Table of Contents

i-net Clear Reports

Overview

  • i-net Crystal-Clear has been renamed into i-net Clear Reports: The name of version 2011 (version 11.0) is now i-net Clear Reports. Drop “Crystal”, focus on clear reports - simple name, simple yet powerful reporting: i-net Clear Reports.
  • Java 6 required: The i-net Designer and the i-net Clear Reports server now requires Java 6 as minimum version of the Java virtual machine. The i-net Clear Reports viewer requires Java 5.
  • i-net Clear Reports .NET: With i-net Clear Reports .NET you are no longer bound to the Java platform but can take advantage of i-net Clear Reports' simple and powerful reporting right within your own .NET application.
  • i-net Clear Reports for mobile devices: i-net software offers free Apps to connect to your i-net Clear Reports repository and run reports from your mobile device (Clear Reports for iOS™, Clear Reports for Android™).

i-net Clear Reports runtime

New Features / Improvements

  • Encyption of PDF files with user and/or owner password supported.
  • To improve the visual appearance of the bar, area or pie charts, it is now possible to define a vertical or horizontal color gradient.
  • Improved error handling for the case that the Report Reader tool which handles the reading of Crystal Reports templates is missing.
  • PDF export:
    • DSA signatures just like RSA signatures are now supported.
    • EUDC characters will be replaced with logical font (for example SansSerif) as for embedded fonts.
  • Native boolean type of PostgreSQL database supported.

Changed Behavior

  • Java 6 required.
  • The changing of the table alias modifies now the chart color and other property formulas too.
  • Some property methods like setXXXFormula(FormulaField f), which did not check the type of the formula will now throw an IllegalStateException if the FormulaField has not the type of a PropertyFormula.
  • The following deprecated report URL parameter are no longer supported: “dll”, “host”, “catalog”, “database”, “schema”, “user”, “url”. Use the report URL parameter “datasource” instead.
  • The Java viewer now supports EUDC replacement for logical fonts as well.
  • The formula statement 'if <condition> then <result>' in the record selection formula is now optimized to 'false' in case the condition is not met.
  • During export to Excel the sheet names are checked for not permitted characters, like '['.
  • The custom formatting of a group field elements is now possible.
  • A rare problem occurred when loading older reports from Crystal Reports 9 and before which contained multiple summaries used in formula fields. The error was “Report file not found.”
  • For backward compatibility the usage of the string “true” and “false” as a boolean in a record selection formula is possble for PostgreSQL database.

Fixed Bugs

  • Crosstab: Manual Formating formula was not counted by the reference counter, which may have cause under some condition, that this formula was not evaluated correctly.
  • HTML Export:
    • Hyperlinks on Java beans and charts has not worked.
    • Rounding error occurred by calculating the font size.
  • All images having the same image key are now considered as the same image in Java viewer and in PDF-Export. Therefore only the first image will be rendered.
  • Images were not loaded correctly if they were loaded via HTTP redirects from HTTPS to HTTP.
  • The “image key” property formula was not correctly saved and loaded in reports, which meant it had to be re-entered each time a report was loaded.
  • Crosstabs in Crystal Reports templates with no rows and/or columns were incorrectly read due to a bug in the Crystal Reports API. This bug is now worked around by the i-net Clear Reports Report Reader.
  • Certain summary fields of charts in Crystal Reports templates were incorrectly read due to a bug in the Crystal Reports API. This bug is now worked around in the i-net Clear Reports Report Reader.
  • The group labels in the report page and group tree were not correct when grouping on formula and group selection formula were used.
  • In the rare case multiple summary fields with the same names but varying parameters were used in multiple formulas which were used in a crosstab, the crosstab could have issues rendering the summary.
  • The order of hierachical groups with descending order was incorrect.
  • A graphical defect with the white strips in the continuous area chart has occurred.
  • Subreports which could not be read in Crystal Reports templates caused the warning message which was displayed while loading to become longer and longer because the older messages were not reset. Now the warning message is reset after each conversion.
  • Endless loop occurred because of java.util.WeakHashMap, which is a non-thread safe object.
  • A section was suppressed, if it contains a Java Bean only and “Suppress Blank Section” was enabled.
  • Subreports with special fields as subreport links could not be loaded correctly.

