A report uses the same mechanism to access data from any of the sources listed in Table 1‑1. First, you create a data source, which is a BIRT object that contains the information to connect to an underlying data source. Each type of data source requires different connection information. For a JDBC data source, for example, you specify the driver, URL, and user login to connect to a database. An XML data source requires the location of the XML file and, optionally, the location of the XML schema.

Next, you create a data set, which is a BIRT object that specifies and returns all the data that is available to a report. For a JDBC data source, for example, you write a SQL query or run a stored procedure to retrieve specific data from a database. For an XML data source, you use XPath expressions to specify the XML elements and attributes from which to retrieve data.