i-net Clear Reports create reports from a report template and data from an external source (e.g. database). The following types of data source can be used:
With JDBC drivers you can use data from many different sources (MS SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, XML files, ...). Currently there exist over 200 different public JDBC drivers.
JDBC drivers for the following databases are bundled with i-net Clear Reports:
You can use the JDBC-ODBC Bridge to use the wide range of ODBC drivers. If you have a native JDBC driver then it is in general better to use the JDBC driver.
In an Application Server or Servlet Engine you can configure a JNDI Data Source.
If you use the report engine in your own Java program then you can set the data for the report via the API at runtime.
A BeanDataSource is a data source for i-net Clear Reports using JavaBeans instead of sql queries.
This means that at runtime a list of java beans can be returned as data source for a report. This can be used inside of application servers if the bean objects already exists and a separate sql query would reduce performance. It is also a way to provide the data for i-net Clear Reports if you don't use direct sql queries at all. Then a BeanDataSource can use simple JavaBeans to set the data for a report.
If you use i-net Clear Reports in script languages then you can use data from this script languages. For example you can use ADO if you use ASP.
A special case is a report without data. You can use this to create forms. These forms can be customized via runtime parameters.