Eclipse BIRT has some main parts:

• Report Designer: To create reports from your desktop
• Report Viewer: To visualize reports on the browser

Report Viewer

The BIRT Report Viewer is a free and opensource web application built with Java and JSPs. It can be downloaded and installed on a third-party Java Application Server like Tomcat and run BIRT reports remotely. However, it is not necessary as it is automatically installed and deployed on Jira by the SQL for JIRA - BIRT Reports app.

The RCP Designer provides a built-in Report Viewer for development so you can test your BIRT reports locally. Once they are ready for production, they must be uploaded into Jira. Then the BIRT report Viewer included in the Marketplace app will render the report as HTML page right inside Jira.

Report Designer

It is a desktop app intended to create BIRT reports in a visual way with drag&drop.

Download and install the RCP Designer (BIRT Report Designer) tool on your desktop (Windows, Linux or Mac):

If you already have Eclipse installed, then you can install the Eclipse BIRT as plugin on it:

Once it is installed, you can open it to start to design your BIRT reports:

Document (editor)

it is configured by BIRT to edit reports (XML files with the .rptdesign extension). It has some tabs on the bottom left to switch among different ways to edit the full document or some parts of them

Palette (view)

It'sa Eclipse core component configured by BIRT to display the basic items to composite a document visually via drag&drop ion the Document Editor's Layout:

Property (editor)

Palced under the Document Editos it shows the properties of the active (selected) ites on the document editor:

Outline (view)

BIRT reports are XML files. Data is hierarhicaly structred simlary to the HTML documents (DOM). This view provides a very useful graphical interpretation of the more relevants elements in the report XML document:

Data Explorer (view)

It contains some collections for all the most relevant elements in the XML related with the report data like data surces (connections), data set (queries), report parameters, variables....