Dynamic report mapping apparatus to physical data source when creating report definitions for information technology service management reporting for peruse of report definition transparency and reuse

A data processing system for dynamically creating report mapping relationships at runtime, the data processing system comprising:

• a bus;
• a storage device connected to the bus, wherein the storage device contains computer usable code;
• at least one managed device connected to the bus;
• a communications unit connected to the bus;
• and
• a processing unit connected to the bus, wherein the processing unit executes the computer usable code to create a relationship mapping definition based on the generalized description in the report definition in response to generating a report definition comprising a generalized description of desired data without any database-specific properties, wherein the relationship mapping definition comprises data connection information for accessing one or more data sources containing the desired data, initiate a connection to the one or more data sources using the relationship mapping definition, and generate a report using the acquired data in response to acquiring the desired data from the one or more data sources.