New in Data Access Studio 6.0

Transcription

1 New in Data Access Studio 6.0 Unless otherwise noted with a version number, all features list were available as-of the General Availability of 6.0 (version ) on November 1 st, Contents Major Features... 2 Automatic Presentation (Improved in )... 2 Combine Data from Any Data Source... 7 Automatic Burst Optimization (6.0.65)... 8 Masking Security (6.0.74)... 9 Enhanced List... 9 Support World A9.3 Role-based Security Union Join Type Support (6.0.93) Jargon Support (6.0.95) Group By Support ( ) Horizontal Summarization for more Calculations ( ) General Usability New GUI Excel Minor Usability Improvements New and Changed Calculations Administration Improvements Performance and Scalability Other Feature Improvements... 31

2 Page 2 of 37 Major Features Automatic Presentation (Improved in ) DAS 6.0 has a new Automatic presentation mode that makes it far easier than the current manual presentation method 1 to present data in Excel. 1 Manual presentations are still very much supported and are still needed for very complex presentations.

3 Page 3 of 37 The automatic presentation automatically tracks changes you make on the data tab. For instance if you add new columns or change the grouping, the change automatically appears on the presentation tab. Automatic presentation does away with row padding. This means you may have as many grouping levels as you want (the legacy way had a limit of 3 group levels). Also, the new mechanism is more efficient with memory so the size of your resulting report will be smaller as well Formula and Chart retention. The main advantage of presenting to Excel is that you can chart and create formulas. With the Automatic presentation, your formulas will stay intact as you modify your incoming data e.g. if you add a row to a static list for instance, all formulas based on other amounts will remain unaffected. Data tracking. With automatic mode, you add formulas and charts to Excel using the Excel techniques you know. DAS does the rest to make sure the formulas and charts work as the query data changes.

4 Page 4 of 37 Dynamic styles. The Automatic Presentation has a new feature called styles. Styles let you stylize your output quickly by categorizing elements of your report e.g. Group header, totals, captions, details, etc. To get you started, we ve provided over 30 different customized styles that you can quickly apply and customize. Note that the Apply/Cancel buttons on the style dialog were added in

5 Page 5 of 37 Richly Styled Group Footers ( ). It is now possible to add custom formulas and formatting to the footer of each section in an automatic presentation. In addition, to maintaining the formulas and styling of the footer regardless of the changing number of records in the group, the same footer will be replicated to all footers of the same group level in the report dynamically.

6 Page 6 of 37 Row Level Style Overrides for Lists ( ) Allow for the identification of custom styles per list row. When combined with custom column styling, this new feature enables cell-level styling on a list based reports.

7 Page 7 of 37 Combine Data from Any Data Source Linking to non-jde data is now easier than ever. With the new External Data feature, you can connect to any ODBC datasource, re-use connections between users, and combine data from multiple sources into one report. Managing reports. Reports written to connect to non-jde data sources behave like reports written over JDE data sources. This includes being able to open them from the list of reports in My Reports and the ability to publish and schedule such reports. Connections to external data sources on which such reports are based are provisioned and managed through separate user interface. o Server-side connections. With DAS 6.0, you can now create the connections to external data sources on the DAS server and clients can use this connection if they are granted permission to do so. DASADMIN grants permission by adding the user under Admin->Security->Allow Server Connections tab. With previous versions of DAS, external data connections had to be set up on each client machine. Note that client connections are also still available. Setting up the connections at the server level also allows reports to be published and scheduled.

8 Page 8 of 37 o o o Easier to make connections. There is also now a new user interface for provisioning both client and server connections to external data that is designed to be simpler to navigate for common data sources, such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and IBM DB2. Additional drivers. Where DAS 5.4 only supported access to external data using 32-bit OLEDB drivers, DAS 6.0 supports a variety of managed.net providers as well as OLEDB and ODBC drivers. DAS 6.0 also supports connection to 64-bit data drivers in addition to 32-bit drivers. For example, if you are using the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office, DAS is now able to connect to Excel or Access using its 64-bit drivers. If you are using a 64 bit version of Excel or any other driver, you now have the option to create a connection using the 64 bit client or server connection. Table Lookup. Users can now look up non-jde data using the Table Lookup calculation. In prior versions, table lookups could only be performed from a non-jde table to a JDE table. To use this feature, select an external data connection in the data source option of the Table Lookup calculation and then select a table from that external data connection. Joins. The join editor has a new datasource field that allows you to create joins within a non-jde datasource as well (provided that the non-jde datasource supports joining.) Cross datasource joins must be implemented as Table Lookups (see above) 6.0 now allows you to nest (subgroup) lists. This means that you can group two different lists and DAS will automatically generate correct placeholders for each list item. Automatic Burst Optimization (6.0.65) DAS Automatically optimizes burst processing to bulk up queries from driver report and not have to run the target report for every row.

