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Version 3.0 comes with a fresh and new interface, new flexible report and dashboard layout possibilities, two web-based report editors for both experts and novice users, a new template based export engine and much much more…

Continue reading for an updated overview of the new features and the release notes.

We cleaned up and gave instantOLAP 3 a fresher and clearer design with less buttons and tabulators but more functionality. Not much to write here, just have a look onto the following screenshots.

The Designers

instantOLAP 3 allows to interactivly change content and the look&feel of your reports while watching them. A couple of new “designers” can be opened while watching a report, including a designer for the pivot-table content, a designer for the table-layout, a designer for charts and others.

Query Designer

The Query Designer allows to add axes, facts and selectors to your report with single mouse clicks. You can also rearrange your reports, add Top 10 filters and do many things more inside the designer without having any knowledge of instantOLAP queries.

Table Designer

The Table Designer offers a large number of predefined table designs. Simply change the look & feel of your report by selecting one of them. Of course, after you selected on the designs, you can change it afterwards by changing the table properties.

Block Designer

The Block Designer is very similar to the Table Designer but changes the look & feel of the containing blocks. Like the Table Designer, it offers a number of predefined layouts where you can choose from.

Chart Designer

Another very useful is the Chart Designer. It automatically turns your query into one of the predefined charts. A large number of chart layout are offered, including 3D versions of every available chart type.

Better layout possibilities for queries

A more flexible block layout

First of all, we broke the fixed block structure of queries and created a new, more flexible alternative. Now you can nest as much blocks as you want and as deep as you want. E.g. it is possible now to nest complete reports in tabulator block and to build huge executive reports which contain all neccesary data in one page.

Also, the selectors are no longer limited to stay at the top of the query, they can also be placed in any other block and every block can have its own selector. You may even place the selector at the left, right or bottom border of your blocks.

Of course, the old query structure will automatically converted in the current one and every existing query will be compatible with version 3.

New “Fit To Screen” mode

The new option “Fit To Screen” for reports lets them use the whole available space on the screen. This is very nice e.g. for building dashboards.

All blocks will be displayed inside the screen without the need to scroll the report in order to see blocks outside the screen. If you enlarge browser window, all blocks will be enlarged immediately, too.

Because in this mode the content of the blocks can be larger than the block itself, all tables will automatically display as scrollable tables with fixed headers. Images and maps will be zoomed to the size of their block. All other content like IFrames or commets will be displayed with scroll bars if the content is too large.

New block types

We also introduced two new block types, the “IFrames” and “Query-Imports”. IFrames allow to display other HTML pages within your reports and to enrich them with other content. Query-Imports display other queries inside the importing query as if they were part of it itself.

And – you can include other queries as a block by using the “Query Import” format. This allows to reuse and to build dashboards by putting multiple queries together!

Partitial loading of queries

Another great change is how the queries load their content: Until now, every query was executed and displayed as a monolithic block, but now every block can update its content without the need to refresh other blocks. E.g. drilldown inside a table can become much more comfortable, because only the block containing the table has to be refreshed.

Also, blocks now do not load their content until it is needed. E.g. tabbed blocks will only load the data of their visible tab and dynamically load the other tabs content when the user selects them. Additionally, blocks can be collapsed and only load their data when the user expands them. This allows to build fast dashboards which load their data only on demand.

Use multiple models or single cubes in one query

A much requested feature was to use multiple models in a single query. In instantOALP 3, each query can use a different model and you can generate reports with data from multiple models. Even the selectors work with different models if the dimensions have the same name. The only limit is that a single table or chart may only use a single model.

Included fully functional Query Editor

This is surely one of the greatest features in instantOLAP 3: This version will contain a fully functional and powerful query editor, even more mighty than the editor included in the Workbench of previous versions.

The new editor used the same layout and look & feel like the Workbench version – including drag & drop – but contains a couple of new improvements:

• First of all, it reflects the new block structure, this means you can nest blocks as you want and create selectors everywhere. A large number of new context menus will help you to arrange blocks and to change their format.
• Also, the new Designers from the Query Viewer are available in the editor. This means, you can also design tables or turn them into predefined charts within the editor with a few mouse clicks.
• The property editor has the same functionality as the Workbench version. Properties are now group in the web front end and Workbench.
• The query editor will use the powerful expression editor of the portal which allows a much more powerful editing of expressions, including Top 10 requests, dimension searches, saved expressions and much more. We also improved the expression editor between version 2.7 to version 3.
• A zoom function allows to keep the whole report in sight when editing large reports.

In difference to our first planning, the Workbench still contains the query editor (now compatible with the new query structure).

New export engine

DOC export

With the final version 3, we changed the export engine for PDF exports and added the new DOC export (compatible with MS Word). Both export formats use the same engine.

Export templates

The new export format is based on document templates (either MS Word or Open Office format). instantOLAP uses this templates as the base for exports and appends the report content to them. Templates can contain images, headers, footers, an index, fields and anything else. Some report informations (like the name, title or author) are passed to the template as fields and can be used anywhere in the exported documents.

