Preface

This manual will help you learn about the extensive capabilities of Reports Builder (the report-building component of Oracle Reports), how to build different types of reports, and how to customize your reports to meet a wide variety of requirements.

Audience

This manual is intended for anyone who uses Oracle Reports to build reports. The needs of both novice and advanced users are addressed. Following the step-by-step instructions, you can build the example reports from start to finish. Each report that you build will demonstrate how to use many of the powerful features in Reports Builder.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention	Meaning
boldface	Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
italic	Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
`monospace`	Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.
`monospce italic`	Monospace italic type indicates variables or user-supplied names.
[ ]	Brackets enclose optional clauses from which you can choose one or none.

Accessing the Example Reports

The supporting files for the reports you will build are available on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN): on the Oracle Reports 10g page (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/reports/index.html), click Getting Started to display the Getting Started with Oracle Reports home page. In the list of topic sections on the left, click Index. In the Topic list, choose Building and Developing Reports; in the Collateral Type list, choose Examples, then click Search. In the list of topics that displays, find Building Reports sample files and click the Download icon to download a zip file, called buildingreports_examples.zip. This zip file contains subfolders that correspond to the names of each chapter. Each of the subfolders contains all the supporting files (example reports, images, SQL query code, and so on) necessary for building the individual reports. Extract this zip file into ORACLE_HOME\examples (for example, D:\orawin\examples).

Additionally, the remaining examples in Getting Started with Oracle Reports provide a Web-based selection of examples in this manual, as well as examples not covered in this manual.

Accessing the Data Sources

The data sources used in this manual are:

SCOTT schema
Sample Human Resources, Sales History, and Order Entry schemas
Summit Sporting Goods (SUMMIT) schema

The SCOTT, Human Resources, Sales History, and Order Entry schemas are available with the Oracle Database (both 9i and 10g). You can contact your database administrator for more information on where to find these schemas. You can download the SQL scripts to install the Summit Sporting Goods (SUMMIT) schema from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN): on the Oracle Reports 10g page (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/reports/index.html), click Getting Started to display the Getting Started with Oracle Reports home page. In the list of topic sections on the left, click Index. In the Topic list, choose Building and Developing Reports; in the Collateral Type list, choose Tools/Utilities, then click Search. In the list of tools and utilities that displays, click the Download icon to download the SQL scripts to install the SUMMIT sample schema.