Code On Time: Reports

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Reports

Friday, August 15, 2014Print Subscribe

Improving Performance Of Reports in ASP.NET 4.0 and 4.5 Applications

Microsoft Report Viewer is the lightweight reporting engine used by generated apps to produce data reports in PDF, Word, Excel, and TIFF format. A generated app creates an in-memory table of data sorted and filtered according to the end user criteria. The data table is passed to Report Viewer to produce a report. The design template of the report is either created on-the-fly by the application framework or supplied by a developer at design time.

Report Viewer allows including formulas written in Visual Basic in the definitions of property expressions in various elements of a report template. The report formulas from the template are compiled to executable code by Report Viewer. If an ASP.NET web application tries to create a report with the help of Microsoft Report Viewer, then certain security requirements must be satisfied. The formulas compiled by Report Viewer must run in “sandbox” environment.

ASP.NET security configuration has changed starting with ASP.NET 4.0. Now the sandbox of Report Viewer is required to jump through many hoops in order to produce a report. This results in poor performance of reports on large datasets requiring significantly more time to complete rendering.

A simple solution exists to overcome this problem in an app created with Code On Time.

1) Select the project name on the start page of the app generator and choose Settings.

2) Proceed to Web Server Configuration and paste the following snippet into Web.Config modification instructions box:

AppendChild: /configuration/system.web

<trust legacyCasModel="true"/>

3) Click Finish and regenerate the project. A new <trust…/> entry will be created in the configuration file of application.

Now the reporting performance will become significantly improved.

Labels: Application Factory, Reports, Tips and Tricks, Web Application Generator

Monday, July 14, 2014Print Subscribe

Map View, Master-Detail Pages, Custom Result Sets, Client-Side APIs

Code On Time release 8.0.6.0 introduces countless enhancements to Touch UI - the unified user interface of mobile and desktop applications created with our app generator. Developers can now select a default user interface model for the apps in all product editions. The two options are Touch UI and Desktop. Applications created with Unlimited edition support both user interface models simultaneously.

Notable enhancements include:

Support for exact and negative search in Quick Find. For example, “USA” –“ak” will yield a list of customers from the United Stated with the exception of those located in Alaska.
Map view is now available in Touch UI.
Complex Master-detail pages are now supported in Touch UI.
Custom result sets based on arbitrary SQL queries, stored procedures, and web services with automatic support for filtering and sorting can now be utilized in applications. The tutorials are coming up.
Client-side API has been extended with the method $app.execute. This method allows easy selection of data on the client and execution of arbitrary commands. The tutorials will become available shortly. This method is the core of the custom GUI development in http://cloudontime.com. It performs a function similar to REST API, but works in all product editions. REST API does not require client libraries of apps created with Code On Time. The new method $app.execute works only within application and cannot be used independently.
Client-side API has been extended with the method Web.DataView.search. This method allows activating search in a data view on the page with filter and sort expressions defined by a developer.

Touch UI apps created with Code On Time work on all devices with an optional ability to degrade user interface in Inernet Explorer 6-9.

Touch UI automatically creates complex layouts with tabs and any number of levels of master-detail relationships.

Touch UI supports complex tabbed layout in apps created with Code On Time

Map view works on all types of devices:

Map view is a core automatic feature of Touch UI applications created with Code On Time.

The following features and enhancements are included in this release:

Developers can choose user interface for Azure Factory, Web App Factory, and Web Site Factory projects in the Settings /Namespace, Framework and UI section.
All settings of Touch UI applications can be configured in the Settings / Features / Touch UI section of application configuration.
Map view style is now available in Touch UI applications.
End users can choose Form Label Alignment in an app.
End users can choose Position of List Labels in an app as.
Touch UI applications offer 38 built-in themes.
Developers can now specify default themes for pages.
End users can control Display Density of application pages.
End users can choose page transitions in apps with Touch UI.
Fixed the bug causing SQL business rules not being executed on each row when multi-select is enabled.
Data controller "Execute" method has been refactored for improved processing of multiple selected rows submitted from the client.
Fixed the incorrect multi-value adaptive filtering of lookup fields in Desktop UI.
Touch UI now uses minified CSS stylesheets.
JQuery Mobile 1.4.3 framework is the core of the Touch UI applications.
Methods $app.execute and Web.DataView.search are now supported.
The first allows server-side requests to SELECT/UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE data on the server. The second method allows passing "sortExpresson" and "filter" to a data view to sync data. Method $app.execute also supports "Report" action.
Quick Find filter now uses a system name "_quickfind_" parameter to enable filtering operations on the first field in the view.
User controls generated "First Time Only" now include a standard template for Touch UI.
EASE configuration will not assign "mailto" if the field already has a HyperlinkFormatString.
Added fix in Controller.Filter for fields that are shorter than the search query.
Added Quick Find support for "exact matches" and -negative results.
Fixed charts not rendering in reports due to view access not being validated.
Data views can be tagged as display-style-grid, display-style-list, display-style-listonecolumn, and display-style-map to force a specific presentation style on all devices.
Renamed “Device” property of pages to "User Interface". The valid values are "Touch UI" and “Desktop”.

Labels: Application Factory, BYOD, Data Aquarium Framework, EASE, Email, JavaScript, Release Notes, Reports, Touch UI, User Interface, Web 2.0, Web Application Generator, Web Form Builder, Workflow

Monday, June 16, 2014Print Subscribe

Deployment: Installing Report Viewer 2012

If you have enabled dynamic and static reports for the app, then the Reports menu option is available in the user interface.

Selecting any report option will cause the app to produce a PDF, TIFF, Excel, or Microsoft Word document with reporting data.

If Report Viewer is not installed on the machine, any attempt to start the application will display the error message below stating that “Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms…”.

If you do not need reporting or have enabled it by mistake, then select your project in the app generator, choose Settings, select Reporting, and uncheck “Enable dynamic and static reports in my application”. Click Finish to regenerate the app. You may also consider refreshing all controllers to remove the reporting actions from the user interface.

If you do need built-in reporting in your app, then you need to install Microsoft Report Viewer on your deployment machine.

You will need the following files. It is advisable to download them on your personal machine and then copy them onto the server over Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).

Connect to your server via RDC. Copy the files into the Downloads folder of the server.

Installing SQL Server SQL Types

If SQL Server is not present on the server, then you will need to install Microsoft SQL Server 2012 CLR Types component.

Execute the Web Platform installer file by double-clicking on the “wpilauncher” file.

When installation is complete, the Web Platform Installer will open. In the search box, type in “CLR” and hit Enter on your keyboard.

Press Add next to the first item in the list, then press Install. Accept the license terms to proceed.

Installing Report Viewer

Switch back to the Downloads folder. Double-click on the “ReportViewer” file.

Press Next, then accept the license to install Report Viewer.

This procedure will need to be done on both your development machine and your server.

Labels: ASP.NET, ASP.NET Code Generator, Deployment, Mobile, Reports, Tutorials, Web Application Generator