| ActiveReports 9 > ActiveReports User Guide > Getting Started > Adding a Data Source to a Report |
The first thing you probably want to do when you create a report is to add data. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, depending on the type of report you are using.
With page reports or RDL reports, you basically connect to a data source, and then add a dataset. You can also create a shared data source if you use the same one for many reports. For information on how to perform these tasks, see Work with Data in the How To section. For more information on each item in the associated dialogs, see Data Sources and Datasets in the Concepts section.
For more advanced ways to connect data, see the Walkthroughs section for step by step instructions on using Reports with Stored Procedures, or creating a Custom Data Provider.
With section reports, you bind a report to any of a variety of data sources and select the data using a SQL query or XPath expression in the Data Source Dialog. You can also use code to create an unbound data source or to change the data source at run time. For more information on all of these methods of binding reports to data, see Work with Data in the Section Report How To section.