The following chapters describes the various things to know when migrating from version 13.x of i-net Clear Reports to version 14.x. If you migrate from older versions of i-net Clear Reports then you should also read the migration information depending on the version that you migrate from.

With version 14 we are introduced the concept of plugins to i-net Clear Reports. This removes a large amount of libraries from the installation and adds a single zip file per feature. This makes it much easier to say which library is required for a specific feature, this also avoids ClassNotFoundExceptions which could occur when removing libraries for features you didn't need.

Every plugin is a single zip file. All plugins are located in a folder named “plugins”. On server start this directory is scanned and a plugin dependency hierarchy is created. All plugins with unresolved dependencies will be disabled. Now the start classes of all valid plugins are instantiated and the extensions for the core or other plugins are registered. The last step is the initialization of all valid plugins. To check which plugins were successfully loaded, activate the logging of i-net Clear Reports and set the log level to at least INFO.

A plugin is a zip file. It contains at least the files “plugin.properties” and “server.jar”. The plugin.properties defines the start class which implements the interface com.inet.plugin.ServerPlugin. Further properties of the plugin are defined by annotations of the start class. These annotations cover the id of the plugin, its dependencies and the plugin version. For further details refer to the Server Programming Guide.

If you are using a custom scheduler action and/or dynamic properties, it is necessary to write a plugin for this action and/or dynamic property class. Registering custom actions or dynamic properties to the scheduler does no longer work by adding a jar-file to the lib path. For more information please refer to the samples in the i-net Clear Reports installation directory.

• The following constructors of the class com.inet.report.Listener have been removed:
  • Listener(int port, boolean throwException)
  • Listener(boolean standalone, int port, boolean throwException)
• The other constructors of class com.inet.report.Listener are new throwing an IOException in case of IO error.

• The following interfaces and classes were moved from package com.inet.report.config to com.inet.config:
  • Configuration
  • ConfigurationChangeListener
  • ConfigurationChangeEvent
  • ConfigurationManager

• The following interfaces and classes were added:
  • com.inet.authentication
    • UsersAndGroupsProvider
  • com.inet.problemfinder.rules
    • ProblemFinderRule
    • AbstractRuleElement
    • AbstractRuleField
    • AbstractRulePropertyFormula
    • AbstractRuleSection
  • com.inet.plugin
    • ServerPlugin
    • ServerPluginManager
  • com.inet.report
    • ListenerSettings

• Removed deprecated API:
  • com.inet.report.ReportProperties
    • getLabelFormat()
    • setLabelFormat( String s )
  • com.inet.report.ValueProperties
    • getBooleanFormatTypeFormula()
  • com.inet.report.AbstractValueElement
    • getBooleanFormatTypeFormula()
  • com.inet.report.chart.plot.BarPlot
    • DEFAULT_BAR_MARGIN_PERCENT
    • getBarMarginPercent()
    • setBarMarginPercent( double barMarginPercent )

The email settings in the configuration moved from the category “Scheduler” into the new category “Email Settings” because they are used by “Error Notifications” as well.

It is now possible to display a link with a support email address in the error dialog of HTML and Java report viewer. You can configure it in the configuration manager category “Email settings”. The default value is “clearreports@inetsoftware.de”.

It is now possible to send an email notification in case of an error. In the new plugin “Error Notifications” you can set an email address to which all error notifications will be send.