What is the difference between AWS Data Source and JDBC connection

To put it short

Both types of these data sources use JDBC. The main difference is that the AWS Datasource does auto-connect of your Amazon RDS and Redshift instances, sets the proper Security groups, drivers and creates the connection string (JDBC URI) for you without the need to dig into the EC2 Console and get all the data.

Steps involved in AWS Data Source setup

There are three parts:

1. AWS RDS discovery - functionality to discover RDS/Redshift databases, endpoints, main databases, master user names ).
2. AWS RDS Security Setup/Recovery - fuctionality to automaticaly setup AWS Security layer (which will allow your TIBCO JasperReports^® Server instance to connect to RDS), or in case of an IP change for your AWS instance, it will recover the connection with the new IP
3. DataSource Connection setup via JDBC URL, which makes use of AWS RDS discovery to generate JDBC URL

Please keep in mind that the auto-connect feature only works if you have launched the Jaspersoft instance using our Amazon CloudFormation template:

https://community.jaspersoft.com/jaspersoft-aws/launch

You may also want to refer to the auto-connect feature description on this page:

https://community.jaspersoft.com/wiki/jaspersoft-bi-aws-frequently-asked-questions#auto-connect