Commercial open source companies like Pentaho offer unique opportunities to customers who have atypical business intelligence needs. If you want to do something unusual with a proprietary BI product, you can't -- you're limited by a static design. Pentaho, however, provides access to the source code for its core components, including full API documentation. So if there is something unusual that you need to do with the Pentaho BI Suite (like completely rearranging the user interface, or adding new features, or building your own software with Pentaho's Reporting or Analysis engines), you are limited only by your own budget for in-house software development. If your programmers need help or advice, a Pentaho Enterprise Edition subscription includes developer assistance from Pentaho's engineering department.
Report Designer is one possible implementation of the Pentaho Reporting engine, formerly known as JFreeReport. The engine can be integrated into existing Java applications, or you can build your own Report Designer-like user interface for it, or you can use it as sort of a reporting appliance that you send jobs to from other services.
If you're looking for an embeddable reporting solution, the Pentaho Reporting engine is an excellent option because of its source code availability, its history of successful embedding projects, and Pentaho Reporting Enterprise Edition's developer assistance options. As an Enterprise Edition customer, your application developers can get assistance from the Pentaho engineers who created and maintain the Reporting engine code, and get a fast track for bug fixes.
In order for Report Designer to interface properly with your database, you must prepare the data so that it is easier to work with. The Pentaho Metadata Editor is designed specifically to prepare data for Report Designer and ad hoc reporting in the BI Platform by creating user-friendly names for tables and columns. If you extend your evaluation to include connecting to your own database, you should start with Metadata Editor, which is included in the Pentaho Reporting evaluation package.
Reports published to the Pentaho BI Platform can also be accessed through other methods not covered in this guide. Design Studio enables XML experts to hand-edit an xaction to add complex parameterization and other highly advanced report functions that are not currently available through Report Designer.