Stonefield Query SDK version 4.2

We are pleased to announce the immediate release of Stonefield Query SDK version 4.2. There are lots of new and improved features in version 4.2.

Report Designer

• You can now edit formulas from Step 2 in the report wizards. When a formula is selected, click the Edit Formula button to edit it. Otherwise, that button appears as "New Formula", so clicking it creates a new formula.
• Formulas now appear in report wizards with "[Formula]" after the name so you can distinguish them from real fields.
• You can now specify the order that a formula appears in its table when fields are displayed in table order. This is useful if you want a formula to appear somewhere other than at the end of the list of fields.
• You can now specify the number of rows a dashboard has. For example, if there are four charts in a dashboard and you specify two rows, the dashboard will have two rows of two charts each.
• Two new templates are available:
  • Modern: this template has alternating light and dark rounded rectangles in the detail band and a blue rounded rectangle for column headers.
  • Modern with Title: this template is similar to Modern but with a title page showing the report name, comment, user, date, and filter.

  To add these to the list of available templates, choose Template Editor from the Tools menu, click Import, and select these templates from the Sample Templates folder.

• Objects in templates have a new Center option, which is useful for images such as logos that you want to be centered horizontally on the page.
• Stonefield Query can now automatically sum numeric fields when you add them to a report. Turn on the Automatically sum numeric fields setting in the Options dialog to use this feature.
• The Format page of the Field Properties dialog of the Advanced Report Designer now has a Display date only setting that works like the same setting in the Properties dialog of the report wizards: turn this setting on to display the date only or turn it off to display the date and time.
• You can now specify whether missing date values are included in a chart when a date field is used in as the category (X-axis) field.
• The License Manager now includes a Copy button to copy the selected serial number to the Clipboard. This makes it easier to specify your serial number when requesting technical support.
• You now get a warning if you try to schedule a report that has ask-at-runtime filter conditions, since that prevents a scheduled report from running.
• Because exclude filter conditions are often erroneously used in place of a normal "not equals" filter (for example, you want a list of customers who aren't in Germany and use an exclude condition of Country equals Germany rather than the correct way, with a normal filter condition of Country does not equal Germany), you now get a warning if you try to create an exclude condition of this type, although that doesn't prevent you from using it.
• Most cross-tab reports run faster now.
• You can now output cross-tab reports that have Show Change or Show % Change turned on to Microsoft Excel, CVS, or PivotTable files even when the report can't be previewed or printed because it has too many columns.
• Stonefield Query starts up faster than before.
• The setting of the "display only directly related tables"  button is no longer remembered because it was easy to miss that this option was turned on and then wonder why all of the tables weren't displayed.
• Turning on Use same options next time report is run on the Output page of the Reports Explorer now saves the selected printer if it isn't the default printer. This allows you to always print the report to the same printer, such as sending mailing labels to a label printer.
• You can now specify the name of a report to edit or that a report should be created with the New Report Wizard with command-line parameters.

Stonefield Query Studio

• It's now much easier to create a relationship between tables that matches more than one field from each table: rather than typing the join expression, you can use field drop-down lists to choose up to five fields from each table.
• The Import Data Dictionary function can now add tables and fields to the data dictionary, and supports the data type, size, decimals, and picture for fields. It also now supports subtables and application views.
• Stonefield Query can now accept XML created by the WriteXML method of an ADO.Net DataTable from the Select script for a table.
• The Report object has a new Template property that allows you to programmatically determine or change the template used for a report.
• The description applied to SFQuery.EXE by the Change SFQuery.exe Description function in the File menu is no longer padded with spaces and terminated with periods.
• You can now specify the order of a field in the table. This is useful if you want some calculated fields to appear somewhere other than at the end of the list of fields when fields are displayed in database order.
• If you specify a value for the new URL for Knowledgebase configuration setting, the Stonefield Query Help menu has a Knowledgebase function that navigates the user's browser to that URL.
• If the new Application.SubmitTicket script has any code, that script is executed when an error occurs and the user clicks the Send button in the error dialog. This script can be used to automatically create support tickets in your support system if you have such a system and it has an API or some other automated mechanism for creating tickets.
• The new DataEngine.SetOperatorList script allows you to customize the list of filter operators available for a specific field or data type.
• Stonefield Query now correctly handles fields defined with more than 18 decimal places.
• The About dialog, available in the Help menu, now displays the serial number.
• You no longer need to create a GetDataSources script for a database that has its connection type set to "None". In that case, you will need Select scripts for all of the tables since Stonefield Query doesn't connect to any database.
• Turning off the Reportable property for a field no longer disables the Filterable and Allow Values properties. This allows you to turn these properties on, meaning a user can't report on the field but can filter on it.