In this chapter, we created a copy of the previously created report and modified it to use a relational source to obtain its data. We then learned about JDBC and JDBC drivers, downloaded the MySQL JDBC driver, and copied it into Pentaho BI Server and PRD.

We also created a JDBC connection with our sakila database and wrote an SQL query to obtain data to fill our report. We learned how to modify certain sections and objects of our report; among these modifications, we configured Details Header and Details Footer sections to be repeated on every page.

We discussed the most commonly used aggregation functions and created a formula to use a function to modify the style of an object. We also explained how to use and apply an encoding charset to our report.

Finally, in order to strengthen the acquired knowledge we proposed the creation of a new report from the ground up.

In the next chapter we will explain how to create Groups in our reports.