Integrating and Extending BIRT authored by Jason Weathersby, Don French, Tom Bondur, Jane Tatchell, Iana Chatalbasheva and published by Addison Wesley is obviously all about BIRT. So what is BIRT?

The creation and generation of well presented and delivered reports is a specialized profession that requires the correct skills, mentality and tools. An excellent free software example of such a tool set is the Eclipse-based Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) system for web applications.