The key tasks that a reporting application must perform are to set up the report engine, any required parameter values, and the task objects to generate the report document, and finally to render the report. The reporting application does not require the BIRT Report Designer user interface to generate a report.

The org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.api package contains the classes and interfaces that an application uses to generate reports. The main classes and interfaces are ReportEngine, EngineConfig, IReportRunnable, IRenderOption and its descendants, and IEngineTask and its descendants.