Stonefield Query for AccountMate Version 6.0

We are pleased to announce the release of version 6.0 of Stonefield Query for AccountMate. There are lots of new features in this release; the major ones are:

• You can now add subreports to quick reports.

• A new type of formatting is available for date fields: Fiscal Year. For example, if the Year Starts In setting in the Options dialog is set to November, a date of 12/06/2016 displays 2017 (since it's in the 2017 fiscal year) when the date is formatted as Fiscal Year.

• You can now include reports that have ask-at-runtime filter conditions in a batch report. When you run the batch report, it now prompts you for all unique conditions for all reports at the start of the run and uses those values for the conditions in all reports. That way, you aren't asked more than once for the same value.

See What’s New in This Version for a complete list.

Stonefield Query for AccountMate version 4.2

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

• Stonefield Query for AccountMate supports AccountMate for SQL 8.2 and AccountMate for LAN 7.4.
• 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 for AccountMate 4.1

We are pleased to announce the immediate release of the Stonefield Query for AccountMate version 4.1. This release includes both Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL and Stonefield Query for AccountMate LAN. There are lots of new and improved features in version 4.1.

New Features

• You can now define dashboards using the new Dashboard Wizard. A dashboard is a set of chart reports that displays on your desktop in its own window. These charts automatically refresh at an interval you specify so you can always see the most current data.
• Stonefield Query now supports Windows 7:
  • When you run a report, the taskbar button shows a moving green bar indicating something is happening.
  • You can now right-click a report and choose Pin to Taskbar to pin it to the taskbar; choosing that item in the taskbar launches Stonefield Query and previews that report (this obviously works best when Stonefield Query itself is pinned to the taskbar).
  • Stonefield Query report files, which have an SFX extension, now display a nice report icon in Windows Explorer. Double-clicking an SFX file launches Stonefield Query and previews that report.
• You can now create a desktop shortcut for a report. Right-click any report in the Reports Explorer and choose Create Desktop Shortcut. This will create a shortcut on your desktop with the same name as the report. Double-clicking this shortcut previews the report without opening Stonefield Query, which is handy if you just want to run one report without having to find it in the Reports Explorer.
• Usage statistics are now maintained for reports, and the new Usage Reporting function in the Tools menu allows you to report on these statistics. This allows you to determine which reports are actually being used, how often, and by whom.
• A new type of display for date fields is now available in the Field Properties dialog: "Month/Year". This displays the month and year part of the date, which the "Month" option formerly did. "Month" now outputs only the month part of the date, which is handy, for example, in cross-tab reports where you want to show the date in the rows and the year in the columns to compare sales by month and year. Reports you created prior to version 4.1 using "Month" are automatically changed to use "Month/Year" so they work as they did before.
• When you install a new version of Stonefield Query over an existing one, if there are any new or modified sample reports, a dialog appears telling you that and allowing you to select which of those to import. You can also choose the Check New or Updated Sample Reports function in the Tools menu.
• You can now configure how much memory Stonefield Query reserves for itself at startup. This is especially useful in Windows Terminal Server environments where multiple users run Stonefield Query on the same server at the same time.

Charts

• Multi-page charts are now supported. In the new Size/Paging page of the Chart Wizard, turn on Paging and set the number of points you want on each page.
• Linking, such as drilldowns, from charts is now supported. The Properties dialog for the Category (X-axis) field has a Link page that works the same as other report types. This allows you, for example, to display a chart showing sales by salesperson and click a certain salesperson to drill down to a report showing individual sales for that salesperson. Linking even works in charts displayed in a dashboard. To support this feature, a different preview window is used for charts. It has the same features as the preview window used for other report types but cannot used tabbed pages showing other report types, only other charts.
• Charts now use the Segoe UI font for text in Windows Vista or later because it looks better, especially when rotated.

Cross-Tab Reports

• Cross-tab reports now support displaying the amount and/or percentage change between columns. The Display page of the Properties dialog for a data field has new "Show difference from previous column" and "Show percentage change" options. You can turn on one or both of these.
• You can now specify whether cross-tab reports include row and column totals using new options in Step 5.
• The Select only top option in a cross-tab report now applies to the totals for the first row field rather than the row field itself. For example, setting "Select only top" to 10 now displays the top 10 values rather than the top 10 alphabetically.

