telephone:Version 10.1 Release Notes
Last Updated May 13, 2009
Introduction
Version 10.1 is a minor release. Feature enhancements were made over 10.0 in the following areas:
- Report Charts & Scripting
- Multi-Tenant
- Ad Hoc Ported to Flex
- Performance/Availability
- Viewsheet Enhancements
- Security Improvements
Report Charts
In 10.0 we introduced a new chart engine in Viewsheets that allows more sophisticated binding to a chart's visual properties. In this release, this same chart engine is used by charts in reports. Developers can also leverage the scripting environment for programmatic access to all of the components of a chart in both reports and Viewsheets. For programmers who have needs that go beyond what we provide out of the box, you can extend the individual aspects of a chart, creating, for example, a custom scale, color spectrum, or shape.
Multi-Tenant
Many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products provide extensibility beyond the base data model they provide. With this release, we make it easy to strike a balance between manageability and flexibility by allowing base Physical Views and Logical Models to be extended. Changes can be made to the extended models that are specific to a certain user population, and updates to the standard model will only have to be made once. Users will see their custom objects as part of the base model, based on their group or role.
Ad Hoc Ported to Flex
In 9.5 we ported the Visual Composer to Adobe Flex and saw a significant improvement in performance and responsiveness. We took advantage of this same technology in a rewrite of our Ad Hoc Reporting interfaces and Wizards. Also, the Chart Wizard and binding interface have been updated to support the new flexible engine.
Performance/Availability
In this release we focused on issues of performance and reliability. The opening of our new office in Xian, China has allowed us to dedicate more resources to testing real world scenarios. This has led to improvements in caching, swapping, and the dependency checker, among others.
Viewsheet OLAP
We have made OLAP data sources available in viewsheets. A multi-dimensional database yields high performance, but the strict hierarchy of an OLAP Cube is more of a limitation than a help. So we have removed this restriction, and allow you to bind individual dimension attributes to the aspects of a chart and areas of a crosstab or pivot table.
For example, you can see the Sales for every City, regardless of State or Country, and color the bars by Product, regardless of Category. You can also make use of selection elements to filter your multi-dimensional data. We are providing this flexibility at the UI layer, while still taking advantage of your high performance backend.
Viewsheet Layout
We have made a number of additions to the layout and display capabilities of Viewsheets.
- Use CSS to style your Viewsheets consistently
- Group elements together so they behave as a unit
- A new Current Selection component shows you a summary of filtering
- Draw Shapes on your Viewsheet to add visual appeal or express information
- In-place Show Details allows you to quickly browse the underlying data
- Charts have a new Maximize Mode that lets a small chart make use of the screen real estate
- Non-tabular elements use a Free Layout in which they are not tied to the grid
Viewsheet PDF Export
In 10.0, the PowerPoint export that Viewsheets have was added to Reports. In this version, the PDF export of Reports was added to Viewsheets.
Security Improvements
We have also made the following security enhancements:
- VPMs allow for global ID filtering
- Toolbar button permissions are individually exposed
- Single Sign-On (SSO) has been improved to allow for custom attributes
