i-net Clear Reports

Changes in Current Release 8.1.123

i-net Crystal-Clear runtime

New Features / Improvements

  • The property “initSQL” has been added to the Data Source Configuration, specifying a SQL statement which will be executed once a JDBC connection has been established.
  • It is now possible to compress the embedded fonts that are send to Java viewer.
  • New chart property: “Show each Nth Label”
    With this property it is possible to configure that labels to be shown only every certain amount of category values.
  • PDF export: New property “Map to Adobe Fonts” specifies if the fonts will be mapped to true type fonts or to fonts distributed with the Adobe Reader.
  • CSV (Data) export: New property “columnnames” specifies if the exported CSV file contains column names in the first row.
  • There is a new value for the property “Prompt Behavior” available: NEVER_PROMPT causes reports to always be run without a prompt dialog of any sort. Using this prompt behavior, if prompts do not have values set, their value is automatically set to null. Note that this is in addition to the two already existing Prompt Behaviors values, TAKE_VALUE_FROM_DEFAULT_VALUES and VALUES_MUST_BE_EXPLICITLY_SET.
  • New API method: Engine.getStatus()
    It is now possible to get an “EngineStatus” object with the method “Engine.getStatus()” from the engine which currently contains any errors which occurred during the rendering of the report (including any of its sub-reports).
  • New Properties: TolerateErrors (boolean) and MaximumErrors (int).
    If TolerateErrors is true, then any number of errors will be tolerated and logged during the rendering of the report (this is the current default behavior). If TolerateErrors is set to false, then the number provided by MaximumErrors determines how many errors are to be tolerated during the rendering of a report before the report is to be aborted. For example, if you want the report to be run with “Zero Tolerance”, having any internal or external error whatsoever cause the report to be aborted, you can set TolerateErrors to false and MaximumErrors to 0. See the Configuration Manager help for further information on these two properties.
  • New Function: “afterLastDetail”
    This function evaluates as “true” if the last record has already been read and evaluated and the last detail section has been completely rendered.
  • It is now possible to run crystalclear.jar from the command line to replace an old configuration by importing an old crystalclear.properties file. The new command line argument is “forceImportConfig”, e.g. “java -jar -forceImportConfig” USER/MyConfig c:\crystalclear.properties”. The old command line argument “importConfig” still exists and will only import the configuration if no configuration already exists at the given spot.
  • The second original sort order is now avialable. This collect only the same values located nearby, and begins a new group whenever the value changes in the group field.

Changed Behavior

  • Chart:
    • The item label positioning of horizontal continuous bar charts can now be set just as in other bar charts. Before, the item label positioning was quite random and different from the other bar chart types.
    • The plot outline is now disabled if the position of both axes is set to “None”.
    • 3D Charts now also show negative values.
  • Formula: The behavior of patterns in the toText function is now different for numbers and currency values. By default, thousand separators is now disabled when using patterns.
  • Excel export: Images are now positioned independently of the position of other elements.
  • SQL Statement creation has been optimized, the Distinct clause will now be executed on the database.
  • Now, all values of a number field with a customer format will show a currency symbol, even if a custom “Show Zero Value As” formula was set and the number is 0. In order to remove the currency symbol for this case (as it used to be), you can set an additional property formula for the currency symbol.
  • The documentation and behavior of Section.addFieldElement has been improved for binary fields: since binary and blob fields must be added with addDatabasePicture instead of with addFieldElement, this method now throws an exception and clearly documents which method to use instead (namely addDatabasePicture).
  • Configuration Manager:
    • The logging into core files can now be switched on or off, independent of the logging of the engine or driver.
  • The Report Server (listener) now accepts command line arguments of the form ”-DCC:<prop>=<value>”. This has the effect that for the running process, the specified property is set at the startup. Examples of using this feature would be ”-DCC:listener.port=9001” or ”-DCC:log.engine=true”.