Other Features

• Emailing now supports SSL/TSL for SMTP, which means you can now email using Gmail or Hotmail accounts or other SMTP servers that require SSL/TSL. Also, emailing using MAPI with Microsoft Outlook as your email program no longer displays the dreaded Outlook security dialog.
• Certain characters that weren't allowed in the name of a report, such as a period, comma, question mark, slash, and so on, are now allowed. The only character you can't use is a backslash ("\").
• Certain characters that weren't supported in the body or subject of an email, such as "&" or ">", are now allowed.
• You no longer have to contact us if you have to activate the program on a different computer than it was originally activated on. Online activation will automatically activate this computer and deactivate the license on the other one.
• There's better support for adding images stored in your database to reports.
• Output to text, comma-separated (CSV), table, and XML files is now faster.
• Exclusion conditions now work faster than before.
• The Preview window now remembers the setting of the zoom option. If you run a report and change the zoom to 200%, the next time you preview a report, it'll be at 200%.
• The Ask At Runtime filter and report progress dialogs now always appear on top of any other windows so they can't get lost behind something else if you click on a different window.
• The Setup dialog has a new page (page 2) for contact information.
• The activation process is now simpler. Clicking the Click here to activate the program now link in the Welcome dialog (displayed when you're running an unactivated version) now displays the License Manager dialog where you can add as many licenses as you need rather than bringing up a Registration dialog that only allows one license to be activated.
• New templates are automatically imported when you run Stonefield Query.
• The OnSelect script for a report can now access the report using the Report object. This is useful if, for example, you want to change the default filter for a report when it's selected.
• You can now use the built-in RunSQL function in formulas.
• It's easier to work with the Dynamics tab in the properties dialog for Pictures and Rectangles in the Advanced Report Designer. You no longer have to enter values in 960th's of a inch; instead, you can enter value in inches or centimeters, depending on how your system is configured.
• File dialogs, such as those displayed when you output to file or export a report, now support Windows Vista and later features, such as search and recent places.
• The ask-at-runtime filter dialog now appears on top of the report progress window so it doesn't get hidden behind other windows.
• The new GetValueForParameter function is like the existing GetValueForField but allows you to specify the caption, data type, and size of the parameter being requested from the user.
• You can now filter on the Source Database field. This allows a report to drill down based on a data source. For example, suppose you have a cross-tab report that retrieves data from multiple data sources and it has Source Database as the column field. Clicking a specific data source should drilldown and run a detail report for that data source only, so the linked report has a filter on Source Database.
• The progress dialog that appears when running a report that retrieves data from multiple databases now shows the name of the database the data is currently being retrieved from and the number of records retrieved.

Stonefield Query for AccountMate 4.0

We are pleased to announce the immediate release of Stonefield Query for AccountMate version 4.0. This release includes both Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL and Stonefield Query for AccountMate LAN. There are lots of new and improved features in version 4.0.

We have a video covering some of the new features in the Report Designer.

Report Wizards

• You can now customize the relationships between tables in a report without having to edit the SQL statement for the report.
• You can now turn on the Show percentage of total option when you use the Count and Count Distinct summary types in Quick and Cross-Tab reports.
• You can now use the Highest and Lowest summary types on all fields, not just numeric ones.
• You can now create a filter condition that compares a field in one table to a field in another table by using an expression condition.
• Creating a formula by clicking the Formula button in Step 2 of the report wizards now automatically adds the new formula to the report.
• The list displayed when you click the Values button in Step 2 of the report wizards or the Expression Builder now displays two columns of information for certain fields: the value displayed in reports and the actual value stored in the database.
• If Stonefield Query closed due to a problem and you were in the middle of editing a report in a report wizard, the next time you start the program, it prompts if you want to recover and continue editing that report. Choosing No abandons the recovered report so the changes are lost.
• You now have finer control over the placement of a report's filter in a custom SQL statement.

Quick Reports

• You can now group on a field even if the Display this field in the report option is turned off. This is useful, for example, if you want to group on customer ID but display customer name in the group header.
• You can now create bookmarks on fields that are included in the group header of another field.
• You now get a warning in the Field Properties dialog if you turn on the Include this field in group header for option and select a grouped field in a different table than the current field.

Charts

• New options in the Chart Wizard allow you to stack series in area, bar, and column charts and combine smaller slices into one "other" slice in pie charts.
• You can now specify whether a chart added to a quick or cross-tab report appears at the top or bottom of the report using the new Position on report option.
• The Total type option in the Field Properties dialog for the Chart Wizard has a new Count Distinct setting.
• The Summary report option in Step 4 of the Chart Wizard has been removed. Instead, set Total type in the Field Properties dialog to None, meaning you want individual values plotted rather than summarized values.
• The Multi-line option in the Labels page of Step 4 in the Chart Wizard is no longer available for Windows XP since that option is only supported in Windows Vista and later versions.
• You now receive a warning if you create a quick or cross-tab report, add a chart to it, then remove one or more of the fields used in the chart.
• Outputting a chart report to an image (such as GIF) now outputs just the chart, not an entire page with the template.

