Data Access Europe has released DataFlex Reports 2017 / 6.0.
With particular emphasis on performance in release 6.0, a Just-In-Time function pre-compiler offers speed improvements for reports that use many functions. Also, in response to Microsoft’s upgrade to the GDI library, to GDI+, the handling with GDI has been optimised to offer more compatible layout between version 6 and older versions of DataFlex Reports.
New features in DataFlex Reports 2017 / 6.0
We have summarised the new features below, but please read the DataFlex Reports v6 Highlights blog, which illustrates the changes brilliantly.
Barcode Support
DataFlex Reports 6.0 supports over 70 different types of symbologies (type of barcodes) both one dimensional and two-dimensional (stacked) symbols are available. Fields (like database fields, functions or parameter fields and text objects) can be converted to a barcode with a simple mouse click and can be exported to PDF, RTF, HTML or image.
Performance Improvements
To optimize the report generation process, a number of performance improvements have been made. A function pre-compiler has been added which makes reports with lots of functions run up to 10(!) times faster; the performance of summaries (both summary fields and the Sum() function) has also improved. Additional changes have been made to the layout engine to streamline report generation.
Functions and Function Editor
A new case statement has been added to DataFlex Reports 6.0. The case statement supports comma separated lists of values and does not allow fall-through to occur. Case statements can be nested. In addition to the case statement, whenever a function error occurs, the function editor is opened and the symbol which caused the error is highlighted. Selected text can now be commented and uncommented using the Ctrl+K,C and Ctrl+K,U keys or toolbar buttons. Additionally line comments can be toggled using the Ctrl+/ key.
Embedded SQL to directly execute SQL statements
A new built-in function SQL() has been added to DataFlex Reports 6.0 which allows you to execute SQL statements directly (also known as SQL expressions). This function is only available for ODBC datasources and is a powerful addition to report developers. Note, only a single value can be returned from a SQL() function.
Changes in DataFlex Reports 2017 / v6.0
Font sizes are calculated differently in version 6.0 of DataFlex Reports. This can have an effect on the layout of existing 5.0 reports
- String comparison in expression evaluator
- New cWebDRReportViewer class
- Added support for DataFlex 19.0 tab-workspaces
- Added option for case-insensitive compare in functions. We recommend you turn this option on for all new reports (by default this option is turned on for new reports and off for existing reports)
- ’(null)’ values will no longer appear in RDS reports
- Variable length Memo and Binary fields
- Anchor support
- New ‘TableNameAlias’ function in OCX
Before downloading, please read the notes relating to older releases in the DataFlex Reports 2017 Released forum post.
There is a choice of two editions of DataFlex Reports:
- Developer Edition
- Download Standard Edition
Note, the User and Developer PDF guides (which existed for previous releases) have been removed from DataFlex Reports v6.0, being replaced with a significantly improved Help system.