Business Intelligence Goes Open Source With Spec

The Eclipse Foundation, an open-source organization, last week released Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools 1.0, an open-source specification developers can use to build reporting capabilities into enterprise Java applications.

Also last week, reporting-software vendor Actuate Corp., which spearheaded the Eclipse Birt project, introduced Actuate Birt, a package of services for developers who adopt the development standard. The services, priced starting at $95 per user for an annual subscription, include live support, indemnification, professional services, and maintenance.

Eclipse launched the Birt project last September; 9,000 copies of the specifications have been downloaded from Eclipse's Web site since February, when a preview version was made available.

"This reiterates the value of Eclipse in terms of fusing together the idea of open, collaborative code development with commercial applications," says Forrester Research analyst Keith Gile.

Birt will save time for developers who now have to hand-code reporting and analysis capabilities into applications. With Birt, which provides reports in PDF or HTML formats, developers also can easily make changes to those capabilities as user requirements change.