Cross-Tab Reports

• You can now specify how a date field used in the row of a cross-tab report is formatted: as a date, hour, week, month, quarter, or year.
• You can now specify the width and what to do if the width is too narrow in row and data fields in the Cross Tab Wizard.
• The Field Properties dialog now has a Suppress repeating values option for row fields. If this option is turned on (which it is by default) and several records in a row have the same value in this field, only the first occurrence is printed; the field in subsequent records appears blank.
• A new _TOTAL value is True only for the grand totals line in a cross-tab report, so you can use that in, for example, the Print When expression of an object in a template to output that object only for the totals line. Similarly, _SUBTOTAL can be used to output an object only in a subtotals line.

Preview and Output

• A new file output type is available: Microsoft Excel PivotTable. This type, which is only available for cross-tab reports, creates an Excel PivotTable formatted the same as the cross-tab report, but you can use Excel to change or pivot the report as necessary.
• You can now output cross-tabulation and advanced layout reports to more file types, including Microsoft Excel data-only and delimited.
• The Embed fonts in the file option on the Output page allows you to embed the fonts used in the report, such as a barcode font, in a PDF file.
• The Preview window now supports the same types of output types as the Output page of the Reports Explorer.
• When you run a report, the Reports Explorer and any open report wizard windows become dim and a progress window appears, showing you the progress of the report process and allowing you to cancel the process before it finishes. You can turn this off if you wish by turning off the Display progress during report runs setting in the Options dialog.
• You can now configure Stonefield Query to retrieve records from the database in batches (also known as asynchronously). This gives you the ability to stop a long-running report while records are retrieved rather than having to wait a long time for retrieval to be complete.

Advanced Report Designer

• Several of the object property dialogs in the Advanced Report Designer have some changes. The Rotation option no longer appears on the General page but on its own Rotation page because it now shows a sample of how the rotation will look. The properties dialogs for field, picture, rectangle, and line objects have a new Dynamics page that allows you to conditionally alter the appearance of the object. Because the conditions on the Dynamics page are more flexible than dynamic font and color settings, those two items have been removed from the Style page for field objects.
• You can now use gradient colors for rectangles in the Advanced Report Designer, both for reports and templates. A couple of new sample templates, Gradient Template and Valencia Orange, show how these can be used to produce nice, professional effects in your reports.
• If you use Windows Vista or later, you can now change the printer used for an advanced layout report in the Page Layout page of the Report Properties dialog (this option was previously and is still available for Windows XP and earlier).

Other Features

• Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL has added support for new tables and fields added in AccountMate SQL 8.1.
• You can now use fields from tables involved in the report for exclusion conditions. This means you can create a report that, for example, shows all customer who bought something last year (using a filter condition of sales date is between January 1 and December 31 of last year) but didn't this year (using an exclude condition of sales date is between January 1 and December 31 of this year).
• The performance of certain types of formulas was improved.
• The Formulas dialog now has a Copy function to make it easier to create a formula similar to an existing one.
• The Formula Editor now has a Data group option so you can select the data group the tables in the Tables list are from.
• The default name when you copy a report is now the existing report name with a "1" suffix; in previous versions, the default name was blank.
• The login dialog now has a link to the Setup dialog. This is useful if you need to change something about the Stonefield Query setup before logging in.
• You cannot schedule reports if you are running Stonefield Query on Windows Terminal Server or Citrix since those environments don't permit it.
• The version number now displays in the Reports Explorer title bar so you can quickly see which version you are running.
• You can now specify carbon copy (CC) addresses when sending emails.
• If you're using Microsoft Outlook or some other MAPI email program, you can now enter the name of a distribution list in the To, CC, and BCC options to send the email to a group of people.
• Importing several reports that use formulas at one time is now significantly faster than before.
• Specifying "ALLOWDIALOGS" when running Stonefield Query from another application or the command line now causes a progress dialog to display as the report runs.
• Diagnostic logging is now always performed. A file called Diagnostic.TXT is created in the Data subdirectory of the program folder and is overwritten every time you start Stonefield Query. This file is very useful for tracking down errors or performance issues, and previously was only created if a file named Log.TXT existed.
• Stonefield Query now displays a message that it's retrieving news items while it does that task so you can see what's going on.

AccountMate 7.6 Now Supported

A small update of Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL is now available that supports the new versions that were recently released by AccountMate. This includes AccountMate 7.6 for SQL and AccountMate 7.6 for Express.

Stonefield Query for AccountMate 3.3

We released version 3.3 of Stonefield Query for AccountMate LAN and SQL today. The list of new and enhanced features in version 3.3 is extensive; see the online help for complete details. Here are the major new features.

