BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools)

BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) is an open source technology platform sponsored by the Eclipse Foundation that consists of a visual report designer and a runtime component for Java and Java EE environments. These tools are used to create reports, data visualizations, and charts that can be embedded in Web-based and rich client applications. Information gleaned from embedded BI tools such as BIRT may be used in both real-time decision making and to track and analyze historical data or ongoing developments. Examples of reports that can be designed using BIRT include lists, charts, crosstabs, forms and documents, and compound reports with multiple features.

These business intelligence and reporting tools can pull data from many different sources including databases, Web services, and Java objects to create a report. A single report may contain data from multiple sources. The data can be filtered and grouped to create standardized reports or customized based on the end-user's needs. Because the result may still include too much data for the purposes of decision making, JavaScript can be used to create business-specific logic that makes reports more useful for business purposes. The resulting information can be presented in a variety of visual or text formats from Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations to PDF documents.