SQL Power Software Forum

I see some info on a version 0.98 but nothing about when it will be available. Also, is WABIT an acronynym for something?

Hi Cosburgin,

The release date of Wabit 0.9.8 is Sept 1. If you want to see how Wabit looks now you can get a build from our continuous integration server. These builds contain the latest code changes and a new one is created for every commit.

As for Wabit being an acronym, there were mentions of it standing for "Wickedly Awesome Business Intelligence Tool" or "Wabit's not Another Business Intelligence Tool". If Jonathan replies he might be able to give you the official version though.

Thomas

Hi,

I tried the version 0.98 you released today. It looks very promising!
Just one question: Reports now have content boxes. What are they good for? I couldn't figure our what they do.

Thanks,
Ben

The new interface looks cool. Also, it seems to have corrected the issues with losing the SQL code formatting and the Java Exception if a null result set was returned. Well done - look forward to spending some time with this version later this week.

YEAH! I just figured out what content boxes are good for. If you are good with aiming you can try and drop a chart, image or query right ON the words "Drag content here". In most cases the frame of the content box becomes bold and you can drop the item you are holding. The item will automatically have the size of your content box.

A few suggestions to that:
- A user shouldn't have to aim so hard to be able to drop an item in a content box. It should already become a "drop zone" just by dropping an item anywhere inside the content box
- Does it really make sense that a content box gets deleted whenever I want to delete the item inside of it? Maybe I just want to replace a picture inside a content box?
- Are content boxes useful in the report designer mode or should they only be available in the template mode. If I create a report I won't create a content box first and then add the content to it. I would add the content right away.
- Content boxes (and all items in a report) should have a size property so you can resize them to whatever size you want (cm, inch)

Hope that helps to improve Wabit further to make it THE reporting tool!

I'm glad to hear that people are enjoying Wabit 0.9.8 and thanks for the suggestions Benjamin. As there were a number of suggestions for 0.9.8 and some bugs we wanted to fix we released 0.9.9 last Friday. I mention 0.9.9 as it contains fixes for Benjamin's first suggestions posted here. In 0.9.9 the content boxes are now much easier to drop objects into. Also, there is a right click "clear" option on content boxes to remove their content but leave the box. Additionally, if you want to replace the content of a content box you can just drop the new content over a box with existing content and it will be replaced.

Are content boxes useful in the report designer mode or should they only be available in the template mode. If I create a report I won't create a content box first and then add the content to it. I would add the content right away.

One time you would see a content box in the report is if you delete an object in a report from its workspace it will be removed from the report but its content box will remain. The content box remains in the report to let users drag in a different object that should take up the same amount of space. When it comes to letting you create a content box in a report from the tool bar menu I don't have any specific examples of where making a content box would be useful. Do you think it would be better if we removed the content box button from the tool bar or is there a possible use for new content boxes in reports?

Content boxes (and all items in a report) should have a size property so you can resize them to whatever size you want (cm, inch)

Bug 1860 involves adding rulers to the report editor. The rulers would allow you to resize the content boxes to specific cm/inch sizes. We don't currently have this bug scheduled for immediate development but voting for it will help increase its priority.

Thanks for the feedback,

Thomas

Hi Thomas,

thanks for your answer. I just downloaded the 0.9.9 and content boxes work a lot better now. I can't think of any reason to add just a content box to a report. Removing the button would create space for other functions which might need a button too. If a user really needs a content box in a report he could just add an image, right click on it and select "Clear". This will give him a content box.

Benjamin