Ad Hoc reporting is a simple way for everyone to generate reports on the fly. It offers an easy-to-use interface which is wizard-like but powerful at the same time. Our solution enables you to create reports without needing to have specialized knowledge of the underlying database structure or advanced technical skills.
After ad hoc reporting can be accessed as modul of the Remote Interface, as web application using the URL: “http:<servername>:<port>/<context if servlet>/remote/adhoc” or as applet using the URL: “http:<servername>:<port>/<context if servlet>/adhoc”.
An ad hoc data view is a simplified representation of a complex database. It offers a simple list of columns that can be used in an ad hoc report instead of a large number of joined tables. An end user does not have to know the structure of a database and can dive into ad hoc reporting.
The ad hoc data views can be created with the i-net Designer (File menu item “New Ad Hoc Data View”).
Since version 10, i-net Crystal-Clear supports several authentication methods. The property Login Type defines, how the user has to log into the system and where the permitted usernames are administrated. If you want to use a specific login type instead of the default type “Automatic”, e.g. Windows authentication, you can change the login type in the Configuration Manager.
Since version 10 it is possible to start the i-net Designer from the repository browser. The i-net Designer can then be used without installation on the client.
The web-based report prompt dialog has been completely rewritten and “AJAX-ified”. It now supports cascading prompts - i.e. fetching default values of cascading parameters from the server on-the-fly via AJAX - as well as scores of other improvements, visual and otherwise. The prompt dialog is shown when requesting a report with prompts in an export format with the URL parameter “init=<format>”, or when displaying a report with prompts in the web-based Ad Hoc service, or when exporting a report from the web-based Report Repository.
If the border of an report element is, at design time, on the lower edge of a section and the element has a border and / or shadow, then the height of this section increases, at runtime, by the width of the border and / or shadow. In previous versions the border and/or shadow was painted into the next section.
Single string parameter fields (prompts) which do not have any length limit now accept null in addition to an empty string. In the prompt dialog, they have a “no value” option which can be toggled on and off for the string prompt.
If you do not want to allow null values for string prompts, you can simply specify 0 as the minimum length of the string - note that in the designer, this is now the default setting when creating new string prompts.
Based on Ad Hoc Reporting, we developed a new report wizard for the i-net Designer. With this new report wizard, it is now possible to create reports containing charts and / or crosstabs.
The Options dialog has been revised. It now includes all configurations, including the i-net Crystal-Clear configuration, data source configuration and repository configuration. Also, it is now possible to search properties and to add multiple repository servers.
In addition to the local directories, the new “Open Report File” dialog in the i-net Designer includes the configured repository URL's. Also it is possible to display a preview and the properties of the rpt files.
You can use the i-net Designer to design report templates without installation on the client. You can open the designer program from the Repository Browser (i-net Crystal-Clear Plus required).
Logging now is able to use an archiving mechanism which zips and archives log files once they reach a certain size and which then deletes old archived files if a certain amount of archive files is reached. By default, an uncompressed log file can reach 100MB before it is archived and at most 10 archive files are kept. These two values can be changed within the i-net Crystal-Clear configuration under the Logging tab.
With the console setup, it is now possible to install the i-net Crystal-Clear report server on servers without a GUI.
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NOTE: This form is for documentation feedback only. For technical assistance, please send an email to clearreports@inetsoftware.de.