9 Page 9 of 37 Can now burst individual bursts on a row (previously could only execute all bursts for a row). An improved design experience when working with burst targets. Masking Security (6.0.74) Masking Security is a new, highly configurable, row-level security system. With masking security, any column in a JDE Enterprise One and World table can be masked using sophisticated rules and utilizing data from any other data source. A typical use of this security is to hide sensitive HR information of some employees to a particular user but still allow that user to see non-sensitive information in that HR table. Enhanced List DAS 6.0 enhances the List calculation: Color highlighting list columns for Label, Criteria, and Expressions Undo/Redo/Cut/Copy/Paste: Added standard editing functionality to make list editing easier List show row numbers to better manage visualizing large lists Insert Before/Insert After: You can insert a blank row before or after the highlighted row Drag and Drop rows: Automatically scrolls if you drag down Multiple expressions (Add column). Expressions allow you to calculate more in DAS and less in Excel (which can be a good thing.) Expressions are variations of the current Row calculations in the list editor. With expressions you can create any combination of formulas with the symbols in your list. For instance you can create an Expression column that calculates the percent of totals for any number of quantities that you need. Generic expression -> column mapping. Previously, lists applied the Default Expression to any visible numeric column. Now DAS allows you to assign or un-assign a list expression to any

10 Page 10 of 37 numeric column. Simply right-click a numeric column and select List Expression. Then select None, Default, or any other list expression that you defined. Expressions can be applied and reused in this manner over any numeric grid column. Create lists from spreadsheets: In the previous version you could only load lists from AAIs. Now you have the capability to create lists from external data sources like spreadsheets. If you have a spreadsheet formatted to include your labels and criteria, open it as a report, and then select Quick Calculation->Text->List and a list will be generated from the contents of the report that you can choose to modify and/or save. (6.0.76) Detect invalid field references between a list and the report it is being used with, autocorrect ones that can be corrected, and highlight invalid ones in red. Support World A9.3 Role-based Security In 6.0, DAS fully supports the new JDE World role-based security introduced in A9.3. Including adding the ability for a user to sign-in using a role, DAS also support signing in using all the user s roles (*ALL). World Search Type Security (6.0.67) DAS now honors World s Search Type Security so that users of DAS will only see records in any table (that contains address book numbers) that they are secured to view. This feature is off by default. Union Join Type Support (6.0.93) DAS now supports the union join type. Now it is possible to easily add a history table or other archivelike tables to a main table in a report. In addition to a simple union all, DAS also supports Distinct Unions (along with Distinct Joins too). Note that a Union All and simple Join will always perform better than their distinct counterparts.

11 Page 11 of 37 Jargon Support (6.0.95) DAS now supports alternate column captions based on the JDE industry identifier (i.e. system code). For example, the Business Unit column in the Sales Order Table (F4211) will now be called Branch Plant because that is what business units are called in the Sales vertical in JDE (system code 42). This makes tables easier to understand for users not familiar with JDE s overall base vocabulary. Of course, report developers still can then rename the column caption to whatever they want. While new reports will use the system code of the primary table as its initial jargon code, existing reports will not use this feature unless the report is changed by a developer.

12 Page 12 of 37 Group By Support ( ) In addition to our DAS Server summarization, we now provide the ability for the database to perform summarizations (SUM, MIN, MAX, etc) instead of requiring the client to retrieve and then summarize a potentially large set of detail records. For certain types of reports, this can be a substantial performance improvement (sometimes an order of magnitude faster). Note several caveats: 1. Only supported for World, E1, and external data. XE is NOT supported. 2. Potentially high impact on the database. The administrator can restrict this feature to certain users. 3. E1 does not support summarization of non-numeric fields. 4. Depending on the calculation columns used, not all reports will support server or database summarization (For example, the deduplication calculation requires all summarization to occur on the client).

