Monday, February 28, 2011

Dodeca 5.3.0.2646 Available for Download!

We have been busy working on some new functionality for our 5.3.0 release and have finally got it out the door!  This release features a number of new capabilities requested by customers along with other product improvements.  Our release notes contain an exhaustive list of the changes, but here are some of the highlights:

Support for PDF

We have added native capability to write data in a grid or Excel based Dodeca view directly to a PDF file.  The output PDF file is PDFA-1b compliant.  Additionally, the generated PDF file can be opened locally in a Dodeca WebBrowserView or externally in the default PDF viewer.   We have also added programmatic support for PDF by way of the SaveWorkbookAsPdf method (or "action") and the BeforeSaveAsPdf and AfterSaveAsPdf event links.

Dodeca SQL Excel View Rendered as PDF (click to enlarge)
Excel AddIn Mode

Dodeca was created to target the need for a bulletproof spreadsheet environment for planning, analysis and reporting on Essbase and relational data sources, but we have had requests to make Dodeca work even more like the classic Excel add-in.  We are happy to announce this new release features our new Excel AddIn mode.  This mode, which is implemented as an optional configuration setting on our Adhoc Essbase view type, allows an end user much more flexibility to choose their own Essbase connection, load their own Essbase-aware Excel workbooks from their hard drive and retrieve/drill just like they are using the classic addin (except without the bugs!)


Copy Comments

We have had many customers ask if they could copy their analytic commentary from one set of datapoints to another. For example, one customer wanted to copy their comments relating to January Forecast for their 25 assigned markets to the February Forecast. In response, we have added server-side support for copying comments. Additionally, we have added the CopyComments workbook script method/action to facilitate end users initiating the copy comment process.

CopyComments Workbook Script Method (click to enlarge)












Support for Adding and Removing UDAs

User Defined Attributes are often used to mark Essbase members for special usage in an Essbase application.  This new functionality provides a new workbook script method, SetUDA, with both AddToMember and RemoveFromMember overloads.  The workbook script method allows an adminstrator to include functionality in an application to add, or remove, one or more UDAs from one or more Essbase members in a single call to the server.  Of course, with any workbook script, the functionality may be attached to a toolbar button, menu item or context menu item to make it easy for users to complete the task.

Improvements Working with Stored Procedures

In a Dodeca SQLPassthroughDataSet object, the select, insert, delete, and update statements defined for the object can be defined to execute a stored procedure.  Here is an example of a typical stored procedure:

execute @argument1,@argument2,…

Inside Dodeca, we take the SQL statements, parse them, and create prepared statement objects.  In this process, we also modify insert SQL on the fly to eliminate columns for which there is a parameter defined,

but which do not have a parameter passed for the record. We did this to allow for database default column values to be returned after an insert statement. Nice feature and I had just bunches of fun writing that one! It works very well except, for stored procedures, arguments are typically required (vs. SQL which is very flexible). We have changed the behavior of an insert when we detect a stored procedure to not modify the SQL.

Other New Workbook Script Events

BeforeDataTableRangeAddRow / AfterDataTableRangeAddRow - Occurs before / after a row (or rows) is added to a DataTableRange either by a user adding/inserting a row(s) or when an empty row is automatically added.

BeforeDataTableRangeDeleteRow / AfterDataTableRangeDeleteRow - Occurs before / after a row (or rows) is deleted from a DataTableRange.

Other New Workbook Script Methods

SaveDataTableRangeRow supports saving the changes to a specified row within a DataTableRange. The row can be an added (or inserted) row or a modified existing row.

Other New Workbook Script Functions

The DataTableRangeRowHasChanges function returns True or False based whether a row within a DataTableRange contains unsaved changes, which includes a new row and a modified existing row.

The DataTableRangeRowState function determines whether a row was Added, Modified, or Unchanged.
This is a summary of some of the new things in the Dodeca 5.3.0 release.  We have worked hard to get this release out the door.  Next on our agenda, we expect to release a 5.3.1 version with some functionality that didn't meet the deadline for 5.3.0.  We are also working in the background on our next big release; we hope to start talking about the contents of that release in the not too distant future.

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