Actuate Journal

Actuate Corporation has announced the general availability of Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet. Actuate e.Spreadsheet is a platform for designing, generating and distributing information as interactive spreadsheets, with formatting, formulas, pivot tables and charts. Actuate 10 introduces a host of new e.Spreadsheet features that allow organizations to address a broader set of content creation and delivery requirements for spreadsheets, while at the same time slashing information application development times.

e.Spreadsheet automatically delivers data via analysis-ready, truly-data driven industry standard spreadsheets to any size user audience, while giving IT complete control over the distribution of mission-critical data. Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet cuts development time and addresses the needs of end-users who require data in a highly interactive spreadsheet format. In addition, Actuate e.Spreadsheet 10 enables the same information to be easily and automatically delivered as PDF content to other users. The release also allows e.Spreadsheet customers who use Microsoft Excel 2007 to benefit from the latest version's enhancements. The release also introduces enhancements that reduce development times by making it easier to define charts and work with queries.

Key features in Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet include:

• PDF Output: Users can specify PDF as the output format when executing or viewing e.Spreadsheet content. As a result, e.Spreadsheet addresses the needs not only of end-users who require the data in industry standard spreadsheets, but also of those who prefer to receive it as PDF reports. An additional driver for this feature is to comply with regulatory requirements which state that all business critical reports must be archived in non-editable formats and kept for auditing purposes.
• Native Microsoft Excel 2007 Output: Users can now select native Microsoft Excel 2007 as their file format of choice, along with previous versions of Excel, when viewing or executing e.Spreadsheet reports.
• Charting Enhancements: The e.Spreadsheet Designer now provides an Excel-like, point-and-click chart wizard that walks the report author through all the steps necessary to add a chart to a report, from selecting the chart type and formatting options to specifying how the chart maps to the data in the report. The wizard provides a guided experience that eliminates complexity while providing powerful new data mapping, formatting and chart bursting options.
• Query Editor Enhancements: A number of developer productivity features have been added to the e.Spreadsheet Designer Query Editor such as impact analysis capabilities to highlight the database tables and columns that are used in a query, but are no longer valid. The report author can now asses how the queries in a report are impacted by a database schema change so that the necessary updates can be applied. Another new capability is allowing report authors to use search expressions to easily locate the schemas, tables, columns and stored procedures to use when building a query.