A BIRT application is a self-contained package that includes all the files and data of a BIRT project. This package enables developers to quickly deploy secure and interactive applications to an iHub server or cloud instance. After deployment, the application is accessible from a web browser and includes an HTML landing page to describe or navigate the application files.

When a project is published as a BIRT application, developers can offer uniform resource locator (URL) entry points to the content of the application using a unique URL for each BIRT or dashboard file in the project. These URLs can also link the application content together, such as drill down reports or hyperlinks to additional content.

Developers use BIRT Designer Professional to build and preview all components of the application before deployment such as data objects, data stores, dashboards, BIRT design and document files, BIRT libraries, HTML files, JavaScript libraries, and other standard web content. All of these components work together in a relational structure.

For example, the landing page of a BIRT application can contain a description and URL link to a dashboard file in the BIRT application. The dashboard can display BIRT documents or display charts from BIRT data objects that are stored in the BIRT application.