The BIRT report engine enables XML report designs created by the BIRT Report Designer to be used by a J2EE/Java application. To support this functionality, the report engine provides two core services, generation and presentation.

The report engine provides extensions to support custom report items and custom output formats. The report engine also supports Java application developers who want to integrate powerful report generation and viewing capabilities into their applications without having to build the infrastructure from lower-level Java components.

The BIRT report engine API supports integrating the run-time part of BIRT into Java applications. The report engine provides the ability to specify parameters for a report, run a report to produce HTML, PDF, DOC, PS, or PPT output and fetch an image or chart.

The generation service within the report engine connects to the data sources specified in a report design, uses the data engine to retrieve and process the data, creates the report layout, and generates the report document. Report content can be either viewed immediately using the presentation services, or saved for later use. The saved report documents containing snapshot views of data can be retained for use and comparison over time.

The presentation services process the report document created by the generation services and render the report to the requested format and the layout specified in the design. The presentation services use the data engine to retrieve and process data from the report document. The presentation services use whichever report emitter they require to generate a report in the requested format. BIRT has several standard emitters, HTML PDF, DOC, PPT, PS, and XLS. BIRT also supports custom emitters that modify these default formats or deliver new formats.

Extensions to the presentation engine and services provide display capability for chart report items and custom report items.