The most current version of this document is available on
the
BIRT website.Frozen version for the Eclipse Roadmap v1.0, last revised February 16, 2005.
The most current version of this document is available on
the
BIRT website.
Please send comments about this draft plan to the BIRT developer mailing list.
This document lays out the plans for the first feature release of the Eclipse BIRT project.
Plans do not materialize out of nowhere, nor are they entirely static. To ensure the planning process is transparent and open to the entire Eclipse community, plans are posted in an embryonic form and then revised from time to time throughout the release cycle.
The first part of the plan deals with the important matters of release deliverables, release milestones, target operating environments, and release-to-release compatibility. These are all things that need to be clear for any release, even if no features were to change.
The release deliverables are:
CVS repository for BIRT . The Eclipse BIRT 1.0 release is targeted for general availability on May 15th, 2005. All release deliverables will be available for download as soon as the release has been tested and validated in the target operating configurations listed below.
Release milestones:
In order to remain current, each release of an Eclipse project targets reasonably current versions of underlying operating environments and other Eclipse projects on which it depends.
Most of Eclipse is "pure" Java™ code and has no direct dependence on the underlying operating system. The chief dependence is on the Eclipse Platform, and on the Java 2 Platform that runs it.
The Eclipse BIRT 1.0 release depends on the following:
The 1.0 release of BIRT is designed to run on any configuration supporting the above components.
The Eclipse Platform runs in a variety of operating environments. Testing is focused on a handful of popular combinations of operating system and Java 2 Platform; these are our reference platforms. Eclipse BIRT undoubtedly runs fine in many operating environments beyond the reference platforms we test. However, since we do not systematically test them we cannot vouch for them. Problems encountered when running Eclipse on non-reference platform that cannot be recreated on any reference platform will be given lower priority than problems with running Eclipse on a reference platform.
For BIRT 1.0, the project team plans to tests and validate the following reference platforms:
|
BIRT Report Designer Reference Platforms
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Processor architecture | Window system | Java 2 Platform |
| Microsoft Windows XP | Intel x86 | Win32 | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
| Microsoft WIndows XP | Intel x86 | Win32 | IBM SDK 1.4.2 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3.0 | Intel x86 | GTK | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
| BIRT Report Engine and Chart Component Reference Platforms |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Processor architecture | Window system | Java 2 Platform |
| Microsoft Windows XP | Intel x86 | Win32* | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
| Microsoft WIndows XP | Intel x86 | Win32* | IBM SDK 1.4.2 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 | Intel x86 | Win32* | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 | Intel x86 | Win32* | IBM SDK 1.4.2 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3.0 | Intel x86 | GTK* | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
| IBM AIX 5L 5.2 | POWER | Motif* | IBM SDK 1.4.2 |
| Sun Solaris 9 | UltraSPARC | Motif* | Sun Java 2 Standard Edition, version 1.4.2 |
* Window system only required when displaying charts within SWT or SWING windows.
| BIRT JDBC Reference Platforms |
|---|
| MySQL Connector/J 3.x JDBC driver |
| Cloudscape ( Derby) V5.1 JDBC driver |
| DataDirect Connect for JDBC 3.4 |
| BIRT Browsers and Viewers Reference Platforms |
|---|
| Mozilla Firefox 1.0 |
| Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 |
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 |
Eclipse 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 not provided with this release. However, the plug-in fragment mechanism provides the means by which translations into any number of other languages can be incorporated.
This is the first release of the Eclipse BIRT project, so compatibility with previous releases is not applicable. However, this section is retained in order to provide general forward looking guidelines regarding compatibility with future releases of BIRT.
In general, the BIRT project aims to provide strong upward compatibility with future BIRT releases. However, as a 1.0 release, community feedback may dictate that some upward compatibility can not be supported in favor of advancing the capabilities of BIRT to meet the needs of the community.
As a new project within the Eclipse Foundation, the BIRT project's overriding release 1.0 theme is to extend the Eclipse platform to provide infrastructure and tools that allow application developers to design, deploy, generate and view reports within their applications. In this context, the BIRT project also adopts and supports key themes within the overall Eclipse planning process:
In addition to these goals, the BIRT PMC want to ensure that the initial release of BIRT provides usable value to Java application developers. Even at the 1.0 release level, the BIRT PMC has targeted common report types and a very approachable user interface design to ensure the release is immediately appealing to the Java development community. For full details on the content of the release, see the Release 1.0 BIRT Requirements (November 8, 2004).