Version 2.7: New backend

Today, we released version 2.7, which is a combination of the new backend from the upcoming version 3.0 and the „old“ frontend from version 2.6.

We decided to release this version for migration reasons. Customers can install 2.7 and test their existing reports with the new backend without dealing with the new frontend features. The backend will not change between version 2.7 and 3.0 except bug fixes.

Version 3.0 is scheduled for release within the next few weeks. Currently we’re making the Workbench query editor compatible to the new version 3 reports – this means, in difference to our first idea, creating reports will be both avaibable in the Browser and the Workbench.

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The new backend

Performance

The new backend has many new and effective internal performance improvements. Mainly the preprocessing of reports has rapidly changed, some types of reports will now execute exponentially faster. Especially reports with large range selectors profit from the new preprocessing algorithm.

The new preprocessing does no longer examine reports „cell by cell“, it rather analyses the whole report at once and creates SQL load instructions for whole regions of a query simultaneously.

Also, the preprocessing for LOOKUP has changed – it does no longer send SQL statements to the database but used the standard proprocessing and loading techniques as the rest of the report engine. This e.g. allows to use nested LOOKUPs in a query which gather their data together and with a single SQL statement.

Migration from 2.6 to 2.7

The very most configuration settings and functions are are still compatible with version 2.6, only LOOKUP and SORT have slightly changed:

• The functions DLOOKUP and DSORT are no longer available and should be simply replaced by LOOKUP and SORT
• The LOOKUP function does no longer treat a dimension name (like LOOKUP(Product)) as a special argument. Instead of this, the current selection of that dimension will be passed to the function and it will perform a lookup over these keys.

Adhoc rollups for SQL Cubes

SQL Cubes now can rollup your dimensions while loading the data from the underlying database. This is very helpful for unbalanced hierarchies where e.g. only data for leafs is stored in the database. instantOLAP will only load the data for leafs and aggregate it up to the wanted dimensions elements when executing a report.

Single Sign On for Windows

The new user management of instantOLAP allows to connect with a Windows Domainer controller and to use your existing username, password and roles inside instantOLAP.

We also support Single Sign On (NTLM based) in intranets. SSO will identify and login the user without prompting his username and password. For SSO, the server must run on a Windows. SSO works best with Internet Explorer as client though other Browsers, like FireFox, can also be configured to use it.

Max OSX support for the Workbench

The Workbench now supports report previews on Mac OSX machines. Though there is no installer for Mac, the Workbench can be launched from the Java Webstart URL.

Changes in the frontend

There are a few new features in the frontend, mainly a few new design properties and some export improvements:

• PDF tables will now repeat their header lines on new pages
• The export of the current selections can be disabled with the new „Export Selectors“ property
• The title of a block can be overriden for exports with the „Export title“ property
• The font for the main title can be changed now with the new properties „Title Font“, „Title Font Size“ and „Title Color“
• The visibility for cells can now, independent of the header visibility, controlled with the „Cell Visible“ property

Release notes

Server

• A new internal engine now speeds up generating ToDo-Lists, loading data and building reports. The ToDo-List generation was changed from cell-oriented to package- (filter) oriented in order to speed up the list generation.
• The functions DLOOKUP and DSORT no longer exist and have to be replaced by LOOKUP and SORT
• Multiple LOOKUP and nested LOOKUPs inside a report now load their data with a single SQL statement
• Configurations can now specify a global filter for all reports using it
• The Omit-Factor for dimension mappings can now also be specified as a maximum number of keys (instead of a percentage value) with the property „Omit Limit“
• A new property „SQL Fetch Size“ allows to set the fetch size for SQL cubes
• A new property „Cell Visible“ allows to control the visibility of a cell independent to the header
• The new properties „Title Font“ and „Title Font Size“ control the font and size of the report title
• Bugfix: The YTD function didn’t work properly with multiple input keys
• Bugfix: Cells of a table now cannot be spanned by the neighbor cells left and above the cell simultaneously

Web-Frontend

• The default values of a selector are now recalculated if the selector has the option „Use Filter“ set to true.
• Calendar-Selectors now allow to specify the selectable range with its options
• Comments now can contains and display line breaks
• Descriptions of selector groups are now displayed a hover texts
• Bugfix: Applet-Charts didn’t display overlay charts correctly
• Bugfix: CalendarRange-Selectors now accept Default-Values
• Bugfix: All types of selectors can now access variables
• Bugfix: The Save and SaveAs dialog now show empty folders
• Bugfix: The font size for comments wasn’t used
• Bugfix: The CRS for ESRI maps (geo charts) is now calculated more accurate

Workbench

• Support for Mac OSX 32/64 bit added
• The process of a still running query is now killed when leaving the preview
• Table Aliases can now be generated from the context menu of a table in the database explorer
• The original table for aliases and the expression of virtual columns are displayed in the database explorer
• The SQL query tool holds the result for each SQL statement in a single tabulator window
• Better representation of the queries in the Query Editor (correct header size, font size etc)
• Bugfix: A locking problem in the matrix-editor in combination with at least one open preview window was solved