"Any data, any format, anywhere" - the motto of Oracle Reports Services characterizes the today's organizations reporting needs very well. The solution is therefore prepared for meeting even the most demanding requirements to provide business users with the information they need, at a time they need, and in a form they need.

The reporting needs are evolving constantly. The handwritten reports known from the past no longer are usable as they don't provide a sufficient access to data. But that's not everything. In most of cases, also the basic computer reports happen to be not enough. Once the organizations depend on higher and higher volumes of data, more and more attention is paid to report comprehensiveness and universality. Report preparation time shouldn't be longer than a few whiles, including data collecting from different sources. Then, it should be a matter of a few seconds to spread the findings among all interested users. Today's reporting solutions have truly a difficult challenge to meet. And this challenge is the best characterized with the motto of Oracle Reports Services which is "Any data, any format, anywhere". That's the shortest and - simultaneously - the most precise description of today's reporting goals.

Oracle Reports Services is a powerful Enterprise Reporting engine which guides business users through the stages of the route from data to information they need. In a very few words, it achieves the goals thank to multiple report generating capabilities, and the results are top quality, dynamically generated reports which include tables, links, and charts as well as many other objects to help in transparent information presentation. Thank to helpful Wizards, the whole process lasts shorter than ever before what accelerates the - so called - time to value and allows managers to make better decisions faster.

Reports Services: Any data

Today's companies, even those tiniest ones, base on relatively high volumes of data. What's important, this data hardly ever is uniform and/or stored at one source. What it results in is quite a high diversification of data sources, data formats, and other factors which - as a consequence - impedes the reporting process. But Oracle Report Services is advertised to base the reports on any data. In practice, the product is well prepared for working with diverse data sources, including SQL, PL/SQL, Express, Oracle OLAP, XML, JDBC, and text documents. Even though these are the most common sources, it does not mean that they're the only used across the organizations. Thereupon, Oracle Reports Services is supplied with a special API named Pluggable Data Source, which allows users to add any type of data source to their solution. By creating a native mechanism for chosen data formats, the Java API makes the Report Services product usable even in the most specific organizations.

What else is important is the fact that - unlike many other solutions' - Oracle Reports Services' developers are allowed to use as many queries as they require, no limits are set. Additionally, it's not a problem in Oracle to link the queries of diversified types at once.

Reports Services: any format

In every organization, it is possible to distinguish at least a few groups of report end users. Unfortunately, each of these groups have some specific needs and expectations about how the reports they receive should look like. Different are the reports published as a part of the organization website and different are the reports used for presentation during company managers meeting. Even though both these report types contained more or less the same data, different would be the format of its visualization. Oracle Reports Services provides twofold options for report publishing:

• Paper Layout
• and Web Source.

Paper Layout is provided for all non-Internet appliances. It allows to prepare the top quality reports which - later - may be printed or rendered in any of accessible formats, including PDF, HTML, RTF and many other. In a very few words, Paper Layout is for printing and using on the computer screen but on the website. This last appliance, though, is reserved for Web Source publishing - it allows to add dynamic report content to Web pages.

Reports Services: anywhere

Once the data sources are chosen and the data formal already known, one thing remains left to take under consideration. It's a report destination - report designer has to choose where end users are going to be allowed to take the report from. Once again, the requirements may be differentiated, thereupon Oracle Reports Services offer a few destination options which include:

• files (save the report in a file of chosen format and - then - store on a hard disk, for instance)
• printers (when the reports have to be seen on a paper eventually)
• caches (to use in a browser)
• e-mail
• OraclePortal
• WebDAV
• FTP.

Additionally, other sources can be added thank to another Java API named Pluggable Destination, included in Oracle Reports Service packet and - commonly with other additions - turning into a really flexible reporting solution.

Oracle Reports Services resources:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/reports/datasheet-htm-099644.html - here is quite an interesting note on the Oracle official website, containing all the main features of Oracle Reports Services, each and every described very well. Besides the very technical list of the features, there is also an explanation to "Any data, any format, anywhere" idea, followed with an information about how Oracle's product meets these requirements in practice.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/reports/reports-technicalwp-128359.pdf - here is an overview of Oracle Report Services written from the perspective of Enterprise Data Publishing. The PDF document consists of eighteen pages and each contains a lot of interesting information supplied with appropriate illustrations. Additionally, every question there is answered. What's worth mentioning, it's the source of information which both types of users - advanced and non-technical - could benefit from.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/reports/collateral-9i-10g-087783.html - there is quite a comprehensive set of different releases applying to Oracle Reports Services included behind the link. There are PDF documents, HTML files and - additionally - Microsoft PowerPoint presentations devoted to different aspects of the Oracle product. Besides the strictly technical documents devoted to the features or changes introduced in the newest version of the Reports Services, there are documents which cover relatively wider areas as well.