Installing custom ODA drivers and custom plug-ins
BIRT Designer Professional loads plug-ins from the following folder:
<installation folder>\BDPro\eclipse\plugins
BIRT iHub and Information Console load custom plug‑ins from the following folder:
$ACTUATE_HOME\iHub\MyClasses\eclipse\plugins
BIRT iHub and Information Console load custom ODA drivers from the following folder:
$ACTUATE_HOME\iHub\oda\eclipse\plugins
Install all custom ODA drivers and custom plug-ins in the folder corresponding to your Actuate product
If your application uses a different location to store custom plug‑ins, you must set this location in a link file for each Actuate product. Actuate products use link files to locate the folder where the custom drivers or plug-ins are deployed. The name of the link files are customODA.link and customPlugins.link. Use the customODA.link file to store the path for custom ODA drivers, and use the customPlugins.link file for all plug-ins used by BIRT reports and the BIRT engine, such as custom emitters, or Flash object library plug-ins. For example, if you store custom plug-ins at C:\BIRT\MyPlugins\eclipse\plugins, then the contents of the customPlugins.link file is the following:
path=C:/BIRT/MyPlugins
Link files are typically stored in a \links subfolder of the Eclipse instance of the product. Create the links folder if it does not exist. For example, if BIRT Designer Professional for Windows is stored in the root of the C: drive, it looks for link files in the following location:
C:\BDPro\eclipse\links
The locations of the link files for each Actuate product are listed in Table 42‑3. After adding the link file to your Actuate product, deploy the plug‑ins to the new location described in the link file.  
Table 42‑3 Locations to store .link files
Product
Paths to store .link files
BIRT Designer Professional Windows
<installation folder>\BDPro\eclipse\links
BIRT Designer Professional Mac OS X
<installation folder>\BRDPro\eclipse\links
BIRT iHub
$ACTUATE_HOME\iHub\Jar\BIRT\platform\links