The development environment for a reporting application must provide access to all the required BIRT plug-ins and API libraries. The key requirement for the application is the path to the BIRT home directory. The BIRT home directory contains the BIRT engine, which is made up of the required BIRT plug-ins and libraries.

Installing the BIRT Report Engine package, as described in Chapter 3, “Installing Other BIRT Packages,”provides a complete BIRT home in the ReportEngine subdirectory.