Frequently Asked Questions about the BIRT Marketplace

About Submitting/Selling Applications

What is BIRT Exchange Marketplace?

BIRT Exchange Marketplace is a showcase for BIRT applications developers to display and sell their products. Its purpose is to provide a place for the BIRT community to share applications, solutions, and components with others in an effort to promote the use of BIRT and BIRT-related products, ultimately improving and enriching the BIRT community at large.

Who is eligible to submit apps or become a partner?

Anyone interested in BIRT with a BIRT-related application, solution, or component to offer to the BIRT community is eligible to submit their materials to the BIRT Exchange Marketplace.

How can it benefit me?

The Marketplace is the best way to reach the growing community on BIRT Exchange and promote, distribute, and (optionally) sell applications or software components that integrate or extend BIRT. Your visibility on the most active, online BIRT community is supported by marketing campaigns and an e-commerce infrastructure so that you can focus your efforts on developing your solutions, and spend less time promoting them and maintaining a sales infrastructure.

What kinds of applications, solutions and components should I offer?

Any BIRT-related application, solution, or software component is appropriate. Examples include:

• BIRT designs or templates that work with widely available applications.
• Style sheets, report components, component libraries
• BIRT data connectors to help access specific data sources such as UML models, publicly available APIs, Web Services, flat files, and more – potentially using the ODA (Open Data Access) framework.
• BIRT extensions for components like chart types, emitters, and more.
• BIRT plug-ins
• Frameworks or starting points to help use BIRT within specific application architectures or to support specific business processe
• Software to help deploy BIRT or view BIRT output
• Applications in which BIRT is used to deliver reports and data visualizations
• Appliances that include software built with BIRT
• Consulting services to build industry, domain or application-specific BIRT visualizations

The above list is intended to illustrate examples. Any software component, solution, or application that integrates BIRT, extends BIRT or uses BIRT to meet a specific technology or business need is suitable.

Are there listing or other fees?

There are no listing fees at this time. If you choose to have Actuate collect payment for your software or service, there will be a transaction fee.

What are the requirements for submitting applications, solutions and components?

The full requirements are detailed on the Submit Your App page.

What is the approval process?

The approval process is detailed on the Submit Your App page.

What kinds of resources are available to assist in the development of applications and components?

The following resources can be helpful as you develop your BIRT applications and components:

• The forums on BIRT Exchange where you can get answers from the BIRT community and Actuate’s BIRT evangelists.
• The Marketplace itself offers frameworks and starter kits that can be the foundation for other applications and components.
• Discounted training and consulting services from Actuate are available to organizations and individuals developing applications and components for the Marketplace.

What kinds of marketing benefits are available?

Listing your offerings in the Application Showcase on the Marketplace provides exposure for you on the most active online community for BIRT users and developers. In addition, you can take advantage of marketing benefits offered through the BIRT Global Partner Connection.

About Buying/Downloading Applications

What is BIRT Exchange Marketplace?

BIRT Exchange Marketplace is a showcase for BIRT application developers to display and sell their products and solutions. Its purpose is to provide a place for the BIRT community to share applications, solutions, components and services with others in an effort to promote the use of BIRT and BIRT-related products, ultimately improving and enriching the BIRT community at large.

What kinds of applications and solutions are available?

Any application, software component or solution related to BIRT is appropriate. Examples include:

• BIRT designs and templates that work with widely available applications.
• Style sheets, report components and component libraries
• BIRT data connectors to help access specific data sources such as UML models, publicly available APIs, Web Services, flat files, and more - potentially using the ODA (Open Data Access) framework.
• BIRT extensions for components like chart types, emitters, and more
• BIRT plug-ins
• Frameworks or starting points to help use BIRT within specific application architectures or to support specific business processes
• Software to help deploy BIRT or view BIRT output
• Applications in which BIRT is used to deliver reports and data visualizations
• Appliances that include software built with BIRT
• Consulting services to build industry, domain or application-specific BIRT visualizations

How are the apps and solutions organized?

The apps and solutions are organized into three categories:

• Customer Self Service - Customer-facing online channel applications that provide interactive, easy-to-use, real-time, high-quality content which improves customer sales and service processes.
• BI Applications - Business intelligence applications that provide information to users across the enterprise.
• Components/Extensions - Any reusable BIRT connectors, emitters, designs or templates that speed the development of BIRT solutions.

How can it benefit me?

Using the BIRT solutions offered at the Marketplace, you can improve your development cycle by:

• Downloading functionalities too time consuming to develop yourself.
• Providing a convenient starting point for your own development projects.
• Exploring interesting ways others’ applications have integrated BIRT

What’s the difference between DevShare and BIRT Exchange Marketplace?

DevShare is where the BIRT developer community collaborates and creates products by sharing tips, techniques, and white papers. The Marketplace is where BIRT users can actually download packaged starter kits, applications and tested software.

Are the apps in the Marketplace open source?

Since there is no requirement that our vendors make their source open, the items on the Marketplace can be proprietary or open sourced.

Who provides support for these apps?

The support for items obtained via the Marketplace is exclusively the responsibility of the vendor.

Is there a cost associated with these offerings?

The items listed by the Marketplace vendors can be free or charge a fee. Please see individual items for details.