Stonefield Query will now attempt to automatically detect available BusinessVision databases. This removes the need for ODBC data sources to be set up manually for use in Query.
The data source management options have been improved. Maintaining data sources is now done through the Databases page on the Options screen, rather than through the Maintain Data Sources screen.
The Stonefield Query installation now includes the BusinessVision DDF files for versions 7.0 - 7.2 of BusinessVision, and Query will add them to BusinessVision database folders when possible. These files are required to be in the BusinessVision database folders for ODBC applications such as Query to be able to access the data, but BusinessVision does not automatically install them itself.
The available tables have been organized into data groups, such as Payroll and General Ledger, to make it easier to find tables in the list.
New fields Last Invoice Date and Last Invoice Number have been added to the Inventory table.
The new sample reports Inactive Inventory Items and Two Year Monthly Client Sales Comparison have been added.
The captions of the Country fields in several tables have been updated to distinguish between the Country (ie "Canada") and the Country Code (ie "CDN").
BusinessVision databases have a number of numeric fields in which logical values are stored as either 0 or 1. These are now treated as logical fields in Stonefield Query.
The behaviour of the "Ship To" address fields in the Sales Order and Purchases Order tables has been changed to account for BusinessVision's support for multiple ship-to addresses.
Version 3.20
New Features
Stonefield Query has been updated to ensure compatibility with BusinessVision 7.2. The new BV tables GL Chart History, Pricing, and Unit Of Measure have been added, as well as a number of new BV fields in existing tables.
The Filter page has a new Exclude button that allows you to specify which records to exclude from a query. We call this a "negative" query because it looks for the absence of data, such as all customers you didn't contact last year or all customers who didn't buy a certain product. Previously, you had to customize the SQL statement for the report to achieve this. Now you simply specify how to exclude certain records using the same dialog you use to create a filter on a report. See the Selecting Which Records to Exclude topic for details.
Stonefield Query no longer has a background screen. All dialogs now appear directly on your Windows desktop and can be moved around independently.
The report wizards are no longer modal. This means you can modify more than one report at a time if desired.
You are now prompted for all ask at runtime filter conditions in a single dialog rather than one dialog per condition when you run a report.
If you turn on the Include all fields in same table in group header setting in the Field Properties dialog, you can now specify that all fields in the group header should appear on the same line rather than each on its own line by turning on the new Place all fields in group header on same line setting.
You can now specify that a field should go into the group header for another field. For example, suppose you group on City from the Customers table but want to show the Region in the group header as well. If you turn on the Include all fields in same table in group header option in the Group page in the Field Properties dialog, all fields in the Customers table will appear in the group footer, which isn't what you want. Instead, turn the new Include this field in the group header for setting on and select City from the drop-down list to place just City and Region in the group header. Since all fields that appear in group headers now appear in summary reports, Region will no longer be excluded from such a report.
The Cross-Tabulation, Label, and Chart wizards now have an Advanced button that, like the Quick Report Wizard, brings up the Customize Report Wizard so you can specify top values, customize the SQL statement for a report, or specify code to execute at certain places for the report.
The Field Properties dialog for the Label Wizard has a new Display this field in the report setting. Turn this setting off if you want the field included in query (for example, you want to sort on it) but not display it in the report.
You can now specify multi-line headings for a field in the Field Properties dialog.
You can now press the Esc key to stop a report run at any point rather than just while the pages are being rendered as was the case in earlier versions.
Templates can now specify the paper size and source (such as a certain bin) so you don't need to use the Advanced Report Designer to, for example, output a report on legal paper.
The Preview window has a new Email button allowing you to send an email directly from the window.
You now get a warning if you run a report that has no filter, with an option to run the report anyway. This prevents a long-running report because you forgot to create a filter. An new setting in the Options dialog allows you to turn this warning off.
A new Include database in header option adds the database name to the report header.
The Options dialog has a new Locations page where you can easily change the location where reports are stored.
You can now drag a Stonefield Query import file (an SFX file) from Windows Explorer to the Reports Explorer to import that report. You can also drag an FRX or RPT file from Windows Explorer to the Reports Explorer to bring up the External Report Wizard for that report.
The Setup dialog now prompts you for your email settings. These are needed to email reports. However, many people don't realize they need to set these settings in the Options dialog so they can't email reports.
You can now select specific reports to export or export all or some of the reports in a specific folder. The Export All Reports function in the File menu was renamed to Export Reports; selecting it now displays a dialog from which you can select which specific reports or folders to export. The Export Report function in the File menu was renamed to Export Selected Report.
