Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) 4.4.0
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The primary themes for the BIRT Luna release are:
- Addressing Community Feedback issues reported in Bugzilla
- Incorporating fixes from 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 releases
This release of BIRT will focus on providing the same downloads as BIRT 4.3.
BIRT 4.4.0 is the Luna release of the the BIRT project. BIRT is a +2 offset in the simultaneous release.
BIRT 4.4.0 will be following the Luna release scheduled documented on the Wiki page: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Luna/Simultaneous_Release_Plan#Milestones_and_Release_Candidates
BIRT 4.4 will be compatible with earlier versions of BIRT to the greatest extent possible. The nature and scope of some of the key plan items for BIRT 4.4 are such that the only feasible solutions might break compatibility. In other regards, BIRT 4.4 will be compatible with earlier 4.x, 3.x, 2.x and 1.x. We also aim to minimize the effort required to port an existing plug-in to the 4.4 APIs.
Compatibility of Release 4.4 with Prior Releases
BIRT 4.4 will be compatible with prior releases of BIRT unless noted otherwise. The detailed compatibility statement is listed below. In this statement, "BIRT" refers to all BIRT components: BIRT Report Framework, BIRT Runtime, and BIRT Chart SDK.
API Contract Compatibility: BIRT 4.4 will be upwards contract-compatible with BIRT prior releases to the greatest extent possible. All incompatibility exceptions will be documented. Downward contract compatibility is not supported. There is no guarantee that compliance with BIRT 4.4 APIs will ensure compliance with prior BIRT release APIs. Refer to general Eclipse document on Evolving APIs for a discussion of the kinds of API changes that maintain contract compatibility.
Chart UI API: The BIRT Chart UI API 4.4 is compatible with earlier 4.x, 3.x and 2.x.x API's but not compatible with the v1.x APIs due to a full redesign of the Chart UI in the BIRT 2.0 release.
Binary (plug-in) Compatibility: The BIRT 4.4 plug-in framework will be upwards binary-compatible with prior BIRT release plug-ins to the greatest extent possible. Downward plug-in compatibility is not supported. Plug-ins for BIRT 4.4 will not be usable in prior BIRT releases. Extension plug-ins for prior BIRT releases will be upwards binary-compatible with BIRT 4.4.
Source Compatibility: BIRT 4.4 will be upwards source-compatible with prior BIRT releases to the greatest extent possible. This means that source files written to use prior BIRT release APIs will successfully compile and run against BIRT 4.4 APIs. Downward source compatibility is not supported. If source files use new BIRT APIs, they will not be usable with an earlier version of BIRT.
Report Design Compatibility: BIRT 4.4 will be upwards report design compatible with prior BIRT releases unless noted otherwise. This means that reports created with prior BIRT releases can be successfully opened by BIRT 4.4 and upgraded to a 4.4 format.
Non-compliant usage of API's: All non-API methods and classes, and certainly everything in a package with "internal" in its name, are considered implementation details which may vary between operating environment and are subject to change without notice. Client plug-ins that directly depend on anything other than what is specified in the BIRT API are inherently unsupportable and receive no guarantees about compatibility within a single release much less with an earlier releases.
Eclipse BIRT is designed as the basis for internationalized products. The user interface elements provided by the various Eclipse projects, including dialogs and error messages, are externalized. The English strings for BIRT are provided as the default resource bundles. Translations are provided with this release for French (fr_FR), German (de_DE), Spanish (es_ES), Japanese (ja_JP), Simplified Chinese (zh_CN), and Korean (ko_KR).
Most of Eclipse, and all of BIRT, is "pure" Java code and has no direct dependence on the underlying operating system. For BIRT, the chief dependence is on the Eclipse Platform, Graphical Editor Framework (GEF), Modeling Framework (EMF), and on the Java 2 Platform that runs it.
BIRT 4.4 Reference Stack for Java SE 7
- Java SE 7
- Eclipse Platform Runtime Binary 4.4
- Graphical Editor Framework (GEF) Runtime TBD (Luna version of GEF)
- Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) 2.10
- Data Tools Platform Project (DTP) 1.12
- Web Tools Project (WTP) 3.6
| Name | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1 | 2013/08/23 | Luna M1 |
| M2 | 2013/10/04 | Luna M2 |
| M3 | 2013/11/15 | Luna M3 |
| M4 | 2013/12/20 | Luna M4 |
| M5 | 2014/01/31 | Luna M5 |
| M6 | 2014/03/14 | Luna M6 |
| M7 | 2014/05/09 | Luna M7 |
| RC1 | 2014/05/23 | Luna RC1 |
| RC2 | 2014/05/30 | Luna RC2 |
| RC3 | 2014/06/06 | Luna RC3 |
| RC4 | 2014/06/13 | Luna RC4 |
| GA | 2014/06/25 | Luna Release |