13 Page 13 of 37 Horizontal Summarization for more Calculations ( ) In addition to the Horizontal Division summary, DAS now supports horizontal summarization for many more calculations. By selecting horizontal summarization for a calculation, the group and grand summary cells of a calculation column will show the result of the calculation logic on of its input column summary values instead of executing standard summary logic (Sum, Min, Max, etc.) on its detail calculation results. In other words, execute the calculation on the summary input row values exactly like the detail input row values. This is especially important for reports that are more about the first or second level summaries rather than the detail rows (such as cross tabular reports). List of calculations that support horizontal summarization: Absolute Value Division Margin Remainder Round Running Total Average Difference Max Median Min Multiply Standard Deviation Sum

14 Page 14 of 37 General Usability New GUI The main page has a new look and feel that has some similarities to the Modern UI in Microsoft Windows 8. This includes tile buttons for common functions on the home screen that work well with touch. The smart search field now searches your Private and Published reports as well as DAS templates and JDE table and view names. You can check and uncheck search results to limit what is searched. For example, if you only want to see DAS templates you would uncheck the icons representing My Reports, Reports Published To Me, and JDE. Please note: if you want to see all the templates available, uncheck these items and put a space in the smart search field to refresh the search results. In the previous versions you had to type in RT_. Tree-based Folders Designer users can now create their own personal folders by simply clicking on the Add Folder icon. You can also create folders within folders. The new user interface also allows users to undo or redo changes they have made. It will migrate your existing folder configuration under My Reports.

15 Page 15 of 37 For Published Reports, the Folder Administrator (this can be selected to be a user other than DASADMIN) can create Global Folders and then move the reports to certain folders. Once the user signs in and goes to their Reports Published to Me page, they will see the report under the correct folder.

16 Page 16 of 37 There is also a Recycle box now. If you delete a report, it will automatically move to this recycling folder. From there you can right click and empty it. Skins The look of DAS 6.0 can easily be changed by clicking on Windows->Skins. Currently there are over forty skins.

17 Page 17 of 37 Excel 2013 DAS 6.0 presentation system works for Excel 2003 through Excel Excel Specific Improvements: Support Excel charts as Excel pages when using Automatic Presentation (6.0.82) Support spaces in Excel page names when using Automatic Presentation (6.0.82) Minor Usability Improvements New Editor for Design and How to Use Notes The editor for Design and How to User Notes is a full featured editor supporting all the features of a modern word processor such as full font control, embedding images and table, and layout control.

18 Page 18 of 37 Easier mapping of report parameters to Embed Excel DAS 6.0 now maps all parameters and variables to Excel as Named Ranges. This makes it much more convenient and resilient to include these values in your Excel Presentation. (Previously DAS saved these as a column in DASLink, which will still work for legacy reports.)

19 Page 19 of 37 Improved Help About In 6.0, the Help About window provides admins, as well as users, with useful information such as the number of designer and subscriber licenses you have, number of licenses that are currently being consumed, the expiration date of the licenses if you are on trial and the name of your deployment server. There is also a new Help Show Licenses Usage that will show you who is currently consuming a license in DAS.

20 Page 20 of 37 Header/Footer A cleaner look for the Header/Footer UI. Users have the capability to put the parameters in the header. Easy Font Size Adjustment (6.0.79) Easily change all the fonts in the report with easy shrink and grow buttons.

21 Page 21 of 37 Published Report Can be saved as Private Report (6.0.79) Have you been modifying a report and then come to point where you want to save your work but find out the report was a published report? Now it is possible to save your work as a private report.

22 Page 22 of 37 New and Changed Calculations Rounding Calculation This new calculation lets the user quickly select numeric columns and round them up. Options include number of digits to round to, the way to handle midpoint, and a divisor so users can for instance divide by 1000 and then round up. String Contains Calculation (6.0.75) This new calculation allows searching for a string in another string with the option of ignoring case.

