NextReports : Templates for Parameters' Values with Time Interval

NextReports Server has a feature called Templates for Parameters' Values which was explained here. User will be able to save a template of runtime values or to select a previously saved template to automatically load all values.

This template will be extended with a Time Interval starting with 6.0 version.

If a report has two parameters named by convention as start_date and end_date and those parameters have single selections and their type is one of Date, Time or Timestamp, then values templates panel will show also a selectable time interval:

This interval can be one of Yesterday, Today, Current Week, Previous Week, Current Month, Previous Month, Current Year, Previous Year and Last.

For all the intervals the two dates will be automatically filled with the corresponding dates. For example for Current Week, start_date will be the Monday of current week with hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds equals to 0, while end_date will be the Sunday of current week with hours 23, minutes 59, seconds 59, milliseconds 999.

If Last interval is selected user will be able to select how many days, weeks, months or years are counted from current day:

For example for “Last 4 Months” start_date will be the same day as today but 4 months earlier with hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds equals to 0, while end_date will be the current day with hours 23, minutes 59, seconds 59, milliseconds 999.

NextReports: Report Type Property

NextReports can  design two types of entities: reports and charts. Reports can also be classified in default, alarm and table. Alarm and table reports are special formats (defined by convention) which can be used inside NextReports Server dashboards.

To publish a special kind of report to server, user has to check it's purpose: Dashboard Table or Dashboard Alarm.

From NextReports 6.0 this information will be defined when we create the report. A new type property will be added to Report node:

This property can take a value from default, alarm, table. So when we will publish a table or an alarm to server, there will be no need to specify it's purpose, and the publish will look the same as for default reports:

This approach is more scalable and new report types can be added later without impacting the way they are published to NextReports Server.

NextReports Server: Demo inside installer

NextReports Server has a demo online at http://demo.next-reports.com where you can login with demo / demo.

When you install the server by yourself, till version 6.0, you won't see anything. It is a fresh content repository. To make it more interactive and to see main functionality inside dashboards, version 6.0 will allow to specify at installation if you want or not to have some demo data.

If you select this option, you will have a Derby demo database (same used inside NextReports Designer), some charts, some reports and a number of dashboards in which you can see the main chart types, alarms, tables, a pivot, a drill-down chart and a drill-down table.