Patent ID: 8880522

Claim:
A method for generating reports in an on-demand database system supporting multiple users and housing data for the multiple users, the method comprising: receiving, from one of the multiple users, a list of target data for a report, said list comprising a plurality of target sources including an internal target source located within the on- demand database system and an external target source located outside the on-demand database system; generating a plurality of fields in the report including a first field corresponding to said internal target source and a second field corresponding to said external target source, and each field comprising a field label, a field value space, and composite information for use in retrieving said field value from said target source; populating said fields with said composite information; receiving a command to execute the report; upon receiving the command to execute the report, fetching the target data from the internal and external target sources using said composite information in real time; and upon receiving the fetched target data from the internal and external target sources, populating, for each of said plurality of target sources, said field value space with a corresponding field value in real time in response to said command; wherein the composite information comprises all information, including access credentials, necessary to fetch the target data; and wherein the access credentials comprise, for the internal and the external target sources, one of: host names; Internet protocol (IP) addresses and uniform resource locators (URLs); data field names; user names; passwords; authentication information; structured query language (SQL) statements; query string parameters; and port numbers.