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New Eclipse Board Member, Actuate, to Create Open Source Reporting Tool

New Eclipse Board Member, Actuate, to Create Open Source Reporting Tool

In a move that shows the migration of open source development into application areas, it was announced that Actuate has joined the Eclipse Foundation's board of directors. The San Francisco-based enterprise reporting software company is planning on developing an open source reporting tool. The proposal, known as Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT), has been presented to Eclipse members; they have 30 days to comment on the project.

BIRT is expected to be approved. Many Eclipse directors have pledged their full support, and are recommending BIRT be put as a top-level project on the Eclipse.org site. In a press conference, the Eclipse Foundation's first executive director, Mike Milinkovich, formerly vice president of OracleAS technical services, said that the move into application sectors is a logical extension, since open source got its big start in the infrastructure, with operating systems like Linux, Web servers like Apache and databases like MySQL.

Emphasizing the new shift in Eclipse development, he commented, "We really view the extension of Eclipse into the BI [Business Intelligence] and reporting tools areas as a logical extension of...the Eclipse open source community in particular. It's a natural extension, a natural growth as we expand the open source platform towards better and more productive reporting tools for developers and better, more productive business intelligence and reporting tools for end users."

If BIRT is approved next month, Actuate said it will take up project management duties, and will provide a full-time team of engineers to see the project through. The motivation behind Actuate's joining with Eclipse is in part due to the company's own Enterprise Reporting Application Platform; and also due to the lack of automated reporting tools for Java developers.

Actuate said that BIRT will cause a surge in innovation from the world's commercial reporting tools vendors. Actuate noted that Java Server Pages (JSP) are mainly hand-coded by programmers who want to create reports. This process can easily be automated, and once automated, then commercial development of tools will burgeon.

Mark Coggins, Actuate senior vice president of engineering, said, "What BIRT offers them is the opportunity to have access to some technology that will allow them to create reports much more quickly and efficiently."

The project will focus on Eclipse- and Web-based report designers, report engine and charting engine. Coggins illustrated how a developer might work with the application. "The Java developer would be working within the Eclipse environment to create the Java application, they could switch to the BIRT design mode to create their actual design for the reports. They would write out the XML design information and move it over to the application server, where they would embed the application with the BIRT engine."

Actuate will provide paid support to customers if BIRT passes. Furthermore, the open source project will be packaged with its Actuate iServer, an authentication tool for enterprise reports.

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