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Actuate BIRT - open source that's worth a look
October 13, 2014

Actuate BIRT - open source that's worth a look

Bri Gipson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

BIRT 3 & 4

Overall Satisfaction with Actuate

Actuate's open source BIRT is used as an integrated reporting solution to provide data exporting and visualization of client project portfolios that empowers them with information to aid in better decisions.
  • The report outputs can vary across different types such as HTML, PDF, and Excel
  • Their open source offering is very sufficient
  • There are great boards and blogs for developers and engineers to expand and use their features.
  • The people from the company that I've worked with are professional and courteous.
  • The report designer can be unstable at times.
  • The reporting engine tends to have memory leaks with certain types of massive-data reporting.
  • The report graphics don't have the sexiest appeal (e.g. Glossy feel, animated output)
  • Some extensibility is extremely difficult to get to without purchasing a license (e.g. Setting a simple flag so that HTML outputs in compressed mode requires either creating your own emitter or going the paid route)
  • There is a myriad of reporting solutions and options tend to change every other year.
Actuate has been in the industry a while and the open source community make going with Actuate's BIRT a stable decision. Changing report engines can be expensive, so going with a company with a good reputation helps long-term.
Difficulty with some extensibility that should be fairly easy, lack of shading in the reports (even simple phong shading), lack of out-of-the box capabilities that seem like no brainers and instability with the design tools all drop the product a few marks, but the support community and the overall product experience is well above average. It's at least worth a try and its extensibility makes it a good contender.
It depends on extensibility, set-up, access & style. Actuate performs fairly well, but has performance issues because it sits on top of eclipse, which sits on top of Java. Extensibility usually comes at that price. Set-up is fairly straightforward and it can be secured.