App Studio Enhancements

Previously, the App Studio Upload Data function opened an explorer window which you used to select a file to be uploaded.

Now, the App Studio Upload Data function links you to the Upload Desktop File utility in the Reporting Server Console, as shown in the following image. Using this utility, you can upload new data to an application. The data is converted using default master data options and is displayed for your verification before the load is initiated.

You can access the Upload Desktop File utility from the Environments Tree panel in two ways:

• Right-click a folder under Domains and select Upload Data, or
• Right-click an Applications folder under Data Servers and select New and Upload Data.

You can now use a new reporting option to display Master File suffixes and descriptions in the Environments Tree, and in the Chart Wizard and the Report Wizard. In the App Studio Options dialog box, click Reporting. The new Retrieve master file descriptions option appears, as shown in the following image.

System performance may be affected if there are a large number of Master Files. The default value is unselected. If you change this option, you must exit App Studio and reopen it for the change to take effect.

A File Extensions tab has been added to the App Studio Options dialog box. This tab lists the currently supported file extensions which are all checked by default, as shown in the following image. You can clear the check box for any file types that you do not want retrieved from the server. Limiting the file types may result in improved performance. You must exit and restart App Studio for your selections to take effect.

The Blend option has been added to the Join group on the Join tab, as shown in the following image.

Blending data is the process of gathering data from various sources and combining the useful data into a customized, functioning data set. For example, you may have some of the basic fields available in the current data source. You can use the Blend option to add relevant data fields from a different data source to the current data source in order to create a unique data set.

The Blend functionality allows you to explicitly select the data fields you want to include. More specifically, you can join multi-fact data structures and combine pertinent external data into your current data source, creating a blended data resource. This can be from local or other system resources.

Topics: Learn More

WebFOCUS Release 8.2 Version 01M includes a new web-tier Source Control implementation. At this time, Microsoft Team Foundation Services (TFS) is supported. Additional version control systems will be supported in upcoming releases. Source Control functionality is available through App Studio and provides version control for your individual and multi-user application resources. The Source Control system manages access to source code and keeps track of all code changes.

Once your Source Control provider is configured in the WebFOCUS Administration Console, you can use the Configured Environments Tree to check out and check in WebFOCUS files through the App Studio interface. A Source Control system allows a user to check out a file for editing and prevents other users from checking it out until the first user checks it back in.

When you start App Studio, it checks your system to determine if WebFOCUS is configured for Source Control, and if so, it enables the optional use of that product for the management of App Studio application resources through the Source Control integration.

The Source Control feature provides many benefits, including the following:

• A valuable feature for companies that need to audit changes made to their applications.
• A repository to store your source code, providing backup in a central location.
• A historical record of changes over time.
• Ability to review and compare changes.
• Ability to retrieve a specific version of a file.
• Ability to compare files between WebFOCUS and Source Control.

Topics: Learn More

App Studio supports Auto Drill functionality for reports, charts, and visualizations. This new feature lets you automatically create dynamic hyperlinks that enable you to drill down and pass parameters to existing reports, or to ad hoc reports that are generated on the fly. This allows you to quickly explore your information and gain better analytical insights, while eliminating the need to manually build numerous drill downs.

You can now copy a property value from the File/Folder Properties panel. Right-click a property value and click Copy to copy it to the clipboard, as shown in the following image.

This is particularly useful if you want to capture the full path of an open file.

You can now set a Content folder to be open using the new Automatically Open property on the File/Folder Properties tab. This saves you from having to click to expand a commonly used content folder each time you initiate a new App Studio session.

Both the Report and HTML canvases in App Studio use a new theme as the default StyleSheet. This theme, known as a Neutral theme, is in keeping with the industry standard of simplicity.

The navigator pane has been removed from the Report/Chart, SQL Report/SQL Chart, and HTML/Document Wizards when using the shortcut menu. Since you have already selected where you want to add content, the navigator pane is no longer necessary.

Previously, when right-clicking a folder in the Environments Tree panel, the first page of Report/Chart, SQL Report/SQL Chart, and HTML/Document Wizards included a navigator pane.

Now, when you select Report or Chart, you are immediately presented with the Select Data Source (formerly named Select a Master File) dialog box, as shown in the following image.

When you select SQL Report or SQL Chart from the shortcut menu, you are immediately presented with the appropriate SQL Report Wizard - Welcome (or SQL Chart Wizard - Welcome) page, as shown in the following image.