Report Designer

• The new Formula Editor allows you to create your own formulas without using the Advanced Report Designer or customizing the data dictionary.
• The new Show percentage of total option in the Format page of the Field Properties dialog automatically adds a new column to the report showing the percentage that the field is of the subtotal in detail lines, of the next level of grouping in subgroup footers, and of the grand total for group footers.
• Turn on the new Show totals in group headers option in Step 5 of the Quick Report Wizard and the Options page of the Reports Explorer to display group totals in the group header rather than the group footer.
• Stonefield Query now supports Crystal Reports reports. You can add them to Stonefield Query using the External Report Wizard.
• The Preview window is no longer modal, meaning you can open multiple instances. Also, the new Preview reports in tabbed pages setting in the Options dialog allows you to determine whether different preview windows are used when you run more than one report or whether the reports appear as different tabs in the same preview window.
• There are several new output options available. You can specify that a timestamp is added to the file created to prevent overwriting existing files, that the file emailed to someone shouldn't be deleted after the email is sent, and what filename to use for the emailed file.
• Previous versions of Stonefield Query create a report as a PDF file when emailing the report to someone. You can now specify the type of file used as an attachment.
• You can now specify that each group in a report should be output to a separate file or email and that the email address should come from a field in the report itself. This can be used, for example, to email invoices to customers; the report is grouped by customer name and includes the customer's email address, so each customer's records are emailed to them.
• You can now sort fields in database order or alphabetical order in Step 2 of the report wizards.
• You can now tell Stonefield Query to display in the Tables drop-down list only those tables related to tables already appearing in the selected list.
• Reports are now stored as export files with an SFX extension in a folder structure that exactly matches the folders in the Reports Explorer.
• The new Send summary queries to database engine setting in the Options dialog allows you to specify whether Stonefield Query or the database engine does data summarization. This may significantly improve the performance of certain types of reports.
• The new Run report with no records option in Step 5 of the report wizards and the Options page in the Reports Explorer allows you to run a report when there are no records that match your conditions.

AccountMate SQL 7.5 and AccountMate LAN 7.1 Now Supported

A small update of Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL is now available that supports the new versions that were recently released by AccountMate. This includes AccountMate 7.5 for SQL and AccountMate 7.5 for Express. As long as your Stonefield Query subscription is current, you can get this new version from here.

Also, a small update of Stonefield Query for AccountMate LAN is now available that supports the new version, 7.1, that was recently released by AccountMate. You can get this new version from here.

AccountMate 7.4 Now Supported

A small update of Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL is now available that supports both new versions that were recently released by AccountMate. This includes AccountMate 7.4 for SQL and AccountMate 7.4 for Express. As long as your Stonefield Query subscription is current, you can get this new version from here.

Stonefield Query for AccountMate 3.2 Released

Stonefield Software Inc. is pleased to announce the release of version 3.2 of Stonefield Query for AccountMate SQL and Stonefield Query for AccountMate LAN.

Stonefield Query is a user-friendly report writing, business intelligence, query, and data mining tool. With its intuitive wizard driven design, Stonefield Query makes report writing a snap for even the most novice user. Elegant and persuasive reports can be created in minutes with little or no technical knowledge required.

Some of the new features in this release are:

• Authentication: Domain Authentication mode is now supported.
  
• Display encrypted fields: Stonefield Query for AccountMate now supports displaying fields that are stored in encrypted format in the database (Credit Card and Social Security Numbers).
  
• New command line option: A new command line parameter, action=resetdbconnection, will clear the registry and cause Stonefield Query to re-discover the connection information.
  
• Exclusion filters: this allows you to query on the absence of data, such as "give me a list of customers I didn't contact last year" or "give me a list of everyone who did not buy product X". Behind the scenes, Stonefield Query generates a NOT IN subquery, but from the end-user's perspective, it's just as easy as creating a normal filter.
  
• Modeless report wizards: the report wizards are no longer modal, so you can modify more than one report at a time.
  
• Single ask-at-runtime dialog: all ask-at-runtime filter conditions now appear in a single, wizard-like dialog rather than one dialog per condition.
  
• Workstation installer: Stonefield Query now has a separate WSSetup.EXE installer, installed by Setup.EXE, that does workstation installations with the minimum of user interaction.
  
• More grouping options: you can now specify that a non-grouped field should be included in the group header for another field, you can have all fields in the group header on a single line rather than stacked on separate lines, and all fields in the group header now appear in summary reports.
  
• Multi-line headings: many fields now have multi-line headings so they don't take up as much room in a report, and you can change field headings to use multiple lines.
  
• Customize Report Wizard for all report types: all report wizards now have an Advanced button, allowing access to TOP N, custom SQL statements, and other features.
  

There are dozens of other new features and bug fixes. For more information about version 3.2, please see the What's New in This Version topic in the online documentation.