BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting

Chapter 6. Connecting to a Data Source

Enterprise report data is frequently stored in a variety of systems and in disparate formats. BIRT Report Designer provides wizards to set up access to the following types of data sources:

• JDBC data sources

  The most common way to access a data source is to use the JDBC protocol. BIRT reports use SQL queries and stored procedures to access these data sources.

• Text files

  BIRT reports use text files as data sources. These text files are typically created by business systems and applications that create logs.

• XML data

  BIRT reports use XML data, either as a stream or a document.

Many examples included as part of the BIRT download use the sample database, Classic Models. That database is included in the default installation ...