Recent changes to feature-requests

Charting and graphing

Frank W. Zammetti — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:02:03 -0000

DV should have at least rudimentary charing and graphing capabilities built in. JFreeChart seems to be a natural solution for this. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement... if we architecturally treat a graph/chart like a subreport, then the resultset that the "subreport" uses could be fed into JFreeChart, the image generated and saved in memory, then inserted into the output.

This may be a problem with regard to making it work across all LE's... HTML seems fairly obvious... PDF shouldn't be too tough... the others might be more difficult.

The bottom line is that DV can't do charts and graphs now, and adding that capability might be a real nice thing.

Pluggable look-and-feel support

Frank W. Zammetti — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:22:16 -0000

Implement a system for allowing non-default Swing L&F's to be used in DV. This could come in a number of different forms, but the one I tend to prefer is a list of pre-determined possibilities as part of a new Preferences dialog that they can choose from. Alternatively, a command-line switch for specifying L&F could be added (and these two could coexist as well). We might or might not give the ability to add L&F's generically.

Field-level escaping of text values

Frank W. Zammetti — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:40:49 -0000

At least in the HTMLLE, formula output is escaped to make it safe for insertion into HTML. However, this means things like links aren't possible because < and > are converted to < and > respectively.

To address this, add an option on any field, shown in the format dialog, to escape or not escape the field. The default would be to escape it, so backwards-compatibility is maintained.

Here's a quote from a mailing list exchange that covers this:

> > // Fix courtesy of Brendon Price <Brendon.Price@sytec.co.nz>
> > if (" ".equals(str))
> > out.print(str);
> > else
> > out.print(StringUtils.newlinesToXHTMLBreaks(StringUtils.escapeHTML(str)));
> >
> > DataVision is indeed modifying the data that gets output. There are a few
> > possible solutions:
> >
> > 1) Stop doing that.
> > 2) Make it a command line flag.
> > 3) Keep doing that.
> >
> > The original idea was to make the output be the same between all layout
> > engines, without having the user worry about escaping data for HTML.

Ok... given this explanation (which seems perfectly valid to me), and given the suggestions made by Jonathan, and given the concern Charles mentioned about not changing the current behavior (which I agree with), I propose the following solution...

What if we add an option to the format menu, maybe a checkbox labeled "Literal Output". When unchecked, DV does what it does today. When checked, we don't touch the value at all and just pass it on through. This leaves the default as it is today, yet gives sers a per-field way to get the different functionality to allow for links, or really anything else that might come up.

This of course changes the report format slightly, since we'd need to add that attribute to the <format> tag, but I think I can live with that, assuming the attribute is optional and not being present equates
to unchecked.

Improved .bat and .sh scripts

Jonathan Marsden — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:46:43 -0000

Here are improved datavision.sh and datavision.bat scripts to invoke DataVision with, as discussed recently on the DataVision-users mailing list.

Jonathan

Parameter values from database/delimited

Frank W. Zammetti — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:21:29 -0000

Want to be able to point a DV report at a database (or a delimited file alternatively I would think?) to get values for parameters when the report is run.

Web-Based Report Writer

Frank W. Zammetti — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:25:17 -0000

A web-based report designer is to be developed. While it is possible to run the existing Swing-based designer as an applet, a pure HTML designer should be developed since that should provide more broad support for users. I previously wrote such a designer for a reporting tool I was developing on my own, so I have a decent idea what's involved.

The first step should be to evaluate potential libraries to make this task easier in terms of UI components. Potential candidates included Dojo, Ext JS, dhtmlx or Tibco General Interface. Might also consider a Flex or GWT-based solution. If not using a framework like those, think about DWR for AJAX support. Right now, Ext JS seems like the best option. Need to determine if there are any licensing compatibility issues (I know the Apache folks have some issues with GPL/LGPL and the ASF, so we may have the same issues).

I'm thinking this will be in the form of a WAR that can be dropped in the servlet container of choice. It won't use EJBs or anything like that, it should work in a simple container such as Tomcat (in fact, Tomcat should be *the* target, which usually leads to it working in other containers without too much trouble).

Stored Procedure as data source

Frank W. Zammetti — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:25:37 -0000

We can currently use SP's in user columns, but that is still on a per-column basis. This feature request talks about allowing a SP to be used as the reports' data source, not just a single column.

More robust undo system

Frank W. Zammetti — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:53:51 -0000

I'd like to provide for multiple undo levels, and make sure virtually everything is undoable... Undo Move doesn't seem to presently work as one example

Visual table linker

Frank W. Zammetti — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:53:06 -0000

Something along the lines of what you have in MS Access... list all the tables of the database, allow you to drag links between them. I have to think this through a little more to see exactly how it would work, but it seems doable upon first glance.

New dialog for Fields

Frank W. Zammetti — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:52:11 -0000

I'd like to have a whole new dialog to replace the Fields dialog... this one would be a tabbed design, i.e., formulas on one tab, parameters on another, etc. It would also be dockable around the main window (is this possible in Swing? I've never done it). In fact, any popup window like Fields that might exist and that are somewhat "sticky" should be dockable