The Pentaho Reporting Engine Data API is a simple API that describes how Pentaho Reporting accesses data to populate reports. In this section, you will learn about the core interfaces of the API. All the individual implementations discussed later in this chapter implement this API.

There are two main Java interfaces related to the Pentaho Reporting Engine Data API. The first interface you will learn about is org.pentaho.reporting.engine.classic.core.DataFactory. The primary purpose of the DataFactory interface is to generate an object that implements the javax.swing.table.TableModel interface. The TableModel interface is a very simple API for accessing two-dimensional cell data. These two simple APIs are combined to manage all data input into Pentaho Reporting.

To implement your own Java data source for the Pentaho Reporting Engine, all you need to do is implement the DataFactory and TableModel interfaces. But most likely, you will be able to take advantage...