Differences in Exopen Report 6 compared with Exopen Report 4

Introduction

Terminology

• EOR is a shorthand for Exopen Report.
• EWR is a shorthand for Exopen Web Reports.
• EOX6 is a collective term including both Exopen Report 6 and Exopen Web Reports 6.
• EOX4 is a collective term including both Exopen Report 4 and Exopen Web Reports 2.x.

Add-in technnologies used

Exopen Report 4 uses three Excel add-ins

• An XLL add-in:
  • ExopenReport.xll — the “low level” bits that communicate with databases and calculates the sheet functions.
• Two VBA add-ins:
  • ExopenWizard.xla — the user interface forms.
  • ExopenReportRibbon.xlam — the Ribbon menu tab for Excel 2007 and later.

Exopen Report 6 uses a single Excel add-in

• A Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) add-in:
  • Exopen.Report.vsto and associated files.

Office platform support

Exopen Report 4 only supports 32-bit Excel for Windows.

Exopen Report 6 supports both 64-bit, and 32-bit Excel for Windows. Make sure to use the installation files matching the bitness of your Office installation.

Data connectivity

Exopen Report 4 only supports using ODBC data sources.

Exopen Report 6 supports using the following ADO.NET .NET Framework Data Providers:

• SQL Server
• ODBC
• OLE DB

Terminology differences

Getting data from a database to the report:

• The Export functions in Exopen Report 4 are now Load functions in Exopen Report 6.

Putting data from the report to the database:

• The Import functions in Exopen Report 4 are now Store functions in Exopen Report 6.

Sheet functions

Exopen Report 4 uses Excel User Defined Functions (UDF) to specify the Exopen…-functions in the Excel sheets, e.g.

• =ExOpenRecordExport("CONTOSO";A1:A19;A26:AA5025;;FALSE;;;"";"";TRUE;FALSE;FALSE)

Exopen Report 6 uses the Excel built-in function CHOOSE to specify the Exo…-functions in in the Excel sheets, e.g.

• =CHOOSE(1;"ExoListLoad";;"Contoso";$A$1:$A$34;A40:AA1000;"";"VERTICAL";"FALSE";"TRUE";"FALSE")

Store functions

The Exo…Store functions in EOX6 have a different behaviour compared to the ExOpen…Import in EOX4.

In Exopen Report 4 the ExOpen…Import functions created SQL INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements based on the SELECT query in the function’s query area, and operated one record at a time.

In Exopen Report 6 the Exo…Store functions need to call a stored procedure, which in turn requires an User Defined Type (UDT) set up to define the table-valued parameter. All the rows in the function input area are sent to the procedure at once, and in the procedure you can define how the data is to be handled.

For more details regarding Store functions, see the Creating store functions and associated procedure and UDT example in the Exopen Report 6 User Manual.

Converting reports from EOX4 to EOX6

In Exopen Report 6 there is built-in functionality (Tools → Convert EOX4 to EOX6) to convert Exopen Report 4 reports to the Exopen Report 6 format. The conversion can handle most cases, but for more complex reports there can be a need to perform some manual adjustments.

All EOX4 ExOpen…Import-functions are converted to the EOX6 Exo…Import compatibility functions. It is recommended to manually convert these to the EOX6 Exo…Store functions. This is primarily due to performance reasons, and secondarily due to that these Import compatibility functions do not have every option implemented that existed in EOX4 for corresponding functions.

Function mapping between EOX4 and EOX6