Customizing the Query

Users often want the ability to customize a report at runtime without having to actually modify the data model. In Oracle Reports , you can do this in one of two ways:

• You can use lexicals (e.g., WHERE clauses) or conditional logic.
• You can apply runtime customizations without altering the base report definition (i.e., XML).

For example, suppose you are developing a report that many users want to customize. When you update the report, the users can simply reapply their XML customizations to it. If they didn't use XML customizations, the users would have to manually update the report definition every time you provided a new version of the report.

XML Report Definitions