ColdFusion reporting adds integrated business reporting to ColdFusion, providing access to important business data. ColdFusion reporting consists of server-side run-time processing and a graphical user interface (GUI), called the Report Builder.

For information on installing the Report Builder, see  Getting started.

The Report Builder is a Windows-only tool that lets you build banded reports. A banded report consists of multiple horizontal sections (bands), one band for each part of a printed report. For example, data and text in the report header band prints at the beginning of the report, data and text in the page header band prints at the beginning of each page, and data and text in the page footer band prints at the end of each page. In the middle of the report is the detail band, which, at run time, contains one row for each row in the report's result set or database query.

The Report Builder is a stand-alone application that creates report definitions, interacting with a ColdFusion server, as necessary. The Report Builder stores report definition information in a ColdFusion Report (CFR) file. This file contains field definitions, formatting, database SQL statements, CFML, and other information. You display a CFR file by using the cfreport tag and, if enabled for the report, display the report by running the CFR file in a browser.

Remote Development Services (RDS) is a proprietary protocol that uses HTTP to enable the Query Builder and Chart Wizard to access database data through a ColdFusion data source. To enable this functionality in the Report Builder, you define settings for an RDS server. RDS server is another name for an associated ColdFusion server that has enabled RDS.

For more information, see Using CFML in reports  in  Common reporting tasks and techniques.

At run time, you display the CFR file by using a ColdFusion server that has ColdFusion Reporting enabled. You can display the CFR file directly or run it through the cfreport tag. Also, you can save the report to a file instead of returning output to the browser. If the report requires input parameters or a passed query, use the cfreport tag. If you pass a query attribute in the cfreport tag, it overrides any internal SQL statement in the report definition.