The Eclipse BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) project demonstrated their first milestone release at EclipseCon today. The project released version 1.0M1 on February 28.

The initial report generation capabilities look quite interesting, with JDBC support, Eclipse-based GUI Query and Report designer, charting and instant preview.

The tutorial requires Microsoft Access, however it is possible to test the features on any JDBC database.

The team is requesting QA testing and feedback from the community.

UPDATE: The current version requires Eclipse 3.0.1, the BIRT team anticipates 3.1 support one month after 3.1 is released.