Generally speaking you can have dashboard components that are backed by reports or custom visualforce pages that can contain pretty much anything you like - PDFs for example. One thing - I notice that you have posted this question to the apex devlopment board - dashboards aren't generated via apex, they are configuration.
Hi,
Please go through the below link for all the information related to Dashboards in salesforce:
http://ap1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/dashboards_def.htm
Dashboards are nothing but graphical representation of your org's data.
Let me know if it works for!
Here's a good video overview of salesforce dashboards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j06dgTvOcM
Generally speaking you can have dashboard components that are backed by reports or custom visualforce pages that can contain pretty much anything you like - PDFs for example. One thing - I notice that you have posted this question to the apex devlopment board - dashboards aren't generated via apex, they are configuration.