Fixed Bugs

  • Database Connection:
    • Blob objects set with Engine.setData() (methods without ResultSet) were not recognized.
  • Charts:
    • The color formula did not work correctly if the chart had more values than colors in the custom color sequence.
    • The order of the category axis was incorrect for continuous charts with horizontal orientation.
    • There was a NullPointerException if a Continuous Area Chart was used with negative values.
    • Doughnut charts did not use the specified outlines.
    • Line chart - the lines now intersect in a smoother fashion.
    • The property 'descending' on a category axis of Gantt and Stock chart was ignored.
  • Excel export:
    • An ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException could occur if report contained a field with a very small height (e.g. 10 twips).
    • System default formats for date and time were recognized incorrectly.
    • Settings in the font mapping properties had no effect for number and date fields.
  • Formula:
    • The formula function propercase did not handle the ß-character correctly.
    • Many formula bugs have been fixed with an entirely rewritten formula parser - e.g. nested if-then-else blocks which used to cause errors now compile with no problem.
    • The formula function IRR (internal rate of return) did not work properly.
    • The function strcmp was incorrectly translated to SQL to be evaluated on the database, and is instead now evaluated correctly, locally.
  • Changing a sub-report link to link to a different prompt field in a sub report had no effect in some cases.
  • When setting a property formula for the text rotation of an element, text could be incorrectly clipped because the property formula's value was not used for computing the text layout.
  • Sometimes the wrong paper format was detected for reports designed with Crystal Reports.
  • When using EngineRenderData a ConcurrentModificationException could be thrown if properties were incorrectly set before rendering the report.
  • After a report was run, it was not possible to shutdown the JBoss Application Server anymore.
  • JBoss server could not be shut down if i-net Crystal-Clear was deployed as servlet.
  • Websphere application server: “ClassNotFoundException: com.inet.viewer.ViewerApplet” has occurred.
  • On Linux/Unix the license key check has not used all IP addresses that Configuration Manager shows as available IP addresses.
  • Custom Number Format: The property “Show Zero Values as” has not worked correctly for ”-0.0”.
  • Different exceptions occurred if Engine.setData was used to set a ResultSet and the ResultSet contained additional columns that were not used in the report.
  • Multi section lines and boxes in sub-reports were drawn until the page footer of the main report if the sub-report span over multiple pages.
  • The background color of boxes span over multiple sections could be wrong in sub-reports on the second or following page.
  • Fixed a rare case of a NullPointerException if a field was interpreted as HTML and caused a page break.
  • Long labels stretching over multiple pages could effectively have a “Can Grow” behavior even if they did not have this property.
  • An unhelpful “NoClassDefFoundError” was shown when starting i-net Crystal-Clear with a manually set configuration (using ”-Dcrystalclear.config”) to which the user had no reading rights. Now the correct error message is shown.
  • When using a language resource bundle for labels with mixed Field parts and Text parts, there could be an internal NullPointerException leading to the label not being translated.
  • Configurations:
    • In some cases, changes (especially regarding logging properties) made in the configuration were not recognized right away but rather a restart of i-net Crystal-Clear was necessary. This is no longer like this: configuration changes are recognized and applied to the server at run-time if at all possible.
    • In some cases the configuration was unnecessarily read twice during startup of i-net Crystal-Clear. This slowed down the performance of the startup and has been fixed.
  • “Total” strings in cross-tab not translated from the Language Resource.

External Libraries

  • JEuclid Java Bean updated to version 3.0.3.
  • JFreeChart updated to version 1.0.10.

i-net Crystal-Clear - Java Viewer

New Features / Improvements

  • It is now possible to scroll to the next or the previous page in the viewer by continuing to scroll once the view reaches the bottom or the top of a page (in a non-continuous page view).
  • A back and a next button has been added to the prompt dialog of the viewer.
  • If you are typing a date in the prompt dialog, you will get a message if the entered value is incomplete or erroneous.
  • Within the same viewer, the chosen prompt values for the same prompts are now internally temporarily stored and used for initializing new report views using the same prompts. This is useful for viewers with multiple similar reports with the same prompts, where you used to have to enter the same values in each new report view.

Changed Behavior

  • Exporting now also uses a fallback mechanism if an HTTP POST request to the server does not work. An HTTP GET request is attempted in this case.
  • The prompt panel shown for date range prompts has been further improved for usability, e.g. clicking on any text now automatically selects the radio button for the date range type implied by the click.
  • The date pattern hint for non-English locales has been changed to the clearer English pattern due to a Sun VM Bug.
  • The export dialog will use the report title (if available) as proposal for the file name of the exported file.

Fixed Bugs

  • Cascading prompts could incorrectly be displayed as having no default values in the viewer applet after choosing a value for the prompt's cascading parent.
  • Exporting now also uses a fallback mechanism if an HTTP POST request to the server does not work. An HTTP GET request is attempted in this case.
  • Various small GUI issues in the prompt dialog were fixed.
  • Tooltips in the report were sometimes shown directly under the mouse position.
  • On a dual monitor system, the calendar in the prompt dialog would show on the edge of the left monitor if the viewer was showing on the right monitor. Instead it is now shown at the correct spot.
  • Prompts with dynamic descriptions for the default values could run into query issues due to the “DISTINCT” keyword, causing no default values to be generated.
  • If the viewer had no access rights to the user directory, an unnecessary error dialog was shown when trying to export.

i-net DesignerXML

New Features / Improvements

  • Formula Editor:
    • Syntax errors in formulas are highlighted.
    • Line numbers can be switched on/off in the popup menu.
  • New property “Show suppressed group tree nodes” added. If it is enabled then nodes of suppressed groups will not be displayed in the group tree.

