DataFlex Reports

Seamless HTML formatting

DataFlex Reports 2024 simplifies the inclusion of HTML-formatted text within report objects, utilizing LiteHTML for parsing. This integration allows you to effortlessly incorporate rich text content into reports without displaying raw HTML code. By leveraging LiteHTML, you can focus on content creation, enhancing report readability and presentation without the complexities of manual HTML handling.

Enable PDF Creation with Cross-Industry Invoice Data Exchange

Factur-X, also known as ZUGFeRD, is a standardized format for electronic invoice data exchange. In DataFlex Reports 2024, you can seamlessly generate PDF files compliant with Factur-X/ZUGFeRD.

This integration streamlines invoice creation, ensuring compatibility and compliance with industry standards. Leveraging Factur-X support, you can enhance your applications with efficient and standardized invoice generation, facilitating seamless electronic invoice exchange.

Define Comments per Parameter

You can now add comments on a per-parameter basis. These comments serve dual purposes: they document essential information about each parameter and provide insights for smoother report integration. This feature streamlines development, improves communication, and enhances collaboration among teams, resulting in more efficient report generation processes.

Expanded Export Options Control via Options Dialog

DataFlex Reports 2024 offers enhanced export control via the options dialog. You can utilize three integration library modules—Web Desktop, Web Drilldown, and Windows—for end-users to choose report exports. Now, properties of the cDRReport object regulate export choices, streamlining export functionality in DataFlex applications.

This update empowers you to provide users with a seamless experience and improve usability. Leveraging these options ensures greater flexibility and control over report generation and distribution, adding value for end-users.

Enhanced Windows Previewer: Simplified Zoom Controls

In DataFlex Reports 2024, you can now enhance the Windows previewer’s user experience with two toolbar buttons for zooming in or out. Previously, users relied on Ctrl+MouseWheel or a drop-down control for zooming, but customer feedback prompted the addition of dedicated buttons for quicker access.

This enhancement improves the previewer’s usability and shows responsiveness to user requests, boosting overall satisfaction. By adding these simplified zoom controls, you ensure a smoother, more intuitive experience for report users, driving higher engagement and satisfaction.

Quick links

• Download DataFlex Reports 2024/24.0 Developer or Standard edition
• View the Read me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details other enhancements that are included in this release

Overview DataFlex Reports 2023/8.2

DataFlex Reports  2023/8.2 is a service release that includes a number of new features and enhancements as well as bug fixes. Most important changes in this new version:

Justified text - The horizontal alignment of text strings has been extended with a justify option. The choice in the common options for an object is now: left, centered, right and justify. With the justified option space is added between words so the edges of the line are aligned with both margins.

Enumerate and replace existing page layers in a report -  This new feature makes it easier to use a customized page layer in a report. Prior to DataFlex Reports 2023/8.2 page layers had to be added to the report layout at design time and report files needed to be distributed. Now it is possible to design a report with a page layer and replace them at runtime with a customized version for a specific customer/situation. 

Properties to control previewer buttons - The cDRReport class property list for the Windows environments has been extended with 11 properties that control the visibility of tool-bar buttons in several preview classes and the modal dialog. This way you can easily adjust the view to what the users need. Prior to DataFlex Reports 2023/8.2 subclassing or modification of standard classes and components was needed to hide tool-bar buttons.

Added option ‘All variables in functions must be declared’ - This option generates an error when a variable (either global or local) is used without being declared in the function where it is used. Note this option is not set for existing reports but is set by default for new reports.

Quick links

• Download DataFlex Reports 2023/8.2 Developer or Standard edition
• View the Read me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details other enhancements that are included in this release

Link multiple databases in a report

When selecting from data sources in the New Report Wizard or the Database Expert, you can select tables from multiple databases in the same SQL Server instance.

Since reports are limited to a single data source, this allows developers to link data from multiple databases in a report. This ability is limited to SQL Server.

Added RTL support to HTML

This feature is for languages that are written from right to left. If you want text in a field to be right-aligned, set the Horizontal Alignment on the Common tab of the Field Properties dialog to Right. 

Linked columns can have different size

Linked columns must be of the same type, but can have different sizes. This is useful, for example, to link to older versions of the same or related tables whose length may have changed over time.

For example, you can now link an int column of length 8 to an int column of length 4, or even different integer types, such as smallint to int. Keep in mind that linking columns of different sizes can result in not being able to match all data.

For example, a report may try to link a value in an int columm to a smallint column; when that value is outside the range of the smallint column (e.g. >= 32,768) it will not succeed.

