1.1 Introduction to Oracle Reports

Oracle Reports is Oracle's award-winning, high-fidelity enterprise reporting tool. It enables businesses to give immediate access to information to all levels within and outside of the organization in an unrivaled scalable and secure environment.

Using Oracle Reports, you can rapidly develop and deploy sophisticated Web and paper reports against any data source (including an Oracle database, JDBC, XML, and text files). Leveraging Java EE technologies such as JSP and XML, you can publish your reports in a variety of formats (including HTML, XML, PDF, Enhanced Spreadsheet, Spreadsheetdata, delimited text, delimiteddata, PostScript, and RTF) to any destination (including e-mail, Web browser, WebDav, FTP, Oracle Portal, and file system) in a scalable, efficient manner.

Oracle Reports consists of Oracle Reports Developer (a component of the Oracle Developer Suite) and Oracle Reports Services (a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware).

Oracle Reports Developer includes the following component:

Oracle Reports Services is the focus of this manual. It executes, distributes, and publishes your reports for enterprise wide reporting. Using Oracle Reports Services to deploy your reports results in gains of flexibility, time savings, and processing capacity. It includes the following components:

For more resources for information about Oracle Reports, refer to "Related Documentation" in the Preface.

1.1.1 Oracle Reports Builder

As its name implies, Oracle Reports Builder (rwbuilder) is the report-building component of Oracle Reports. Report developers use the Oracle Reports Builder design-time user interface to create and maintain report definitions, using:

  • user-friendly wizards that guide you through the report design process

  • pluggable data sources (PDSs), such as JDBC and XML, that provide access to data from any source for your reports

  • a query builder with a graphical representation of the SQL statement to obtain report data

  • default report templates and layout styles that can be customized if needed

  • a live editor that enables you to modify paper report layouts in WYSIWYG mode

  • the ability to add dynamic report output to an HTML page by embedding custom JSP tags within an HTML document

  • an integrated graph builder to graphically represent report data

  • the ability to generate code to customize how reports will run

  • tools that dynamically generate Web pages based on your data

  • standard report output formats such as HTML, HTMLCSS, XML, PDF, RTF, spreadsheet, PCL, PostScript, and ASCII

  • client-side parameter validation using JavaScript

  • the ability to execute dynamic SQL statements within PL/SQL procedures

  • support for Oracle database objects

  • event-based reporting (report execution based on database events)

  • seamless integration of Oracle Reports with Oracle Portal for administering report security and publishing report output to portlets

For more information, refer to the Oracle Reports online Help (select Help > Contents in Oracle Reports Builder), and the Oracle Reports Building Reports manual.

1.1.2 Oracle Reports Bridge

Oracle Reports Bridge (rwbridge) provides functionality for discovering a Reports Server across farms. For more information, see Section 2.3.4.1.2, "Server Discovery Across Subnets".

1.1.3 Oracle Reports Client

Oracle Reports Client (rwclient) provides a command-line interface to send a report to a remote Reports Server (rwserver).

1.1.4 Oracle Reports Runtime

rwrun (Reports Runtime) runs a report by starting its own in-process server (not to be confused with the default in-process Reports Server), which runs in the same JVM as the rwrun process. The configuration file for this in-process server is rwbuilder.conf and trace files are saved in the rep_machinename-rwbuilder directory.

Note:

It is recommended that you use rwrun for testing purposes only. Use rwservlet and rwclient in your production environment to take full advantage of the power of Oracle Reports Services.

1.1.5 Oracle Reports Servlet

Oracle Reports Servlet (rwservlet) is a component of Oracle Reports Services that translates and delivers information between either a Web Server or a Java EE Container (for example, Oracle WebLogic Server) and the Reports Server, enabling you to run a report dynamically from your Web browser.

1.1.6 Oracle Reports Server

Oracle Reports Server (rwserver) is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware that provides reporting services to execute, distribute, and publish your reports for enterprise-wide reporting. This component processes client requests, including user authentication, scheduling, caching, and report distribution. Use Oracle Reports clients such as Oracle Reports Servlet (rwservlet), Reports JSP, and Oracle Reports Client (rwclient) to send a report to Oracle Reports Server (generally referred to as Reports Server).