Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Stonefield Query SDK Version 7.1

We are pleased to announce the release of version 7.1 of the Stonefield Query SDK. This is mainly a maintenance release but there are a few new features.

  • The Stonefield Query SDK is now available with two license types: Ultimate and Pro. Ultimate is the full-featured version of the SDK and is designed for developers creating reporting solutions for their customers while Pro is a less expensive license intended for consultants, IT staff, or technical people creating a reporting solution for internal use or a single customer.

  • The new Content setting for fields allows you to specify the type of content for a field, which determines how it's rendered in a report.

  • You can now open multiple instances of Stonefield Query Studio.

  • The new BusinessDays function returns the number of business days between the two specified dates, skipping Saturday and Sunday and optionally holidays.

  • There are new This Calendar Year and This Fiscal Year choices for the Is operator for filter conditions on date fields.

  • Grand totals for subreports no longer appear at end of the main report since they are rarely wanted.

  • All dialogs have help buttons so help is even easier to access than before.

  • The Scheduled Tasks dialog now automatically refreshes itself every five seconds while a schedule is being run, saving you having to manually click the Refresh button periodically to see if the task finished.

  • You can no longer change the Data group or table for an existing formula since doing that causes the formula to fail. If you need to change the table, recreate the formula in the correct table.

  • The cross-tab and label field properties dialogs now have an Enclose negative values in parentheses option.

Friday, July 6, 2018

Stonefield Query Enterprise Version 4.0

We are pleased to announce the release of version 4.0 of Stonefield Query Enterprise. There are lots of new features in this release.

  • A new linked report type, Side By Side, is now available. When this is used, you can preview a parent and child report beside each other.

  • You can specify an optional display expression for report fields. If specified, the value of the expression will be displayed in place of the field value, but sorting will be preserved.

  • If enabled for the project, users can click the Forgot password? link on the login page to receive a password reset email and change their password.

  • You can now export a report (File, FTP, Email) directly without previewing it first from the Export Options dialog.

  • The new Templates menu item under the Tools menu will take you to a template management window, where you can copy, delete, or edit your templates.

  • A new Expression Builder dialog is available for filter condition expressions, display expressions, and conditional format expressions.

  • A warning now appears when refreshing collections since all users will be logged out.

  • Browser password managers such as Chrome Smart Lock are now supported in the Login page.

  • A new setting in the Options dialog allows you to impose a limit on how much system memory is occupied when a query is split and joined in memory.

  • The new Training function in the Help menu allows you to launch an in-app training program that covers the use of the main Reports Explorer.

  • The Export Options dialog now has settings organized into groups. Groups are collapsed by default unless any settings in that group have been changed.

  • When you click the button for a filter condition, existing values for the condition are now pre-selected in the list.

  • You can now search the values list when you click the button for a field or filter condition.

  • Previewing a batch report now opens the report in a new preview tab. To export a batch report, use the Export Options dialog.

  • The Schedule Wizard no longer displays tags that don't contain any reports.

  • If you have Tenant support enabled, Administrator users will see the Tenant and Last Modified User in the report list. This will make reports with similar names easier to manage in multi-tenant installations.

  • The output of a quick report to the data only formats such as XLSX has been improved.
  • You can now show percentage values for the point labels in Pie, Doughnut, and FullStacked charts.

  • We now do a better job calculating the column width of columns in a cross-tab.

  • The output of a cross-tab report to the data only formats such as XLSX has been improved.

  • A new function, GetConditionValue, allows you to retrieve filter values for a running report and use the values in a formula expression.

  • The list of available functions no longer includes duplicates or obsolete functions.

  • You can now use LIKE as a comparison operator in database expressions.

  • If a report has the same filter conditions as a group formula on that report, the values from the report will be used. Note that this only affects non ask-at-runtime filter conditions. You will continue to be prompted if ask-at-runtime is toggled on.

  • A list of commonly used expressions is now available.

  • You no longer need to manage the fields included in an expression. If you insert (or type in manually) a field in TableName.FieldName syntax in an expression, the appropriate fields are added automatically.

  • There is improved support for ntext type fields in formula expressions.

  • You can now search the available field list when editing a formula expression.

  • Date functions can now be used with database columns that may have null values.

  • Date fields formatted as Date (using {0:d}) now appear with the same format in Excel output.

  • You can now specify a Reply To email address in email settings.

  • The loading performance for reports, formulas, and schedules has been improved.

  • You can now show the name of the current database in the report header.

  • You no longer have to restart the server after making changes to licenses.

  • More kinds of SQL Statements are now supported when creating a SQL Passthrough report, and there's no longer a length limit on the SQL Statement.

  • You can now output reports to an XML document format.