Show full table name in field explorer

You can right-click on any MS SQL Server table in the Field Explorer and select Show Full Name from the context menu to see the full table name, including database and schema.

This is useful when multiple databases or tables contain the same, or similar names.

Finetuning with OnPre- and OnPost HTML events

There are several OnPrexxx and OnPostxxx events in the cDRReport class that can be used to tweak the output, control titles, log SQL queries, etc. These events are now also available for the HTMLPreviewData. Besides finetuning it’s also useful when debugging. For example you can show the used SQL statement in a log.

New comboform for menus

In DataFlex Reports 2022 a comboform is added to the cDRCurrentPageMenuItem class. This option makes it easier to select a different page.

The choice between a spinform or a comboform is controlled by a new property of the cDRReport object named piPageMaxCombo.

Export button in cWebDRReportViewer class

The cWebDRReportViewer class has been extended with support for an export report operation.

The event OnExportReport has been added to the cDRReport and cWebDRReportViewer classes. It fires when pbServerOnExportReport is set to true (default false) and the pbShowExportButton is set to true (default false).

Change catalog name at integration level

A new feature in DataFlex Reports 2022 is support for multiple databases (if using MSSQL) from a single database server in one report. In previous versions, it was only possible to use tables from one database.

The psTableCatalog property allows getting the current and changing the catalog name in an existing report at integration level.

Quick Links

• Download DataFlex Reports 8.1 Developer or Standard Edition
• View the Read Me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details about the bugfixes and other enhancements that are included in this release

Studio 64-bit

DataFlex Reports Studio is a 64 bit, fully unicode, report designer. Using a 64 bit OCX the Studio is capable to work with larger sets of data and based on unicode source data.

Deployment supports 64- and 32 bit

The integration library that can be installed with the DataFlex Reports Developer Edition Studio can be used for both 32 bit (DataFlex v19.0, v19.1 and v20.0) applications as well as with pure 64 bit applications (DataFlex v20 only). There are two sets of deployment files but there is no difference in coding needed.

Runtime Installer

Deployment of applications using DataFlex Reports has been made easier via the new runtime installers. There is a runtime installer for 64 bit and for 32 bit.

Import sub-reports

This is a new integration feature.. An existing sub-report can be - in memory - replaced by a different one loaded from disk. This opens a feature many developers used in the past where a sub-report was used to show a company 'letter' head.

Cancel on error option

A new report-by-report option to automatically stop report execution in the DataFlex Reports Studio when an error is detected. For example an database (SQL) error which would otherwise appear a zillion times.

Load and save Report Defenition

DataFlex Reports Studio now supports saving the report structure in JSON format. This can be used to make comparisons between two versions of a report and can be used to quickly make changes such as connection string changes in multiple reports. After changes have been made the JSON file can be read in again and the report can be saved in the usual .DR format.

Other features and bug fixes

A number of other features and enhancements are delivered with DataFlex Reports V8, as well as bugfixes on reported issues.

• Added search and replace tool-bar buttons in function editor
• Autoscroll in Database Expert
• Export to CSV now created a UTF-8 file with BOM marker
• Fully UTF-16
• Function extensions
• Keep Group Together
• Preview Explorer
• Unit of Measurement Configuration
• Webform Support

Quick Links

• Download DataFlex Reports 8.0 Developer or Standard Edition
• View the Read Me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details about the bugfixes and other enhancements that are included in this release

Edit in preview

The report developer can now change position and size of objects and more within the report viewer. Starting with DataFlex Reports 7.0 you can revise the report layout when previewing the report. No more need to go back and forth between the design and preview when making layout modifications, simply change the layout from the preview tab and the results can be viewed immediately. This can be a great time saver especially when fine-tuning the report design.

Support of Windows locale per report

In DataFlex Reports 7.0 you can set a locale per report, allowing you to create reports intended for different locales without having to change your windows settings. This also allows you to deploy reports for different locales on a single (web) server.

New Installer

DataFlex Reports uses a new modern product installer. The layout is restyled, it is 64 bit ready and it uses MSI techniques.

Quick links

• Download DataFlex Reports 7.0 Developer or Standard Edition
• View the Read Me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details about the bugfixes and other enhancements that are included in this release

Crosstabs

The biggest new feature and major improvement delivered in v6.2 is the introduction of crosstabs (also known as pivot tables). Crosstabs allow displaying data in a table where summaries are automatically calculated.

With crosstabs you can make a report showing summaries over grouped data per category, such as the amount of sales per shipping method, per payment condition.

New formatting and conversion functions

A number of new built-in formatting functions have been added. These functions allow you to convert data - such as date, time, number, currency and integer - using a mask or the Windows default setting.

