From a press release:

ACTUATE LAUNCHES BIRT EXCHANGE

Developer Community Site Serves as a Dedicated Resource for Eclipse BIRT and the Actuate BIRT Product Line

Actuate today announced the launch of BIRT Exchange (www.birt-exchange.com), a dedicated resource for the Eclipse BIRT developer community and the Actuate BIRT product line. The growth of the Eclipse BIRT developer community and BIRT’s increased use in enterprise deployments has created demand for supported products and services based on Eclipse BIRT.

BIRT Exchange provides a dedicated site where developers can learn about support and services for Eclipse BIRT, download Actuate BIRT products and participate in the growing Eclipse BIRT ecosystem. Developers can share code and expertise with peers, helping to accelerate the flow of knowledge and information within the community.

Available on BIRT Exchange:

· Demos — a collection of self-running learning tools on everything from AJAX interactivity for BIRT reports, ad-hoc reporting with BIRT templates, spreadsheet reporting, using sub-reports, parameters and parallel reporting

· DevX — a dynamic content hub where BIRT developers can quickly find, share and discover useful BIRT-related technical information including code snippets, report designs, technical tips and tutorials. DevX makes it fast and easy for developers to search, upload, download and rate content items

· Documentation — official documentation for Eclipse BIRT and Actuate BIRT products

· Searchable forums — on Eclipse BIRT and the Actuate BIRT product line, including a mirror of the Eclipse BIRT newsgroup, which is also searchable

· Software downloads and detailed product information — for Eclipse BIRT and the Actuate BIRT product line, enabling rapid report deployment, spreadsheet reporting and ad-hoc end user reporting

· Support Resources — information on support, services and training available for Eclipse BIRT and the Actuate BIRT product line

· Wiki & Blog —facilitates an active dialogue among the BIRT developer community

ATTRIBUTABLE QUOTES:

· Virgil Dodson, Java Reporting Evangelist at Actuate Corporation –“Eclipse BIRT and the Actuate BIRT product line are a powerful combination of tools that let Java developers spend their time doing what they do best: creating innovative and impactful applications. BIRT Exchange gives developers a place to share and learn from peers about the latest and greatest technology and techniques for adding reporting to their applications, so that they can more easily meet their end-users’ reporting needs.”

· Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation – “BIRT has been one of the most popular and successful projects at Eclipse since its initiation by Actuate in 2004. BIRT has successfully grown a large community of developers around it, and has helped extend the Eclipse ecosystem into enterprise reporting.”

· Mark Lynd, President, Firescope – “When we first used BIRT to embed reporting within the Firescope platform, we were under time pressure and needed to quickly come up to speed and to understand our different options. BIRT Exchange would have saved Firescope a lot of time and frustration and made life easier. This is going to be an invaluable resource for any BIRT developer.”

RESOURCES:

· Ask BIRT video

· BIRT 2.2 video with indexed menu

· Interview conducted by Michael Coté, RedMonk

· BIRT on Ohloh

· Actuate Del.icio.us page

· Summary of Actuate’s 2007 Open Source Software Survey

· BIRT Exchange Screenshots

· Eclipse BIRT web site

· BIRT Exchange blog