When you select HTML/Document from the shortcut menu, the first page of the wizard enables you to create a new HTML page or document, or select an existing one, as shown in the following image.

Previously, you could select the editing tool to open a file when right-clicking on it in the Environments Tree or Environments Detail panels, but you could not select when double-clicking the same file. Double-clicking defaulted to the Edit in App Studio canvas.

Now, you can set the default action using the Default file editor setting on the General tab of the App Studio Options dialog box, as shown in the following image. The same options are available here as when right-clicking the file.

Topics: Learn More

Responsive web design is an approach to webpage creation where content automatically realigns to fit a variety of different window sizes and screen sizes. This allows the content from one HTML file to automatically adapt to multiple footprints such as a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

App Studio supports multiple ways of creating responsive pages:

Responsive Templates

This method lets you create a page by populating responsive Output Widget containers in a pre-defined template. The Output Widget is a feature-rich container that includes an individual title bar, a toggle to show or hide controls, and a toggle to make the widget full screen or original size. You use the HTML/Document Wizard to specify a responsive template that is either row-based or column-based, as shown in the following image.

Custom Layouts

This method also uses Output Widget containers, but you can define a custom layout at design time. Using an easy dialog box, you specify the number of rows you want and the number of widgets per row.

The HTML Canvas in Responsive Mode

This "free form" method lets you create a responsive page with no pre-defined layout. This manual approach is perhaps not as fast as using a template, but may be preferable if you want to create a responsive page with containers of many different types. This method is also very useful if you want to convert an existing HTML file to responsive.

Topics: How App Studio Maintain Data Works Migrating Existing Maintain Procedures Learn More

App Studio Maintain Data is an application development feature, which creates web-based data maintenance applications. Using App Studio Maintain Data and its multi-platform 4GL language, you can easily create, test, and deploy complex business applications that span the Internet, IBM mainframes, midrange servers, and workstations.

Using App Studio Maintain Data, you can:

• Easily develop web-based data maintenance applications with no prior knowledge of HTML, Java®, or complex 3GLs.
• Access and update data on every major operating system and every major database system (using the power of the Reporting Server).
• Access and update data from different platforms at the same time. For example, the inventory system on MVS and the accounting system on UNIX.
• Partition your application among the platforms that can support them.

To develop an application in Maintain Data, you can:

• Use Update Assist, which provides a simple way to create web-based data source file browsers and data maintenance applications, without having to write code.
• Use the Language Wizard in the Maintain Data Editor, which prompts you to answer questions about the logic you need to create, and automatically generates the required commands.
• Code the commands yourself in the Maintain Data Editor.

Previously, only two options, Access Rules and Effective Policy, were available when you right-clicked a Domain folder and selected Security from the shortcut menu in the Environments Tree or Environments Detail panels.

Now, there are four options when you right-click a Domain folder and select Security: Rules, Rules on this Resource, Effective Policy, and Owner.

• Rules on this Resource. Opens the Rules on this Resource dialog box where you can view and run reports on the security rules defined for the repository.
• Owner. Opens the Set Owner dialog box where you can set the user, set the group to which the user belongs, and publish.

Note: The Owner option is not available for the folders and files under a Domain, since ownership is set at the Domain level.

A Location property for a selected object has been added to the Style attributes section in the Properties panel in the HTML page, as shown in the following image. This read-only field displays the Left, Top, Width, and Height settings of the object and is displayed in pixels.

You can now run the contents of an existing task from another so that the actions of the selected task will be invoked. An Execute Task option has been added to the Requests selections drop-down menu in the Requests/Actions section of the Tasks & Animation panel, as shown in the following image.

Previously, the App Studio HTML canvas had a combined Embedded JavaScript/CSS tab.

Now, this tab has been divided in two: Embedded JavaScript and Embedded CSS tabs.

App Studio is now a 64-bit application and must be run on a 64-bit operating system. This change enables it to make use of larger models and databases and allows for integration with 64-bit RStat and the 64-bit Reporting Server.

Topics: Learn More

App Studio Release 8.2 Version 01M provides support for French during the installation process of the App Studio product. The languages presented during the installation process depend on the system locale of your machine. When the locale is set to English, English and French are available from the Language drop-down list. App Studio will be configured to use the language you select during the installation process. When French is selected, the App Studio user interface is configured to be in French. You can update the language App Studio uses post-installation, using the Language selection drop-down list on the General tab of the App Studio Options dialog box.

You can change the language of the App Studio screen text using the Language drop down list. After you change the language, you must restart App Studio.