You can now edit the security properties of a folder by selecting the folder and clicking Edit in the Reports Explorer.
The Information page in the Reports Explorer now shows what groups have access to the selected report or folder.
New Create/update column heading and Adjust field width automatically options in the Field Properties dialog of the Advanced Report Designer provide you with more control over what Stonefield Query does automatically when you save a field.
You now get a warning if you have a custom SQL statement for a report and filter on a field in a table that isn't specified in the SQL statement. The reason is because the filter condition can't be just added to the WHERE clause of the SQL statement since its table isn't specified in the FROM or JOIN clauses.
The Login dialog no longer displays a choice for the database to query on if the database is specified as a command-line parameter.
The Login dialog now shows the default user name and password (ADMIN and ADMIN) when the program hasn't been activated so new users don't have to guess or (heavens!) read the help file.
Multi-page TIFF files are now supported for report output.
Stonefield Query now looks in the Windows Registry for the location of the help file if the UseRegistry setting in Data.INI is Yes.
A new built-in GetConditionValue function returns the value of the filter condition for the specified field. This can be used, for example, in the header of a report or a chart title to display the selected filter value.
The Reports Explorer and Field Properties dialog now load faster when there are lots of reports. Also, the report drop-down list on the Link page of the Field Properties dialog no longer displays folders that have no reports.
You can now tell Stonefield Query to ignore an ask-at-runtime filter condition in a report run from another application by specifying "Value=" (that is, with no value specified) in the command line parameters.
The performance of some reports was improved, especially when there are lots of records in the table. Specifically, if you use an OR condition in the report but it isn't between different tables (for example, condition on Table1 AND (condition on Table2 OR condition on Table 2) AND condition on Table 1, the performance improvement applies.
If you had multiple fields in the Row or Data lists in Step 3 of the Cross-Tabulation Wizard and wanted to rearrange them, you previously had to drag them all out of the list and then drag them back in the desired order. You can now rearrange them by dragging a field up or down in the list.
The Add License dialog has a new Copy button which places the license information on the Windows clipboard.
The Use old engine setting in Step 5 of the Quick Report Wizard is now always enabled, not just when Advanced layout is turned on. Turning this on allows the Preview window to appear more quickly, especially for very long reports, but the Preview window used when this is turned on has fewer features and some advanced options, such as dynamic formatting and rotation, aren't supported.
Multiple filter conditions on the same field are now supported in linked reports as long as each condition uses a different operator.
Deleting a folder now deletes all reports in that folder rather than giving you an error message and requiring you to manually delete all the reports.
The AfterRun code for a report can now change something about how a report is output and re-run the output. An example in the related help topic shows how this can be used.
Places in Stonefield Query that support expressions (such as the report header or footer) now support non-character expressions such as the current date.
A new GetReportFilter method of the loReport object can be used to display the filter conditions for the report.
The Commonly Used Expression drop-down in the Expression Builder now only shows common expressions that match the data type of the expression being built. For example, the common date expressions now only appear for date expressions. Also, a new First Day of Previous Month expression was added.
A new calculated field Net Amount was added to the Job Costing Transactions table. This is a calculated field based on the Income Amount and Expense Amount fields. The calculation is simply: Income Amount - Expense Amount. This field is particularly helpful for adding summary information to reports. A report can simply total this field, rather than dealing with the income and expense fields separately.
Bug Fixes
A problem that caused advanced layout reports to have too long of a page length when previewed or printed from the Preview window, resulting in some records not being displayed, was fixed.
Under some conditions (sorting on a certain field data type when at least one record has a null value in that field), a single character was displayed rather than the entire contents of a field. This has been corrected.
Charts now display correctly when there's missing data in some categories for some series.
The correct controls are now displayed in the Options page of the Reports Explorer when it is the current page and you change from a Label report to a different type or vice versa.
The Selected Field list in Step 2 of the report wizards now shows real table and field names correctly when you edit an existing report with the Display real table and field names option turned on.
Renaming a report in the Reports Explorer didn't change the report header like renaming it in a report wizard; this was fixed. Also, copying a report now also changes the report header.
The bookmarks panel in the Preview window is now sized correctly when clicking a field that runs a linked report and that report has bookmarks.
A problem with not saving the email settings in the Options dialog was fixed.
Specifying a period for the "CommonFiles" entry in Data.INI now means Stonefield Query's data files are located in the same folder as Data.INI rather than SFQuery.INI. Other types of relative paths are now handled correctly as well. Also, the program does a better job of handling Data.INI and its data files in "legacy" locations (locations other than the Data subdirectory of the application folder), and handles the case where its resource file (SQResource.DBF) exists in both the application folder and the Data subdirectory.
