In this chapter, you will work with various methods for loading data in the Pentaho Reporting Engine, and dig deep into how the Pentaho Reporting Engine interacts with these data sources to render a report. In Chapter 6, Configuring JDBC and other data sources, you learned how to create and use all the available types of data sources, right within Pentaho Report Designer. In this chapter, you will see, with the help of examples, how to embed the included DataFactory implementations in your environment. You will also learn the details of the Pentaho Reporting Engine Data API specification, allowing you to implement your own DataFactory, if necessary.
This chapter is highly technical and written as a tutorial for pure Java developers. At the end of this chapter, you will feel comfortable with all types of data sources, from a developer's perspective...