23 Page 23 of 37 To Lowercase and To Uppercase Calculations (6.0.74) New Filter List Table Lookup Summary Type (6.0.75) It is now possible to return the list of retrieved rows from a table lookup query as a list of values to pass to another query in the form of in a list of values or not in a list of values. For example, if a query returns 1, 2, 7, Filter: list of values returns 1;2;7 (i.e. 1 OR 2 OR 7). For Filter: not in list for the same query return!1:!2:!7 (i.e. NOT 1 AND NOT 2 AND NOT 7). This feature can also be used to simple collapse a set of row values for a column into a single cell.

24 Page 24 of 37 Running Total Calculation (6.0.82) This is a new math calculation for a running total at any grouping level. Activation Condition on Burst Calculations (6.0.94) DAS 6.0 allows the development of custom drill downs using burst calculations. If a report has a lot of these custom drill downs, the report user might be confused about what drill down to choose for the selected row or rows. This feature allows a custom drill down to be hidden or shown (i.e. activated ) based on the contents of the selected row or rows.

25 Page 25 of 37 Date and Date Range Input to Work Days Calculation (6.0.94) As an alternative to passing in data information as discreet elements (day, month, year) for the calculation of the number of work days between two dates, it is now possible to pass in a single date or date range. The data information can either be a literal (as shown above) or as a reference to a variable or column. Julian to Date Calculation ( )

26 Page 26 of 37 Trigonometry Calculations ( ) Supports both degrees and radians Week Number Calculation ( ) Calculation will returns the week number for a given date. Calculation also supports a variety of calendar rules to accurately determine the week number. Median Calculation ( ) In addition to our current Average Calculation, we now support determining a median as well.

27 Page 27 of 37 Random Calculation ( ) Produce a pseudo-random number within a given range using any data type. Random Row Index Calculation ( ) For a give set of returned data records, produce randomly assigned row index values. For example, if a report returned 100 records, this calculation will assign each row (or a subset of returned rows) a random number between 1 and 100 with each number used only once. This is useful for such things as randomly selecting accounts for auditing.

28 Page 28 of 37 Administration Improvements Scheduling Reports Enhancements Users can now queue their reports to run instantly without modifying the schedule by clicking on Queue Now. The task will immediately be placed into the queue of running tasks behind any tasks already running or waiting to run. You can also Enable/Disable a scheduled report from the main window without having to edit the Task. (This is subject to saving changes on the form.) You can change the target environment and provider for multiple reports in one step. This is handy, for instance, when you upgrade E1 and all your scheduled reports need to run off the new environments. (6.0.70) Task grid now contains most of the details about a task such as what reports to be run, , etc. (6.0.70) DASADMIN can now change the ownership of a task from one user to another.

29 Page 29 of 37 Security Audit Report (6.0.81) See the effective security model of all your users in an easy-to-use report. Use this report to verify that the changes you make to DAS security is as you expected. Improved DAS Instance Export/Import (6.0.63) In 6.0, the creation date of imported reports is preserved from what was exported. This makes the DAS instance a true back-up of DAS. Improved Object Filter Security (6.0.82) Object filter security rules specified for more granular identities are in addition (logically OR'ed) to rules specified for other identities (roles or user IDs). Previously, such sets of rules were logically AND'ed together resulting in nonsensically restrictive rules and preventing the expected ability to loosen rules for more granular identities. A legacy option exists to retain the old behavior under administrative preferences for all users. In the most common scenario, it is now possible to filter on system code for DASUSERS, such as SY <05:>=09, and then specify object names within that range that should be accessible for a specific role or user.

30 Page 30 of 37 Performance and Scalability 64-bit Data Access Studio (DAS) is now a 64 bit application when running on a 64 bit operating system (DAS will continue to run as a 32 bit application on 32 bit operating systems). This allows users to run reports that have massive amounts of data (that might have previously encountered an out-of-memory condition.) Improved Tolerance to Network Disruptions (6.0.94) DAS now handles network disruptions better by attempting to reconnect or gracefully close. Improved Tolerance to JDE E1/XE Database Disruptions ( ) DAS now handles JDE E1 or XE database disruptions better by attempting to reconnect or gracefully close. This is especially important for Automator if it happens to be attempting a launch of a report during a maintenance window of the JDE system. Improved Server-Side Summarization Performance and Scalability ( ) The DAS server consumes significantly less memory and performs aggregation of data significantly faster when executing reports using the Server-Side Summary feature. Server Side Summarization can be enabled for any report that just requires viewing grouped data summaries and no detail.