Stonefield Query no longer exits with an error code when a report that has no records is run from another application; formerly, this prevented the rest of the reports from running if multiple reports were specified.
The size and position of the Reports Explorer are now saved when you choose Exit from the File menu.
A problem with entering too long of a contact name in the Registration dialog was fixed.
A problem with selecting the wrong database when reporting on more than one database at a time under some conditions was corrected. Also, an issue with similarly named data sources (for example, "Company" and "Company Database") was fixed.
The cause of a rare "invalid index key" error when running a cross-tabulation report was fixed.
An error caused by sorting on a field that exists on a report but doesn't appear when Summary Report is turned on was fixed.
The numeric part of image file names created when a report is output to an image now have zeros for place holders (for example, Report0009.GIF and Report0010.GIF rather than Report9.GIF and Report10.GIF) so they appear in the correct sorted order in Windows Explorer.
Line spacing is now correct in labels that have fields in larger fonts.
You no longer get an error if you choose Copy or Edit from the File menu when the Template Editor is open.
You can no longer open multiple instances of the Template Editor.
A bug that prevented sorting on a grouped field if you created a variable in the Advanced Report Designer on that field was fixed.
HTML, Word, text, and table output now work correctly for chart reports. You can no longer output charts to RTF because the results aren't very good.
Clicking the Values button in Step 2 of the report wizards nows displays an empty list of values rather than no list at all if the selected table contains no records.
A second error that occurred while displaying the error message for a first error that may have occurred in the Preview window (for example, when running a linked report that had a problem) was resolved.
The report drop-down list that appears on the Link page of the Field Properties dialog now shows the correct icon for chart reports.
In previous versions, if you created a report but didn't go to Step 6 of the report wizard, everyone could run the report but only you could edit it. Now, the default is that everyone can both run and edit the report. You can, of course, change this in Step 6.
A problem with the Chart Wizard hanging up after previewing a chart report that had no data in it was fixed.
There is no longer a problem with displaying reports created by users with user names longer than eight characters.
Pressing the Esc key while a report is running from one of the report wizards no longer causes an error.
A problem with a filter condition containing an apostrophe under certain conditions was fixed.
The Import Reports function now displays a proper error message if you select an empty file to import from.
Clicking in one of the activation code boxes in the Registration dialog or Add License dialog after activating the program online added spaces to the activation code, making it invalid. This has been fixed.
Changing the parameter information for a linked report caused the wrong information to be stored. This was corrected.
An issue with the automatic update mechanism on Windows Vista systems was corrected.
The Page Up and Page Down keys no longer move you from one page to another in a wizard; this feature prevented these keys from being used in other controls, such as drop-down lists. Instead, use Shift + Page Up and Shift + Page Down.
An issue with the Login dialog sometimes appearing off-screen (and thus not visible, leading you to think the program had hung up) was fixed.
Email addresses selected in the Select Email Addresses dialog are now separated with commas rather than semi-colons to prevent an issue with some email programs.
The New Folder function in the File menu is disabled for runtime licenses, since it doesn't make sense to create a folder if you can't create any reports in that folder.
Stonefield Query now respects changes to the font style for a field in a report (for example, making it bold).
The Ignore this condition choice in the Conditions list of the Link page in the Field Properties dialog acted like None (that is, you were still prompted for an ask-at-runtime condition); this now works properly.
The Advanced Report Designer no longer sizes a field past the right edge of the report when it automatically determines the size.
Using the RunSQL function in the Advanced Report Designer with a SQL statement containing a join now works correctly.
You can no longer resize the Reports Explorer window so small that the reports list is hidden.
The Registration dialog now gives you a warning if you click the Print button without first filling in the serial number, and the prompt in the dialog tells you that value is needed.
The hotkey for the Advanced Layout function in Step 5 of the Quick Report Wizard was changed from "V" to "D" so it doesn't conflict with the Preview function.
A bug that prevented case-insensitive filters when the filter Compare to setting is set to Field was fixed.
A bug that sometimes caused the login dialog to appear off-screen so you couldn't see it was fixed.
Grand totals at the end of the report no longer appear on a second line if they will fit on the first one.
Renaming a user in the Maintain Users and Groups dialog automatically moves all their reports to the new name.
A bug that sometimes caused a filter condition to be mangled if it contained a single quote (for example, SomeField = 'Barney's Store') or a pair of empty quotes (for example, SomeField = '') was fixed.
The cFilter property of the loReport object is now set to the filter for the report.