The Language option has been added to the General tab on the WebFOCUS App Studio Options dialog box, as shown in the following image. The languages listed are selected in the Dynamic Language Switch setting in the WebFOCUS Administration Console.

In App Studio, you can dynamically switch to another language to display screen text in that language. Available languages are determined by your settings in the WebFOCUS Administration Console.

Now, you can additionally enter your file and folder titles and summaries in multiple languages using the new Language Properties dialog boxes. The following image shows the Language Properties dialog box for title. The Language Properties dialog box for summary is identical, except the right-most column heading is Summary.

When you enter a title or summary for a language in the Language Properties dialog box, that text automatically appears when you switch to the specified language. This can help streamline your collaborative, multi-language development work.

A Preview Runtime option has been added to the Preview group on the App Studio Utilities tab. It is available for Responsive HTML pages only and uses your default browser to preview your HTML run-time layout with simulated data. This may be faster than running the page if it contains large amounts of data.

App Studio now displays a progress bar while the product is loading, as shown in the following image.

On rare occasions, App Studio may fail to initialize correctly. If this happens, you can start the product in safe mode.

On the Start menu in Windows, there is a new option in the Information Builders section. Immediately below WebFOCUS App Studio is WebFOCUS App Studio (Safe Mode), as shown in the following image.

When viewing Domain folders in the Environments Tree, you can now use the shortcut menu to toggle between Physical View and Shared View, as shown in the following image.

Physical View displays all folders (including empty folders) in the hierarchy that includes shared content. Shared View suppresses empty folders in the hierarchy that includes shared content. Shared View displays all folders that contain shared content.

Topics: Learn More

The App Studio Esri map component allows you to visualize your BI data superimposed on background maps (basemaps) available from ArcGIS Online using any commonly used geographic dimensions, for example, countries, states, and cities.

The Esri HTML5 Viewer enables developers to create map applications using a simple User Interface for configuring map layers, properties, interactions with other components and controls on an html page.

Following are the configuration steps needed to generate a map application using the Esri HTML5 Viewer:

1. Create a standard WebFOCUS report with appropriate geographic dimensions in XML format. The geographic dimensions can be supplied as X (Longitude) and Y (Latitude) values or geographic areas such as State, Country, Cities, Zip3, or Zip5.
2. Create a new HTML page, click the Esri component on the ribbon, and drag the mouse on the canvas to create a frame for the map component. Select a background map image (basemap) on the Properties panel.
3. Use the Settings panel for the Map Component to select a geographic role and the field that represents that role, and configure one of the many symbol options, for example, Color or Size. You can also turn on advanced visualization options for example, Clustering, Heatmap, Popup, and Transparency.

When you run the HTML page, the run-time viewer contains all of the layers you configured in the previous steps, with a set of widgets you can use to interact with individual map layers, as shown in the following image.

Topics: Learn More

The Reporting Server configuration file geo_services.xml contains elements that describe all of the geographic roles known to the server. The geographic role selections that you can make in the WebFOCUS tools when you configure a map layer are built dynamically using this configuration file. To add a custom geographic role, you must add the necessary elements to this file.

For example, the known geographic role, Country (Name) is defined as follows.

<geo_role id="COUNTRY" type="alpha" role_name="COUNTRY" role_name_title="Country"
      role_format="NAME" role_format_title="Name" geo_type="geography">
      <vocabulary_rules><vocabulary>+%country%-%capital%-%population%</vocabulary>
      </vocabulary_rules>  
 </geo_role> 

The Country geographic role is part of the World hierarchy, part of which follows. Defining the hierarchical relationships between geographic roles provides WebFOCUS the information it needs to perform Auto Drilling from a geographic role at a higher level of the geographic hierarchy to a role at a lower level of the geographic hierarchy.

<hier id="world">
  <lev level="1" geo_role="CONTINENT"/>
  <lev level="1" geo_role="CONTINENT_ISO_CC"/>
    <lev level="2" geo_role="COUNTRY"/>
 …
</hier>

Also needed is the URI to the Esri map service that visualizes this role. This provides WebFOCUS information about where to draw the shapes for individual geographies. This URI can be either a GeoJSON object, an Esri Mapservice URL, or any spatial database. For example:

<uri description="World Countries (ISO2 code)">    <returned_geometry>GEOMETRY_AREA 
 </returned_geometry>  
<returned_georole>COUNTRY_ISO_CC</returned_georole>    
<url type="esri"     authorization="none" 
synonym="geo_uri_countries">http://services.arcgis.com/P3ePLMYs2RVChkJx/
arcgis/rest/services/World_Countries_(Generalized)/FeatureServer/0</url>
<parameters>     <parm order="1" parm_name="ISO"
parm_georole="COUNTRY_ISO_CC"/>    </parameters>   
</uri>

To add your custom role, add the elements needed to define it to the geo_services.xml file.

