About the report layout elements
BIRT Report Designer provides a variety of elements for building a report. To lay out a report, drag report elements from the palette and drop them on the page in the layout editor. Report elements fall into two general categories:
*Elements that display information
*Elements that organize multiple elements in a section
Table 9‑1 provides a summary of the report elements that you can use to lay out your report. Details about using these report elements appear elsewhere.
Table 9‑1 Report layout elements 
Report element
Description
Label
Displays a piece of static text.
Text
Displays text that can contain HTML formatting and dynamic values.
Dynamic text
Displays memo or Character Large Object (CLOB) data from a data set field. The data typically consists of large amounts of text.
Data
Displays a computed value or a value from a data set field.
Image
Displays any image that a web browser supports.
Grid
Organizes multiple report elements in a static table. The number of rows in a static table is fixed at design time.
Table
Organizes data from a data set in a dynamic table. The number of rows in a table is determined by the number of data rows returned by the data set when the report is run.
List
Organizes data from a data set in a variety of layouts. By contrast, a table element organizes elements in a row‑and‑column format only.
Chart
Displays data from a data set in a variety of chart types, including pie charts, bar charts, and line charts.
Cross tab
Displays summary, or aggregate, data in a row‑and‑column matrix that is similar to a spreadsheet.