Enhancing Oracle Reports - create a custom type

Usually, the report types (destination types) provided by Oracle Reports are sufficient. You can create your report as a file, in the cache, send it to a printer etc. See the list of standard types in the Oracle Documentation.

It is also possible to create your own destination, but the documentation is a bit vague about this, to put it mildly. Once you know where to look though, it is quite easy to accomplish.

First of all, you will need to modify the reportsserver configuration file. You can do this through Enterprise Manager, or modify the file directly ($ORACLE_HOME/reports/conf/<repserv>.conf). You must add a destination tag, just like there are many others in this file. It would be sufficient to add something like this:
  <destination destype="myDest" class="myDestClass"/>

And now, your reportserver will not start, or at least give you an error that the specified class does not exist. This is the hard part. You must create a Java Class that extends the Destination Class. So, you find yourself a Java Programmer (shouldn't be that hard to find, these days) and let him create your own class. In this class, you can do (almost) anything you can imagine. You will have the XML provided by the reports engine avaiable and you will need some imagination as to what you want to do with this report.
After the class is created, compiled and packaged, you add it to the classpath of the reports server. Easiest way to do this is to use Enterprise Manager. After that, the reports server will be able to find the new class and start the engine.

You could for example create an RTF document from the standard XML using a stylesheet and then mail it to one or more recipients. You could send it to a printer and e-mail it both in the same class. Any requirement you might have for your reports is now available. It will require your effort to implement all your requirements though.

This is a good way to enhance the output options of reports, it is just too bad that it is not so very well documented...
When you start working with this, there will undoubtedly be some other obstacles, but if you have any questions, you know where to find me (i.e. right here ;-)