Topics: Calendar Control for Autoprompt Page

The Report canvas in App Studio Release 8.2 Version 01 allows for chaining input controls in the Autoprompt page. Chaining lets you link two or more input controls when they call the same dimension hierarchy. For example, if you had chained input controls for State and City, the available list of cities would automatically be limited to those in the specified state. This saves users from scrolling through a list of invalid options when specifying a parameter value, as shown in the following image.

Topics: Learn More

With Precision reports, you can create perfectly aligned PDF, PS, and DHTML output for a pre-printed form, such as a Bill of Sale. Precision reports offer all of the benefits of the Report canvas, as well as access to specific tools for controlling items on a form, including fields, images, and other objects required by the form. It also offers additional tools and tabs that enable you to precisely match the format of your pre-printed form.

Precision reports are created in the Precision Report canvas by using the Data Matrix layer as the reporting object, and by inserting objects in the other layers as fields. You can then build the layout of the form, and add headings or footings to it, including embedded fields.

You can access the Precision Report canvas by converting an existing report or by creating a new Precision report.

Topics: Learn More

You can now create filters with parameter options for Responsive Autoprompt cascading filters, as well as simple filter date controls, from the App Studio Report canvas.

The new property Use Title for Deferred Report Description gives you an alternative to being prompted for a custom deferred report description when the report is run deferred. When selected, the Title of the report is assigned as the deferred report description. For additional information, see Prompt for Custom Deferred Report Description Setting. This property now appears on the File/Folder Properties panel for files that can be scheduled to run on a deferred basis.

The default title for column and row totals now appears in the Report canvas as {TOTAL}. At run time, this is automatically translated into the language that you have selected for App Studio. For example, if you have selected Italian, the title appears as TOTALE.

To specify a different title, right-click the total and select Title (for row) or Column Title (for columns) from the shortcut menu. The Title dialog box opens, as shown in the following image.

Clear the Default Title check box and type the desired title in the Enter Title field.

When you view a report, you can now enhance your analytical insight by drilling down from a summary to a detailed report. Similarly, you may want to drill up from a detailed report, to a summary report, or drill across to see similar information in different contexts.

The App Studio Report canvas now provides two new features that automate the creation of links that enable these drilldowns:

• Auto Linking lets you connect predefined reports, charts, and visualizations together through common filters.
• Auto Drill lets you create ad hoc reports, within a dimension hierarchy, that connect to a source report.

These features magnify your analytical capabilities while saving you the significant development and maintenance time required by numerous manual links.

The following two options have been added to the New shortcut menu when creating a procedure or component in the Procedure View panel:

• MAGNIFY Engine has been added and opens the MAGNIFY Engine canvas.
• Engine has replaced SQL Engine to open the Engine canvas.

The New shortcut menu, with these options highlighted, is shown in the following image.

The MAGNIFY Engine canvas contains a list of ENGINE SET statements which are available for selection. When you click on a Property Name, its description is displayed in the lower portion of the canvas, as shown in the following image.

You can now apply background color to push buttons to distinguish between selected and unselected values. When you create a Radio Button or Check Box control, you can use the Type property to select Push button. You can specify background color using the two new properties: Selected pushbutton background color and Unselected pushbutton background color, as shown in the following image.

An Analytical user can share unpublished content with a Developer. Shared content is designated in the Environments Tree by the shared icon overlayed on the shared folder or file. When sharing is removed, and the Environments Tree is refreshed, the icon is removed.

App Studio has added the ability to publish, unpublish, hide, or show multiple folders at the same time. This functionality uses the standard methodology of pressing the Ctrl key while selecting the desired folders in the Environments Tree.

A multi-select drop-down function has been added to App Studio. This multi-select control allows you to specify more than one value at a time. This functionality creates a drop-down list and uses a check box adjacent to each value for selection, as shown in the following image.

App Studio has added the ability to duplicate, copy, and delete multiple folders at the same time. This functionality uses the standard methodology of pressing the Ctrl key while selecting the desired folders in the Environments Tree panel.