Changed Behavior

  • Parameter Field Properties: A popup window now helps to define default values for parameter fields.
  • Changing the look & feel of i-net DesignerXML will take effect after restarting i-net DesignerXML.

Fixed Bugs

  • Space characters in report template names were changed to %20 and a second file with the changed name was saved if Save As…: was selected.
  • Leaving the connection manager with “cancel” resulted in an attempt to remove the current connection.
  • When opening a report template containing an unknown database connection a warning dialog could appear multiple times if the same database connection was used in sub reports as well.
  • Undo points could be missing after elements were pasted into the report.
  • A BrokenReferenceException occurred if a report created with Crystal Report 10 that contained a group and a crosstab was saved and re-opened with i-net DesignerXML.
  • Various GUI Layout problems on Mac systems have been fixed.
  • A report was not immediately added to the reopen list after the user saved it.
  • Reports saved with “Save As” were not added to the reopen list.
  • Formula Editor:
    • Even if a report was based on a manually entered SQL command, it was possible to start to create an SQL expression field which could not be saved since SQL expression fields can only be used in reports based on a single connection and without SQL commands.
    • Creating a SummaryField from within the Formula Editor could lead to a loop creating very many identical Summary Fields. This has been fixed.
    • Changing a summary within a formula field (e.g. from “Sum({Field1})” to “Sum({Field2})” caused the old summary to remain in the report and not be deleted. It is now removed unless it is referenced by a different element of the report.
  • Chart Properties: The default category axis label was displayed incorrectly in the category “Text”.
  • The methods DesignerDataModel.AddedElement() and DesignerDataModel.isAddElementAllowed() has not worked correctly.
    The method addedElement of the DesignerDataModel interface will now be invoked whenever an element will be added to the report, also if an element will be added in consequence of another operation (e.g. sub-elements of a cross-tab).
  • If more than 75 columns were chosen in the Report Wizard, an error dialog was shown and the report was not created.
  • Visual Database Wizard:
    • In rare cases there could be a NullPointerException in the Designer while adding a Stored Procedure with out parameters.
    • Adding a connection, then pressing “Cancel” in the Visual Database Wizard did not revert to the state before opening the dialog, the connection still existed in the report.
  • Parameter Field Dialog:
    • Various GUI issues in the Parameter Field dialog were fixed.
    • The date pattern hint for date prompts in the viewer has been changed to always use the standard (English-based) pattern, since there is a Java bug in which localized patterns are incorrect.
    • It was possible to remove a table source from the report even if a prompt field had a reference to the table source for fetching dynamic default values. Now, this reference must be removed before it is possible to remove the table source.
    • With certain Look and Feels such as the Vista L&F, it was possible to generate an internal NullPointerException in the Designer Parameter Field dialog, leading to GUI issues.
  • SQL Editor:
    • Changing the value type of a prompt with dynamic values generated by a query, within the Designer Parameter Field Dialog, caused its SQL Editor to be cleared, making it necessary to reenter the query.
    • Various small GUI issues in the SQL Editor were fixed.

i-net Crystal-Clear Configuration Manager

New Features / Improvements

  • It is now possible to register and unregister a “ConfigurationChangeListener” with the configuration manager via the methods addConfigurationChangeListener(ConfigurationChangeListener) and removeConfigurationChangeListener(ConfigurationChangeListener).

i-net Crystal-Clear Setup

New Features / Improvements

  • JBoss application server added to the list of application servers in the component selection.
  • Added components:
    • SVG Salamander Bean.
    • JJDBC driver for SmallSQL database.
    •  ”Sample Reports” added to the Report Designer node in the component selection.
      This installs the sample reports, the sample database (SmallSQL) and the SmallSQL JDBC driver in the installation directory of the i-net DesignerXML.
  • Uninstaller was enhanced with a feedback form.
  • PPanel to set mappings between the data sources used in the report templates and the JNDI names of the data sources in the Weblogic and WebSphere application server were improved.

Changed Behavior

  • Setup will check the write permissions for the installation path on Windows Vista.

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