API Changes

  • Added Classes
    • com.inet.problemfinder.ProblemFinder (and subclasses)
  • Added Constants
    • ReportProperties.PAPER_TABLOID
  • Added Methods
    • com.inet.report.chart.plot.AbstractPlot
      • getGradientSetting()
      • setGradientSetting(GradientSetting)
  • Removed Constants
    • ReportProperties.PATER_TABLOID
  • Removed Deprecated Classes, Methods and Constants
    • com.inet.report.RDC
      • getConfigurationProperties()
      • setConfigurationProperties(Properties)
      • getCrystalClearPropertyPath()

i-net Clear Reports viewer

New Features / Improvements

  • In the export dialog it is now possible to specify user and/or owner password for the encryption of created PDF files.

Changed Behavior

  • Java 5 required.

Fixed Bugs

  • With multiple value prompts containing descriptions it could occur that the description was added to the chosen values.
  • Various small GUI issues were solved for multiple prompt value entries in the prompt dialog.
  • If a prompt was marked as “default values only” it still had the “no value” button enabled for it if it was a string prompt. However, toggling this button had no effect since “no value” was not a default value. Now the button is hidden if a prompt is set as “default values only”.
  • The width of the margins on the printout did not match the designed margins, if the default paper size of the printer was Letter and the designed paper size was A4 and vice versa and you changed the paper size in the print dialog to the designed paper size.
  • In the case of an HTTP 302 error in its POST request, the viewer would fall back to a GET request without logging the 302.

i-net Designer

New Features / Improvements

  • Page Layout dialog has been reworked.
    • Preview is now available showing all margins, gaps and columns with sample data.
    • A lot of bugs has been fixed.
    • The dialog has a new and improved look&feel.
    • Improved error handling.
    • New labels from Avery and Herma added.
  • Formula Editor dialog has been reworked.
    • Now it possible to create/edit multiple formula within the Formula Editor without closing and opening it again.
    • The dialog has a new and improved look&feel.
    • New formula function 'SectionPosition' added. It returns the relative position of the current section on the page.
    • It is possible to create User Defined Functions for the report within Formula Editor.
  • Problem Finder added to show and fix warnings in the report design. If enabled then it will be displayed on the left side under the field browser.
  • New formula function signature for 'ToWords' added. It allows to set the translation locale.
  • Gradients in charts supported.
  • When starting the Free Designer Edition of i-net Clear Reports, a new configuration is created for the current user if one does not exist yet.
  • Parameter Field Properties:
    • It is now possible to enter formulas for default values in the i-net Designer or via API (see class FormulaDefaultValue). This means for example that you can enter a formula “currentdate” as a default value for a date prompt. This will cause the current date to always be a default value for this prompt.
  • Feature “Format Painter” added.
  • Error dialogs in i-net Designer now showing error messages from the report engine including error numbers.
  • “Report Data Cache” added. It stores the report data to reduce the count of database requests in i-net Designer. It can be activated/deactivated in the configuration manager category “Performance”.

Changed Behavior

  • Java 6 required.
  • Performance flaw has been improved, when deleting a crosstab with a lot of rows or/and columns.
  • Chart Properties: It is now supported to set different chart color formulas for combined charts.
  • Designer will now use the column alias (if set) to display the database fields.
  • The bar width property in the plot tab of chart properties dialog works now with all configurations of dataset and with stacked bar chart too.
  • Page Layout dialog: The available paper formats now appear to be grouped.
  • Various error messages have been improved and details added.
  • In various cases in the i-net Designer, the i-net Designer would “freeze up” until the database returned information. This information is now fetched as a background operation, keeping the visuals responsive.
  • The status bar shows position and size of the selected report element in the section of the design view.
  • Problem Finder:
    • will no longer replace the complete tree but update it instead in order to better keep the expansion/selection-state.
    • is now able to fix found problems of subreports directly from the main-report.
    • now shows a new warning when the bean-class for a used java bean is not available.