Each report can use its own template – the new property “Export Template” allows to specify the template for a report.

By default, instantOLAP comes with three predefined templates, a “normal” template (DIN A4), a template with index and a landscape version. All templates contain the instantOLAP logo which can be easily replaced with your company logo. All default templates are placed in the folder “stylesheets” inside the repository.

Because the size and orientation of the document is now defined by the template, all export properties for the size have been removed (Print Width and Print Height). Also, the logo is now defined by the template and not by the report itself. Therefore, the “Print Logo” property has been removed from the report and folder properties.

Export layout

By default, reports are now exported without the original block layout of the report and all blocks are exported below each other. Because reports can contain many nested block since version 3, this is necessary in order to keep the exported documents readable.

With the new export property “Keep Block Layout”, you can force a report to export it block with nearly the same block layout as the screen version – e.g. images will be placed next to tables etc.

Release notes

These release notes only contain the differences between the final version and the release candidate. To see all differences between 2.7 and 3.0, you should also read the release notes of 3.0 RC.

Web-Frontend

• Browser support for Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4/5 added
• Better compability with Safari browser (resizing the repository, restoring the scrollposition when switching between reports etc)
• Better compability with Internet Explorer 7 and 8
• New export format (Microsoft DOC format) added. The new format uses DOT templates, which can be changed or extended by the customer. Also, the PDF export now uses the same technology and is just a PDF output of the DOC export. Because of the templates, the page size and export label properties for reports have been deleted.
• Improved import of 2.x reports (importing border colors and block aligns)
• The repository search now also searches in the description of reports
• XML export can now be enabled / disabled with the new property “Enable XML export”
• Permalink option added to export menu
• Invisible cells are not exported to charts
• Bugifx: Targets for chart links were ignored

Server

• New function GETDAYOFWEEK was added
• Less memory usage for large reports
• Concurrent license codes can be assigned to user names now
• Better compability with the newer versions of the Tomcat server (newer Tomcats can change the JSESSION id of a running session at any time)

Workbench

• Reports and Configurations can be opened in “Read only” mode, even if the file is currently locked by another user

Ab sofort steht  das aktuelle Release 2.7.0 in unserem Download Bereich zur Verfügung!

Hier geht’s zur  Download Seite!

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

Ab sofort steht  das aktuelle Service update zum Release 2.6.2 in unserem Download Bereich zur Verfügung!

Hier geht’s zur  Download Seite!

Release Notes

Server

• Two new properties (“First Day Of Week” and “Min Days In First Week”) allow to fine-tune the TimeKeyLoader – e.g. you can generate ISO compatible calenders now
• Instead of “= NULL”, the SQL Generator now generates “IS NULL”
• Faster communication between the server and the frontend or Workbench
• Better detection of the return type for the LOOKUP method (which is eg. important when using a LOOKUP in the “Options” property of a selector)
• Bugfix: Dimensions and offline stores with the same name could cause trouble in distributed environments

Web-Frontend

• Dynamic loading of suggestions for the SuggestSelector – the number of possible options is nearly unlimited now
• For SuggestSelectors, the correct text is now displayed when exporting a report
• Better caching-strategy for files, the browser will immediately reload changed resources from the repository
• Better performance for the ExpressionEditor, the model-tree at the left side now loads async
• Bugfix: The default of a HierarchyTreeSelector was not visually selected if it was another key than the root key

Tomcat

• The default Tomcat installation is now configured not to expand the WAR archives for easier updates

Ab sofort steht  das aktuelle Release 2.6.2 in unserem Download Bereich zur Verfügung!

Hier geht’s zur  Download Seite!

Release notes

Server

• The SQL generator now accepts “CASE WHEN … THEN … ELSE … END” phrases without the need to escape them.
• The SQL generator now always generates “IS NULL” instead of “= NULL” for better compability with some databases.
• The SQL generator now generates “<expression> IN (<value>, <value>, …) OR NULL” instead of “<expression> IN (<value>, <value>, …, NULL)”, because some databases don’t accept NULLs in IN listings. The database property “Drop IN With NULL” was dropped in respect of this new syntax.
• Time-Keyloaders allow to set the “Minimum number of days in first week” and the “First day of week” for generating ISO (or other, country specific) calendars.
• A gzip compression was added between the server and the frontend or Workbench for less and faster traffic.
• The LOOKUP now performs became faster on Stores by building internal substores.
• List reports now can recevice data from multiple SQL statements inside the same SQL cube.
• Bugfix: The LOOKUP function now calculates its return type more accurate.
• Bugfix: LOOKUP on stores returned empty results if the searched dimension was part of the original SQL cube but not of the store.
• Bugfix: The vertical space between blocks with multiple line titles has been to small.

