Dynamic AI - Features

As a web-server application whether Dynamic AI is installed on premises or in the cloud, it instantly provides a web site or web portal platform for developing and delivering business intelligence, ad-hoc query, reporting and analysis capabilities, using nothing but a web browser, from all of your SQL data sources wherever they reside, via either OLE-DB or ODBC connections.

Strict and detailed user, group, profile and password policies give administrators extensive control over who can access what and, more importantly, who cannot – down to the source data row and column level. Design rights are also very granular to control precisely if, and to what extent users can modify or create reports for themselves or for sharing with others. Network encryption can be forced on globally or for ranges of IP addresses and custom certificates that associate users with a named organization can be implemented. Read about other audit features below.

From dynamically generated SQL queries that merge data dictionary rules and runtime report parameters with group and user security profiles, to auto-generated user interface objects for slicing & dicing information or picking dates from a calendar; from dynamically generated HTML output merged with user-definable style sheets and optional, custom, run-time scripts; everything in the product is truly dynamic, increasing both developer productivity and functionality for the end-user.

One click of the AI button will transform any data source into an interactive dashboard presentation that gives an instant overview of that data's information potential. Select from auto-discovered date time dimensions and measures, add graphs with one click, merge objects with drag-drop to generate new report views, click on any dimension to apply it as a filter across the entire dashboard, or drill down on any total to the underlying details. Watch this demonstration.

Dynamic AI supports the following languages including system interfaces: English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Danish. Up to 3 different languages can be supported on any given data source and report design. Users can select their default language.

Who knew sophisticated programming logic could be wrapped in simple select-and-click forms! With a few clicks you can: define or alter drill-down paths; make various total types such as sum, count, average, running, percentage of row, column or total, and more; create run time filters – single or multi-select or between – and even “dual” for auto-generated comparisons on any two selections; select from over 100 date formatting options; control many global aspects of report logic and presentation. Focus your expertise on actual content creation instead of coding syntax!

Whether an end-user making an ad-hoc query, or an analyst wanting to pivot the totals, create new KPIs or change the drill-down path, or a developer wanting to make some design tweaks while reviewing their work, the on-screen design tools allow manipulating the displayed report grid – moving, removing, sorting and grouping on the displayed columns – and building sophisticated formula columns or KPIs just by clicking on columns or totals already being displayed. Extract date parts (month, quarter, year, date/time) into a new column or make new filters with a mouse click. All changes can then be saved according to user permissions.

Build dashboards in seconds by assembling existing reports into a single presentation package by clicking on them. You can control position of both report grids and graphs either in the designer itself or by drag-drop gestures on-screen. Build a collection of auto-refreshing ticker-tape style graphs with custom refresh intervals or override the report’s specified chart with one of the available tile objects such as a gauge. Best of all, run-time filters for slicing or dicing the information can propagate across all of the reports, even when built on disparate data sources.

Calendar presentations are very useful for visualizing key performance indicators in time, and their changes across days, weeks, months and years. They can be created with a few mouse clicks and traversed from single day details to multi-month, multi-year, high-level comparison views with a few mouse clicks. Watch this demonstration.

Besides dashboards and reports you can also build scrolling lists and forms with custom layouts or in auto-generated floating or columnar formats. You can even build a web page in the interactive layout tool by defining areas into which you link to other content such as a Dynamic AI report, other website content, or images, rules, shapes and text for which you can specify typeface, font, size and color.

Like everything else in the product, menus are dynamically generated according to user and group settings and organized according to prescribed or user-selected preference. Menus display all available content according to Category and sub-catergory and organized by any of the following: global, private, access group, owner group, author, DB connection, data source, type, style, change history, or frequently used. Menus are searchable and can be turned off for any user and instead direct them to a custom page.

Choose from among an included library of customizable graph types and choose between javascript-based graphs that users can interact with in their browser, or static charts rendered in your choice of graphic formats: PNG, JPG, GIF. A full-blown graph editor is built-in for controlling every element of the static graphs or creating entirely new ones for your own library. The interactive graphs can be customized via script added to any report design.

Choose from among the included library of style sheets (CSS), or create your own versions, and assign to any report or dashboard to get the formatting that matches your style. It’s easy to brand presentations by adding logos or other images either in the style sheet or directly in the report design.

Any report or dashboard can be scheduled to email to selected users as in-line formatted, hyper-linked HTML or as an attachment in HTML, PDF, Excel- or Word- HTML-compatible formats, or various delimited raw data formats. Schedules can be single or repeating at specified intervals, or conditioned on totals breaking defined thresholds, and scheduled report execution applies all restrictions of the user profile that owns that schedule to the generated content.

Any report or dashboard can be executed by a logged in user or via URL embedded in any web site or called from any application. Varied parameters can be passed in the URL to achieve a specific output result and URLs can be encrypted and use a special ticket authentication. Output formats streamed to the browser or as emailed file attachments include: HTML, PDF, CSV, TSV, Fixed, user-defined, XML, EBCDIC. Dynamic AI is being used by major companies as a high-volume data integration tool to transmit data from centralized databases to branch offices. Report design metadata can be exported / imported between different Dynamic AI installations.

As a web application Dynamic AI integrates naturally with Dataflex web framework applications and can be embedded in a cWebIFrame object or displayed in a new browser tab page or window. Dynamic AI reports can even contain links that call your WebApp views with seeded find criteria. For Dataflex Windows applications, a class library is available for installation on the Studio’s class palette. Just drag and drop the object into a view or dialog, set some properties and add any additional custom code for generating run-time parameters for the report and specifying what navigations will invoke it. Watch this video to see how easy it is.

Dynamic AI’s database explorer and join builder make it easy to find the right database tables and columns to allow non-SQL programmers to join tables for use in building reports. For SQL programmers dynamic views can be created directly in Dynamic AI’s editor and dynamic relations allow linking any data sources (tables, views, joins) across database connections so that any reports built on those related sources can be linked together in drill-down paths. Dynamic views support use of redirected report filters or parameters anywhere in the SQL that will be replaced with user supplied run-time values, or you can predefine and name sets of fixed, coordinated values the user can select from a list at runtime.

Any database object: table, view, dyn-view, dyn-join, can have a data dictionary defined where all columns can be captioned (in three different languages) and have tool-tip help-text added, enforced filters and roles defined that automatically constrain reported content per user-profile values, and global formulas can be defined for use in any report built on that data source.

Reports can be stamped with full menu path report name, version, date-time of execution and user. Deleted report designs can even be recovered from version history, and detailed documentation covering every aspect of a report's design can be viewed or printed. All system activity is logged and captures who did what, when and from where, and is available for reporting.

Single-sign-on capability for Windows domain users within a corporate network simplifies access for users by automatic authentication for logged-in Windows domain users, and Active Directory integration simplifies password maintenance for users and administrators alike by allowing authentication via existing Windows domain credentials.