1. Introduction

The information you must publish is often derived from data in various corporate data sources. These data sources may be SQL-based (relational databases) or non-SQL-based, such as XML. Oracle Reports enables you to leverage capabilities, such as aggregation, summarization, formatting, and scheduling, on data from any data source. You can leverage the PDS (pluggable data source) architecture to connect to your own data source, as well as to any data source available with Oracle Reports.

Oracle Reports enables you to "plug" in any data source you wish, using the provided API. This tutorial will show you how to write you own PDS, using a text PDS as an example.

At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to:

• Implement a PDS class with Oracle Reports
• Register a PDS class with Oracle Reports
• Use the PDS with Oracle Reports

You can also check out how to use a PDS in a report by reading the documentation Building a Report with a Text Pluggable Data Source. Note that Text data source is available out-of-the-box with Oracle Reports 9i and 10g.