Fixed Bugs

  • When previewing the same report in the designer more than once, the report was rendered twice for each additional preview.
  • NullPointerException occurred when opening a report in the i-net Designer on Unix systems where no /media folder is present.
  • Welcome Page: It was not possible to open a report from the list of recent reports containing the character “#” in it's path.
  • SQL Editor: New line after the keyword “Select” was detected as error.
  • NullPointerException occurred if the i-net Designer was used as remote Designer (JNLP) and i-net Crystal-Clear was running on JBoss.
  • Memory leak in the Chart Properties dialog occurred.
  • A possible deadlock situation on opening reports was removed.
  • Viewing the preview of a report in the designer could lock up the designer for a while as long as the database server did not respond.
  • Wrong error message has been displayed if a “report as folder” was saved in a directory for that the user does not have the necessary permissions.
  • Better error message when a “Crystal Reports” report is opened in the Online Designer.
  • Entering numbers as parameter default values in the parameter field properties dialog had locale issues for locales which do not use “.” as the decimal separator.
  • Problem Finder:
    • has not kept the state of the warnings/errors when switching between main and subreport.
    • will no longer show incorrect warnings for on demand subreports.
    • shows a warning about an error in a property formula also, if the related element has been removed in the meantime.
  • IllegalArgumentException occurred when dragging a chart to the size of zero in i-net Designer.
  • Because of an error a rpt file was overwritten if the i-net Designer with called with “–new parameter” pointing to an existing report.
  • Java Bean preview in design view was wrong if a property formula was used for the scaling property of the Java Bean.
  • In rare cases an IllegalArgumentException has occurred when dragging an element in the design view to a position where it forced to snap into the next section.
  • Save button was not deactivated after the report was saved, if the edit modus of a text field was active.
  • The custom summary name in the chart properties dialog was overwritten by next usage of the chart properties dialog.
  • An exception was thrown while clicking on an error java bean (corrupted bean) in the design view of the i-net Designer.
  • Minor internationalization and localization bugs has occurred in the report viewer.
  • When editing prompts, if a cascading parent was chosen for a prompt which had a different table source, the OK button of the dialog could turn grey and not be re-activated.
  • Only changing the case of a parameter field's name caused the error “parameter field name already exists”.

API Changes

  • Removed Methods
    • com.inet.designer.AbstractDesignerDataModel
      • getCustomReportTypes()
    • com.inet.designer.DesignerDataModel
      • getCustomReportTypes()
      • isOpenDriverLibrariesAllowed()
      • setOpenDriverLibrariesAllowed(boolean)
  • Removed Deprecated Methods
    • com.inet.designer.DesignerDataModel
      • chooseReportFile(Component)
    • com.inet.designer.BasicDesignerDataModel
      • chooseReportFile(Component)

Ad Hoc Reporting

New Features / Improvements

  • For the AdHoc Swing client a MessageAdapter can now be implemented and set in the AHConfig. This adapter will be called for any message dialog of the AdHoc client thus allowing to implement custom message handling.

Fixed Bugs

  • Sort fields could be wrong if complete reports has been used as Ad Hoc layout.
  • The crosstab properties “suppress subtotals” and “suppress group labels” and the number format of crosstab cells were not considered if complete reports containing a crosstab has been used as Ad Hoc layout.
  • Groups settings has been changed if complete reports has been used as Ad Hoc layout.
  • Unknown protocol error occurred in the ad hoc applet, if the server used a repository for the ad hoc layouts.
  • A click on the ESC button has closed the complete dialog instead of the pop-up menu.

Configuration Manager

New Features / Improvements

  • Properties catalog and schema added to the data source configuration, so that it is possible change the values from design time.

Changed Behavior

  • It is now possible to add network shares as repository locations in the remote configuration manager.
  • Backslashes in user names are converted into slahes in categories “User Directories”, “Report Permissions” and “System Permissions”.

Fixed Bugs

  • Property “All JNDI locations allowed” in the category “Report Permissions” has not worked if i-net Crystal-Clear was running on Jetty application server.

Remote Interface

Fixed Bugs

  • WebDav interface did not return folders and files if special chars are included in the names.

Repository

New Features / Improvements

  • The repository now allows the usage of user directories.

Fixed Bugs

  • Encoding problems of folder an file names has occurred in the repository.

Scheduler

Changed Behavior

  • When adding a report action, “scanning prompts” from reports now no longer displays a list of default values for prompts which only accept one value. Instead, the first default value is entered as a default which can be changed manually.

Fixed Bugs

  • NullPointerException occurred sometimes while stopping the scheduler.

Setup

Changed Behavior

  • Name of the default servlet context is “reporting” instead of “crystalclear”.
  • Websphere version 7 (or higher) is required because Java 6 (or higher) is required.
  • Datasource mapping dialog for Weblogic and Websphere application server removed.

Fixed Bugs

  • Start scripts were missing if i-net Crystal-Clear was installed on Solaris as standalone application.

.Net Edition

Changed Behavior

  • If the .NET-based Clear Reports service is started when the port is already blocked by another instance, a better error message is now displayed.
 

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