Understanding the BIRT Architecture : About the BIRT engines and services : About the design engine
 
About the design engine
The design engine contains the APIs used to validate and generate a report design file. BIRT Report Designer and any custom Java application that generates a BIRT report design use the design engine. The generation services also use the design engine when building the report document. The design engine contains APIs that validate the elements and structure of the design file against the ROM specification.