A number of conversion functions have also been added which allow you to specify sizes and positions – in inches, centimeters or points – independent of the Windows locale settings of the machine on which the report runs. This enables changing the layout of the report on the fly.

DNS-less connection string builder

A connection to an ODBC data-source can be made via a DSN (Data Source Name), or via a connection string containing all the details which is also known as a DSN-less connection. The creation of this DSN-less connection is now easier with the enhanced ODBC connection wizard in DataFlex Reports Studio. The wizard also supports SQL Managed Connections that were introduced with DataFlex 2017 (v19.0). The information is read and converted into a DSN-less connection.

Import/Export of RDS data

RDS (Runtime Data Source) table structures and sample data can now be imported and exported. This means you no longer need to re-enter the RDS table structure for each report in which you want to use the table or re-enter the RDS sample data after you have made changes to the RDS table structure. The RDS data is stored as JSON in a separate file which you can easily copy between workstations.

Improved Excel Export

A new option ‘Export data using native Excel datatypes has been added to the Excel export. When using this option all data types are converted to unformatted native Excel data types. This makes it easier to make changes to the exported data in Excel.

DPI Scaling support

Both the DataFlex Reports Studio as well as the integration library now support DPI scaling in toolbars, menus and context menus. New icons were designed replacing the bitmaps used before to support DPI scaling.

Other features and bug fixes

A number of other features and enhancements are delivered with DataFlex Reports 2018, as well as bugfixes on reported issues.

• Side-by-side assembly
• Data-source connection errors option
• Bigint support
• Improved Barcode support
• SQLite driver
• Median support
• New reset page number logic
• Improved HTML export
• CLOB and DBCLOB support for IBM DB2
• Options from an older DataFlex Reports installation can be copied during installation
• DF_material support for the integration library
• Ability to show/hide row numbers in the RDS table definition and RDS sample data dialogs
• Function to collect the FilterInformation in a report for the integration library
• Function to convert the RDS data collected during integration into a JSON file 

Quick links

• Download DataFlex Reports 6.2  Developer or Standard Edition
• View the Read Me (Developer edition and Standard edition) for complete details about the bugfixes and other enhancements that are included in this release

Overview DataFlex Reports 6.1

Version 6.1 of DataFlex Reports includes a number of new features and enhancements as well as important bug fixes. Version 6.1 installs side-by-side with prior versions (such as 6.0). To gain 6.1’s benefits, just attach the v6.1 library and re-compile your DataFlex application for transparent report integration. Most important changes in this new version:

• Support for DataFlex 2017/19.0s Managed Connections
• Added Russian translations and collate definitions
• Added Hungarian translations
• Navigating in the report explorer pane now selects the object in the designer tab
• Added option to show sub-reports in the Function Explorer
• Added find by function ID option to the Function Explorer
• Added import registration information to the registration dialog
• Updated documentation
• Bug fixes

To see all bug fixes take a look at this news article. Click here to download DataFlex Reports 6.1

Embedded SQL

A new built-in function SQL() has been added to DataFlex Reports 6.0 which allows you to execute SQL statements directly (also known as SQL expressions). This function is only available for ODBC datasources and is a powerful addition to report developers. However, only a single value can be returned from a SQL() function.

Functions and function editor

A new case statement has been added to version 6 of DataFlex Reports. The case statement supports comma separated lists of values and does not allow fall-through to occur. Case statements can be nested. In addition to the case statement, whenever a function error occurs, the function editor is opened and the symbol which caused the error is highlighted. Selected text can now be commented and uncommented using the Ctrl+K, C and Ctrl+K, U keys or toolbar buttons. Additionally line comments can be toggled using the Ctrl+/ key.

Performance improvements

Version 6 of DataFlex Reports contains many performance improvements to optimize the report generation process. A function pre-compiler has been added which makes reports with lots of functions run up to 10(!) times faster; the performance of summaries (both summary fields and the Sum() function) has also dramatically improved. Additional changes have been made to the layout engine to streamline the report generation.

Barcode support

DataFlex Reports 6.0 supports over 70 different types of symbologies (type of barcodes) both onedimensional and two-dimensional (stacked) symbols are available. Fields (like database fields, functions or parameter fields and text objects) can be converted to a barcode with a simple mouse click and can be exported to PDF, RTF, HTML or image.

Bug fixes and see all changes

DataFlex Reports 6.0 includes over 30 implemented user suggestions and bug-fixes.

To see all the changes in DataFlex Reports 6.0 click on one of these links: Developer and Standard. And read more about this subject in this news article.