Generating reports in an online services system

1. A method for generating reports in an on-demand, cloud-based multitenant database system supporting multiple tenants and housing tenant data for the multiple tenants, the method comprising:

receiving, from one of the multiple tenants, a list of target data for a report, said list comprising a plurality of target sources including an internal target source located within the tenant data and an external target source located outside the multitenant 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 the fields with composite information;

receiving a command to execute the report;

upon receiving the command to execute, fetch the target data from the internal and external target sources using said composite information; and

upon receiving the fetched target data from the internal and external target sources, populate, 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 or more 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.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said composite information comprises information necessary to fetch the target data, and wherein the target is fetched from a plurality of sources.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the fetching comprises performing web services calls to third-party providers.

4. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having one or more instructions thereon for generating reports in an on-demand, cloud-based multitenant database system supporting multiple tenants and housing tenant data for the multiple tenants, the instructions when executed by a processor causing the processor to:

receive, from one of the multiple tenants, a list of target data for a report, said list comprising a plurality of target sources including an internal target source located within the tenant data and an external target source located outside the multitenant database system;

generate 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;

populate the fields with composite information;

receive a command to execute the report;

upon receiving the command to execute, fetch the target data from the internal and external target sources using said composite information; and

upon receiving the fetched target data from the internal and external target sources, populate, 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 or more 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.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 4 , wherein said composite information comprises information necessary to fetch the target data, and wherein the target is fetched from a plurality of sources.

6. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 4 , wherein the instructions further cause the processor to perform web services calls to third-party providers.

7. An apparatus for generating reports in an on-demand, cloud-based multitenant database system supporting multiple tenants and housing tenant data for the multiple tenants, the apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a storage device storing one or more stored sequences of instructions which when executed by the processor caused the processor to:

receive, from one of the multiple tenants, a list of target data for a report, said list comprising a plurality of target sources including an internal target source located within the tenant data and an external target source located outside the multitenant database system;

generate 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;

populate the fields with composite information;

receive a command to execute the report;

upon receiving the command to execute, fetch the target data from the internal and external target sources using said composite information; and

upon receiving the fetched target data from the internal and external target sources, populate, 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 or more 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.