Web-Frontend

• The XML export of reports is now enabled for all users (instead for administrators only).
• The querystring of links do not contain the “All” keys any longer (this was originially introduced in 2.6.0).
• A SuggestionBox-selection can be deleted by clearing the search field and using enter.
• Exported PDF documents now repeat the table headers on each page.
• Bugfix: The default key of TreeSelectors is now visually selected when loading a report
• Bugfix: The tab-colors of tabbed blocks are now using the border color of the embedded blocks
• Bugfix: Scrollable tables with a fixed width and height scaled wrong in PDF documents.

Workbench

• The model tree inside the Expression editor is now loaded async (which means less waiting time before you can start typing).
• A new “Show store log” button was added to the Model info dialog – this log shows all warnings and error messages from the last Store build.
• The User Manager does no longer delete custom column content from the user tables and only updates the changed columns when editing users or groups.

Ab sofort steht  das aktuelle Service update zum Release 2.6.1 in unserem Download Bereich zur Verfügung!

Hier geht’s zur  Download Seite!

Release Notes

Server

• Two new properties (“First Day Of Week” and “Min Days In First Week”) allow to fine-tune the TimeKeyLoader – e.g. you can generate ISO compatible calenders now
• Instead of “= NULL”, the SQL Generator now generates “IS NULL”
• Faster communication between the server and the frontend or Workbench
• Better detection of the return type for the LOOKUP method (which is eg. important when using a LOOKUP in the “Options” property of a selector)
• Bugfix: Dimensions and offline stores with the same name could cause trouble in distributed environments

Web-Frontend

• Dynamic loading of suggestions for the SuggestSelector – the number of possible options is nearly unlimited now
• For SuggestSelectors, the correct text is now displayed when exporting a report
• Better caching-strategy for files, the browser will immediately reload changed resources from the repository
• Better performance for the ExpressionEditor, the model-tree at the left side now loads async
• Bugfix: The default of a HierarchyTreeSelector was not visually selected if it was another key than the root key

Tomcat

• The default Tomcat installation is now configured not to expand the WAR archives for easier updates

ERP – Systeme und OLAP Anwendungen verfolgen in der Regel verschieden Ziele. Im ERP werden die Daten verbucht, verwaltet und weiterverarbeitet, in OLAP Systemen werden diese verdichtet und per Internet Browser aufbereitet zur Verfügung gestellt. Dies stellt verschiedenste technologische und fachliche Anforderungen an die Systeme.

Es fällt ERP Systemen in der Regel schwer performant  und kostengünstig mehrdimensionale Daten auszuwerten, zur Entlastung werden Datawarehouse Varianten genutzt. Hier entscheiden sich Anwender für Lösungen, die es ermöglichen Daten extern zu pflegen und auszuwerten, wie  instantOLAP.

Folgende Berichtesnetzwerke wurden und werden im Rahmen von Kundenprojekten aus Basis SAP – Daten in instantOLAP umgesetzt:
Auftragsbestandsanalyse, CO -Finanzen, Lagerbestandsanalyse, Lieferantenanalyse, Kundenanalyse, Materialanalyse, Vertriebssteuerung, Kostenstellenreporting.

OLAP in neuen Dimensionen 

Wir freuen uns heute die Version 3.0 für Herbst 2010 anzukündigen.  instantOLAP bietet hier ein große Anzahl von neuen Funktionen und Verbesserungen. Der gesamte Query-Designer wurde überarbeitet und in den Browser verlagert. Neben dem”Designer” Button, der dem Excel Pivottable Designer angelehnt wurde, aber wesentlich mehr Funktionen bietet, hat man auch die Möglichkeit in den “Edit” Modus zu wechseln, um dort alle Details einstellen zu können. Somit hat der Power-User jetzt alle Möglichkeiten direkt im Browser intuitive Berichte zu erstellen.

Weiter Informationen erhalten Sie auf unserer Produktseite:

http://www.instantolap.com/news/coming-in-2010-release-3-0

Ab sofort steht  das aktuelle Service update zum Release 2.6.1 in unserem Download Bereich zur Verfügung!

Hier geht’s zur  Download Seite!

Release Notes

Server

• Expression now accept the escape characters \’ or \” to use delimiters in strings
• TimeKeyloader Attributes are now also adjust the years to weeks when the owning KeyLoader has its property “Adjust Years To Weeks” set to “true”
• Better performance for list reports
• Better performance for the MATRIX function

Web-Frontend

• Large logos are scaled to fit when exporting PDF documents
• Bugfix: Interval selectors now accept two equal default values
• Bugfix: The SuggestBox selector now selects values when using the tabulator key
• Bugfix: Better screen layout for the Automation Manager when editing email automations

Workbench

• Better performance when rendering configurations with many dimensions and cubes

Stender AG ist ein führender Hersteller von Substraten und Blumenerden.

Zielsetzung dieser Partnerschaft ist die enge Verknüpfung der Lösung  netinsight, eine  einheitliche und integrierte Plattform für alle Aufgaben im Umfeld von IT Controlling und IT Leistungsverrechnung, und instantOLAP, ein leistungsfähiges OLAP- und Reportingsystem.