R&R Report Writer Version 9.0, Xbase & SQL Editions New Release
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R&R Report Writer Version 9.0, xBase & SQL Editions New Release Enhancements and New Capabilities Liveware Publishing is pleased to announce an exciting set of enhancements to R&R Report Writer!! This is the first MAJOR update to R&R in almost five years, but Liveware has made up for lost time with substantial improvements for every R&R user. Developers building reports for their applications, end-users creating their own ad-hoc and production reports, and even casual R&R runtime users will all find something in this release to streamline their reporting activities. For those who have purchased and implemented every update, and particularly Liveware’s Version 8.1 release licensees, you will be rewarded for your loyalty with a reduced upgrade price and a wide range of capabilities that will make R&R even more indispensable. For others who waited, this is the upgrade to buy since it contains so many unique and compelling ideas about reporting -- and ones you can use right away!! Version 9.0 includes 5 new “modules” -- what we consider significant extensions of R&R capabilities -- and many convenience and usability improvements to open reporting to database users at all levels. The 5 new modules are (with page number in parenthesis): Email Report Bursting & Distribution (2) Report Librariantm (4) ParameteRRtm Field Prompting (9) FlexLinktm Indexing-on-the-fly (11) Rapid Runnertm Runtime Control (16) Among the other improvements, the most significant are: Pervasive Band Color-coding (18) Page X of Y Functions (20) Redesigned Table Join Dialog (21) Print Preview Band Identification (23) Drill-down in Result Set Browser (24) Visual dBase 7 Support (25) This document will summarize each of these modules and improvements and describe how they expand R&R’s capabilities to an ever-wider range of reporting needs. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 2 Email Report Bursting & Distribution Since R&R Version 8, users have had the capability through MAPI (Mail Application Programming Interface) to send the results of a report export as an attachment to an email. R&R would produce the report and launch a MAPI-compliant Windows program (such as Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, Lotus CC:MAIL, etc.). A new email screen would appear with the R&R export file name already as an attachment. The user would then add one or more email addresses in the “TO” box, and a subject and message, if desired. This was a helpful, but two-step process that we felt could be enhanced. Therefore, we have designed a better and -- as far as we can tell -- unique approach to the problem of distributing reports via nearly ubiquitous email. As R&R provided before, when one elects to “Export” the report (to one of the eight different formats--including HTML, RTF and worksheet), and one has a MAPI-compliant program installed on the computer running R&R, R&R will offer the option to “Send via MAPI”. Behind a new “Mail Options” button are several new options. In the traditional MAPI export of the entire report, we have added an option to ‘Auto Send’ the attachment. R&R will build and place in your “Outbox” the email message and attachment to the party (or parties) listed in the “Send to” box. You can also add a subject line. With ‘Auto Send’ unchecked, you can still fill out the address and ‘Subject’, but R&R will launch your email program and allow you to add text to the message area prior to sending. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 3 This is a nice enhancement, but the real fun begins when you click the ‘Send Burst Report’ button: This option activates the ‘Send To’ pull-down list for fields in your database. You can then select the field that holds the email address (or addresses) for the party to receive each PORTION of the report. The report is ‘burst’ into sections based on the ‘Burst Level’ field, which would be one of your designated grouping level fields. You can also add a text subject line, such as what is shown above. R&R will take these instructions and go to work. Every time there’s a new value for the ‘Burst’ grouping level, R&R will create a new attachment for that group value and address it to the value for the field in the ‘Send To’ for that group. If you have 50 groups, R&R will send 50 separate emails with 50 unique attachments to the 50 designated addresses. If you have 100, or 1000, or 10,000, R&R will put them all in your Outbox, ready to go. The capabilities this unleashes are enormous: automatic electronic statement delivery (to your customers, for example), customized email marketing messages and offers, address change email notices to all your vendors, budget reports sent to each department head, the possibilities are limitless. Similar capabilities elsewhere using other tools require extensive programming, custom applications (often costing thousands for software alone). We can’t believe no other report writer ever offered this before!! Due to the nature of MAPI interface, this option is available through the licensed Report Designer only, not runtime. This feature alone is worth the cost of a new license or upgrade since it replaces countless hours for so many people who have to prepare paper output, stuff envelopes and pay for postage to distribute customized correspondence, notices, statements, analyses, and on and on. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 4 R&R Report Librarian As anyone who builds many reports -- or designs reporting systems for others -- knows, keeping track of those reports is difficult. Reports multiply out quickly as end-user take a report, make changes, then resave them under a new name. Reports are files that can be stored anywhere on the user’s computer or network drives. Maintaining organization and references on all of these files becomes increasing cumbersome. After a while, remembering where to find a report, and what it was used for, becomes a burden. But not any longer. R&R V9.0 includes the “Report Librarian” that automatically serializes and catalogs reports, then provides a front-end entry point to find and launch those reports. Librarian also does more: it builds a set of databases that allow multiple R&R users to view just their own (and shared) sets of reports!! Librarian is a catalog from which all R&R users can run and modify their reports. Librarian is the natural entry point for R&R. Each user logs in with a password (with rights controls), then can launch the R&R Report Designer from the main menu. Then R&R knows who is using it and assigns the correct ownership for any reports the user creates or modifies. If a shared report is modified by one user, the other user’s references to that report are updated automatically. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 5 Behind the ‘Catalog’ button is the Librarian database. Think of it as a card catalog you might find at a Library. It tells you where the volumes are stored, who owns them, when they were created etc. Librarian users can also add descriptions and notes to their ‘Catalog Entries’, including a ‘Brief Description’ that displays in the window above to help the user locate that report they need but haven’t used in a while. The ‘Catalog’ report grid can also be resorted on the fly by report name, owner, date last modified, master table and ‘Report ID’ -- the serial number R&R V9.0 automatically assigns. User IDs can be for people or for departments or functions. If you have a set of reports for the Finance Department, create a User ID ‘FIN’ with a special password for those people. That can be in addition to those individual’s User IDs. If R&R is installed on a network, everyone shares the Catalog and R&R updates it automatically each time a report is saved. For a private Catalog, load an R&R license to the local computer and you’ll have a separate Librarian Catalog. This is a very good reason to put R&R on everyone’s desktop. If that was all Librarian did, that would probably be enough for most software publishers, but not for us. Librarian automatically records in a database the key contents of the report. Clicking the ‘Detail’, ‘Relations’ and ‘Fields’ buttons above displays this information. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 6 Tabbed screens let users quickly reference important elements of the report. From summary grids -- similar to the Catalog grid -- for related tables and fields, user can find the details about how tables were joined to build the report, or what the formula was for calculating the commission amount for salesmen. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 7 Of course, the Catalog database and the related Librarian tables can be reported on using R&R Report Writer. Librarian includes several predefined reports (shown below) for commonly desired searches, but creative developers can use the data to determine, for example, which reports must be modified due to a change in the database of their core application. Librarian also allows for version control and historical documentation of prior versions of reports (just do a “Save As” in R&R to assign a new serial number, even without changing the report name!!). There is also a free-text memo field to fully describe anything worth recording regarding the report. R&R xBase Edition Version 9.0 Enhancements Page 8 We think Librarian is so good, we wonder why Microsoft doesn’t have the same sort of thing for Excel, Word, Powerpoint and so on.