31 Page 31 of 37 Other Feature Improvements Save Table-based reports to DASVIEW reports Prior to DAS 6.0, if you created a report based on a table instead of a DASVIEW, you would not be able to add a join to your report at that point. DAS 6.0 lets you seamlessly convert your table-based report to a join-based report. Quick Suppress Zeros DAS 6.0 makes it easy to suppress rows that sum to 0. To suppress zeros for any report, click Design Suppress Zeroes. You can check and uncheck this option to see your report with and without summaries that sum to 0. Quick Reports The Quick Reports user interface has been simplified and DAS now deduces more information from JDE Automatic Accounting Instructions (AAI s). 6.0 also introduces a Job Cost quick report. The setup is similar to what is found in other Financial quick reports, but line item setup is done for jobs and by selecting specific ledger types.

32 Page 32 of 37 Pin to Group Level There is a new option Always Group to this Level when you right-click, which allows you to set the group level automatically.

33 Page 33 of 37 Movable Group Column Unlike in previous versions, it is now possible to move a Grouped Column anywhere in your report. It doesn t have to be the leftmost column. Bring-backs Data Access Studio has a new feature called Bring-backs. This allows a user to right- click on cells that support drill downs and bring the relevant data back into the original report. Where drill downs are useful for viewing relevant data in the context of the target table, bring-backs allow the summarization and comparison of that data with data found in the source table. Just as with drill downs, users activate bring-backs by right-clicking on a cell and selecting from the list of valid associated tables. This allows users to troubleshoot reports and better analyze data. For example - focused on a cell under the grouping of Document Number and Document Type, the user can see that this cell is impacted by how the Company Constants are set up and the F0411 detail that would take a user into any related detail records linked to the related table, e.g. F0911.

34 Page 34 of 37 Publishing Burst Report With DAS 6.0 you can now seamlessly publish burst driver reports. This eliminates steps from the past where you had to re-hook the driver report to the target report. Spacer Calculation This new calculation lets you insert a column spacer between any column. Quick Calculation System Spacer Burst Publishing In 6.0, when you publish a Burst report, the publisher also publishes the dependent (target reports) automatically. Page Break on Group Level In 6.0, PDF and Excel data exports will now break on group level breaks. The page breaking occur on whatever page break you want. System Variables (6.0.59) The following global variables are now available to be used in all reports: SYS_USER_ID SYS_USER_Number (Address book number of signed on user) SYS_USER_Description SYS_USER_BusinessUnit (Per Address Book Master) SYS_USER_Company (Per Business Unit from Address Book Master) SYS_USER_Type SYS_USER_Environment SYS_USER_SignedOnRole Improved Data Export (6.0.65) Fully supports the group column being in any location in the report. Before, it would only display on the left. TSV and CSV formats now support more than one-level of grouping. (6.0.79) Improved XML rendering especially regarding handling grouping of a report and ensuring consistency of the schema of the report between releases of DAS.

35 Page 35 of 37 Custom Date Separator (6.0.75) It is now possible to specify a custom date separator for any date column. This is useful in international situations where you need to create a report for user that uses a date format different from your own. Custom Thousands Numeric and Currency Custom Format (6.0.82) It is now possible to format data columns in thousands for both currency and numbers.

36 Page 36 of 37 Burst to an Output Directory Improvements (6.0.82) When configuring a burst to output to a file, it is now possible to dynamically specify the output directory name using report variables. In addition, while bursting, DAS will auto-create an output directory if the directory does not exist. Auto-Run a Report When Launched From a URL (6.0.82) To better integrate JDE E1 Pages, it is now possible have a report automatically run after it is launched using a hyperlink generated from the Published Report s Folder Admin menu. Simply add &-run to the end of the hyperlink. Fixed Width Data Export of Summarized Data (6.0.94) It is now possible to export summarized data (i.e. grouped data) in the Fixed Width export format as long as all the columns are Pad calculation columns. More Excel Output Format Types for Bursting and Automator (6.0.97) It is now possible to export report data to XLSX or XLSB and the report presentation to XLSX and XLSM in addition to all of the formats DAS already supports in Bursting and Automator.

37 Page 37 of 37 Access to the last time data was selected and retrieved in Presentations ( ) The last time and date data was selected and fetched from the database can now be accessed from the Excel presentation layer via two report level variables.