Article on Sage Software

Software Advice has an article discussing the features of some of Sage’s ERP offerings in the manufacturing and distribution software industries, specifically MAS, X3, Pro, and PFW. Although they missed discussing Accpac, it’s still a good overview of the products it does cover.

Stonefield Query for Sage MAS 90-200 3.3

We released version 3.3 of Stonefield Query for Sage MAS 90-200 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.

Stonefield Software is Sage Gold Development Partner and Sage Certified

Stonefield Software was recently awarded Gold Development Partner status with Sage (formerly known as Sage Software). Also, our Stonefield Query versions for Sage products, such as Stonefield Query for Sage Accpac ERP, Stonefield Query for Sage Pro ERP, and Stonefield Query for ACT!, were recently certified by Sage.

Using Stonefield Query on 64-bit Windows

Although it's a 32-bit application, Stonefield Query works just fine on 64-bit versions of Windows, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.

One known issue with Windows, however, is that 32-bit applications can access 32-bit system DSNs, 32-bit user DSNs, and 64-bit user DSNs, but not 64-bit system DSNs. Since the default ODBC Administrator is the 64-bit version (you can run the 32-bit version from the SysWoW64 subdirectory of the Windows folder if necessary), any system DSNs you create aren't visible to Stonefield Query. So, either create user DSNs rather than system DSNs or use the 32-bit ODBC Administrator to create your DSNs.

This impacts any version of Stonefield Query that uses ODBC DSNs rather than connection strings, including:

• Stonefield Query SDK (if you turn on the User Can Manage Data Sources configuration setting)
• Stonefield Query for GoldMine
• Stonefield Query for HEAT
• Stonefield Query for MAS 90 and 200
• Stonefield Query for Sage Accpac ERP
• Stonefield Query for Sage BusinessVision
• Stonefield Query for Sage Pro ERP (SQL version)