Mr. .NET

This week has been pretty exciting at GrapeCity.  I started the week off by releasing Data Dynamics Analysis, the team is already working on some killer functionality  I can’t wait to talk about it in a few months or so.

Next up, ActiveReports for .NET is in the running for the asp.netPRO Reader’s Choice Awards for 2009.  Please take a moment to vote for us in the Printing and Reporting category.

GrapeCity and Data Dynamics have also won several awards from ComponentSource.

2008 Bestselling Products Awards

• ActiveReports for .NET—Ranked #2 in Top 5 Products
• ActiveReports COM/ActiveX—Ranked #26 in Top 50 Products
• Data Dynamics Reports—Ranked #100 in Top 100 Products
  • I’m especially proud of this, as I’ve been on the Data Dynamics Reports team since March 2006 as an Assistant Product Manager and then as Product Manager.  The product had already been in development for several years before I joined; but it’s still great to see something myself and the rest of the team have worked on sell so well.

2008 Bestselling Publisher Awards

• GrapeCity-Data Dynamics—Ranked #4 in Top 5 Publishers
• GrapeCity (Japan)—Ranked #5 in Top 5 Publishers

Lastly, Data Dynamics Analysis and Data Dynamics Reports are on sale for the rest of the month!

Save 33% on Data Dynamics Reports by using coupon code “903955CBD” and save 46% on Data Dynamics Analysis by using coupon code “AE0455CBD” at checkout!

We have released a hotfix for Data Dynamics Reports.  This new build fixes the designer redraw issue that was present in the last build released.

The redraw issue was caused by a partial fix that was put in to correct an issue where borders disappeared on the chart.

Over 4 months in the making, and it shows; I just uploaded a new build of Data Dynamics Reports to the site.

This build introduces many new features and even more fixes for issues that users have reported.

In the next month or two we’ll be debuting an enhanced setup application, a new chart type, and more fixes.

Release notes follow the break: Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s feature makes it easier to report on data already loaded into your application.

Typically when you create the object hierarchy to represent the data stored in your database you create a series of classes that are interrelated.  A customer object that has orders, each order object has order details, each order detail refers to a product, and so on.  DataSets are usually modeled in similar ways.

Products such as Reporting Services, make it difficult to use this existing data in your report.  They require the object hierarchy to be flattened, that each relationship be traversed and the required data combined with the same row of data.  This isn’t a big problem if the data is being pulled directly from the database, simply change some of the SQL and its flattened.  But if you already have the data in memory then putting it in this format can be difficult.

Data Dynamics Reports on the other hand understands data.  DDR can traverse your object hierarchy or make use of the DataRelations available in your dataset, properties on your business object, or XPath queries in your XML to get to the data needed in your reports.  Now instead of you having to write the code to flatten the data, the data engine inside of Data Dynamics Reports has done it for you.  Now you can get on with creating the report and not have to write code to first fetch the data, yet again.

You can see a sample of how to use this feature with each of the data providers that support it in the NormalizedDataSet sample included with Data Dynamics Reports.

I’m starting a new feature here on my blog; the Feature of the Week.  Here I’ll discuss a cool feature of Data Dynamics Reports and why it makes DDR a compelling reporting solution.

This week’s feature is a new one the Excel Rendering Extension just released in beta in the 1.5 release of Data Dynamics Reports.

This feature is notable for what it allows in Data Dynamics Reports, enough that I’m going to spend a couple posts talking about it!

Foremost is that reports can now be rendered in the Excel format.  This means the business managers can put the data into a tool that they’re intimately familiar with and process it along side the rest of their data.

I’ll get into the really cool part next week in, Excel Transformation Extension.  The magic of the rendering side is that by default it will do its best to create the spreadsheet like you would, without creating an excess number of rows and columns.

You can take it for a test drive yourself, just download Data Dynamics Reports and try it out on some of the samples!  Keep in mind, this is just a beta version of the extension so there are some things not implemented yet, such as support for nested data regions and table/matrix groups don’t honor the current visibility when you export the report.  Jon also created a screencast showing off the stuff you can do with it now, and he teases some of the functionality I’ll talk about in a future post.

In a future Feature of the Week I’ll introduce the Excel Transformation Extension and show off some of the power and utility of it.  Hint: its the same extension!

I gave a heads up on Thursday that it was coming via twitter and today I’m pleased to announce that Data Dynamics Reports 1.5 has been released.

This release has numerous new features and bug fixes, and one of those new features is the Excel rendering/transformation extension!

I teased this back in June with the posting of the press release.  Unfortunately shortly after that announcement we discovered a flaw in the way we created the Excel file for users which made many reports look bad.  The team has taken a month to redo the generator and we now have a beta version of the Excel extension.

This release concentrates on allowing you to take a report and turn it into an excel spreadsheet.

The next major release of Excel will allow developers or report authors to create their own templates and have the report engine fill in the data.  It will support the ability to bind charts, pivot tables/charts, and use other Excel features to the data in the report.  So business analysts can take the quarterly sales report, and play with the numbers in Excel to find out what the sales goals for the next quarter should be without having to create charts each time they export the data.

Jon did it again!  He’s created a screencast which demonstrates the upcoming Excel rendering extension (export to most people).  He also demonstrates some of the new transformation features built into the product which shows off the power behind the technology.

If you watch the screencast you’ll see the use of templates to create the excel file.  Internally, if you don’t specify a template file we create one to go with the report, the week of TechEd we discovered a deficiency in the way that we generate this template so we had to push back the release.  The team is on top if it though and we’ll be able to push out the new build soon!

Here is the text of a press release I sent out this morning!

COLUMBUS, OHIO – June 3, 2008: Data Dynamics today announced the new Excel transformation extension for Data Dynamics Reports enabling report readers and developers to output report data into the familiar Excel spreadsheet format.

“The Excel technology we have introduced into Data Dynamics Reports is very flexible,” said James Johnson, Product Manager for Data Dynamics Reports.  “Thanks to the transformation technology we have developed, customers can export reports verbatim into Excel. Users also have the option to create their own templates to create an Excel spreadsheet that doesn’t resemble the original report at all.  I look forward to seeing how this functionality gets used.”

Transformation extensions start with the report data and using a user defined or generated template it transforms that data into a spreadsheet.   The output spreadsheet takes complete advantage of spreadsheet power including formulas, charts and pivot tables.   There are no limits to this technology and it represents a departure from export filters that are based on report layout.  The Excel functionality is currently in beta and is available in the latest release of Data Dynamics Reports, available at http://www.datadynamics.com.

Data Dynamics, Ltd., the developer of numerous award-winning products, is a software component development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

I’m currently rocking out to the whole Flyleaf album while I prepare a new build of Data Dynamics Reports for posting.  I first heard this song on my way to work this morning on XM’s Squizz; once I remembered I liked it I previewed a few songs and it was a no-brainer to purchase the album.

On Friday we released another beta build of Data Dynamics Reports, this build fixes a few issues including several customer report issues and a regression introduced in a previous release.

I keep saying it, but this is likely to be the last beta release before we put out another production build; coming after the new year.