The Director’s Chair
		Advanced Technique
By Jay Patrick		New Feature
		Special Feature
		FOCUS 101
		Adapter Advice
		Customer Support
		OS Feature
		User Group Meeting Schedule

FOCUS Release 7.3 Has Something for Everyone As promised, FOCUS 7.3 includes a record number of features with something for everyone. The release includes all of the FOCUS-related features in the latest WebFOCUS version, plus special features aimed at improving controls for handling familiar but important reporting tasks that required workarounds in the past. Complete documentation for new features in this release is available at http://www.informationbuilders.com/products/focus/pdf/NewFeat73.pdf. Click the "7.3 New Features" bookmark for links to individual features (NFnnn). The premier feature is a new XFOCUS database with 16-kilobyte pages that accommodate physical files of up to 16 gigabytes. By partitioning file contents in up to 250 partitions, data warehouse designers can actually store four terabytes in a logical database. Experienced FOCUS users will find implementation of XFOCUS and conversion of existing applications to the new data structure intuitive and nearly transparent. An accompanying integrated Multidimensional Index (MDI) feature, delivered originally with Information Builders’ FUSION product, can dramatically expedite retrievals and reduce operating overhead for large-scale applications (see "XFOCUS Database and Multidimensional Index (MDI) Target Data Warehousing Applications" in this issue). As attendees of Summit User Conference and users of informationbuilders-l have found, there is almost always a way to do what you have in mind with FOCUS, but sometimes it is not easy to get exactly the effect you envisioned. Many 7.3 features improve ease of use and results by simplifying what’s required to produce sophisticated report formats or by expanding your formatting options. We also lifted many field-length and command limitations to expand the selection and reporting options in terms of sizes and formats, in addition to the dimensions and levels of detail you can capture in reports. The following sections discuss enhancements made in three key areas: • Reporting, including raised limits and new formatting options • Performance boosters • New Database and Master File syntax Reporting Enhancements New Data Retrieval Features and Raised Limits You are no longer limited to 17 consecutive IF/THEN/ELSE selection statements in a single decision statement. We also raised the maximum number of display fields from 95 to 1,024, excluding sort fields and MATCH fields. You may display up to 1,056 ACROSS fields now, and to facilitate expression of criteria to exploit these higher limits, you may include up to 16 FOLD-LINE clauses in report requests to chain your subject fields. With larger space allotments for column titles in FOCUS reports (32K is now available) you can also include many more sort headings and footings in your reports. New Report-Formatting Features We added a NEWPAGE feature for creating simple cover pages at control breaks in reports or report sections (NF972). There is also a TABLASTPAGE system variable that contains the total number of pages in your report. You can use this in conjunction with system variable TABPAGENO in headings, footings, footers, or subfoots to display individual page numbers within a total report or subsection page count (one of 10, two of 10, etc.). This removes any doubts about whether you have an entire report and aids in tracking when you distribute sections of a report to different analysts for review. Those who require customized page numbering will find new variables for assigning the first page number of a report (FOCFIRSTPAGE) and setting the page number of the first page of the following report to one greater than the last page number in the previous one (&FOCNEXTPAGE). Improved Content Representation We enhanced a number of FOCUS display formats to improve the clarity of your report contents. For example, when grouping data by ranges, FOCUS traditionally showed only the bottom value of each range, but it can now display the minimum and maximum values. The new SET BYDISPLAY=ON option tells FOCUS to display BY field contents in each row, rather than just displaying values for the first record in each new series. This is particularly important when creating HOLD files for Excel, which does not sort columns properly when some rows contain blank values. When using prefix operators (such as MAX, MIN, and CNT) in a request, you can now also employ them at the subtotal and total levels, without resorting to cumbersome reformatting through RECAP and SUBHEAD/FOOT statements. There is also a new option for representing negative numbers by placing minus signs to the right of the numbers as an alternative to putting them on the left or using brackets or credit (CR) notations. There are several new options for handling missing values in HOLD files that enable you to set the missing values and distinguish between missing and default values in the processing. You can also employ consecutive visual delimiters to represent missing values in HOLD files. New HOLD Options The new EXL2K HOLD format produces Excel 2000 formatted spreadsheets with optional active Excel formulas and PivotTables. PivotTables include all fields mentioned in a request that were not included in the spreadsheet. Thus, from within Excel, you can move fields from the PivotTable into the spreadsheet and rerun it without returning to the original data source. The HOLD FORMAT TAB feature creates tab-delimited input or output files similar those produced by TABT, but without the leading column-headings records. To expedite HOLD file transfers, you now have a choice of binary or alpha output format. You may now combine multiple PDF or PS files as well as files in other formats in a single compound PDF or PS file, and you can treat these compound reports as separate pages or as one continuous report. Previously, when creating multiple PDF or Postscript reports, you had to download and print each separately. You will find this ability to stack and display or print one report after another particularly convenient when e-mailing multiple reports. FML Enhancements The new FML Hierarchy feature allows you to dynamically generate FML code when joined with a table representing the hierarchical relationship of your data, such as a chart of accounts or organization chart. Lower-level data is mapped to its parent using the new master file elements PROPERTY and REFERENCE. The syntax drills down into this lower level, generating as many lines of code as necessary to represent up to 99 levels of your structure. To add or delete a department or account, you no longer have to change your FML report; it’s automatic. Design and readability of FML reports can be enhanced through new FML INDENT tags for specifying positioning of tags, labels, or captions. By making FOR objects reusable, we also reduced the need for RECAP statements to duplicate previous lines multiple times; and we added a new FMLINFO function for picking up the FOR value of a row to use in a calculation on that row. StyleSheet Enhancements Application designers planning HTML output will find this release incorporates most of the WebFOCUS StyleSheet capabilities, including SET statements and keywords for selecting grids, page color, wrapping, and stylemode, as well as conditional styling based on actual report contents. There is also support for the W3C-authorized Cascading StyleSheets specification that defines language for styling HTML documents. This works in concert with FOCUS StyleSheets for producing highly styled HTML documents suitable for viewing through CSS-enabled Web browsers (NF973). Additional HTML-related features in this release include decimal point alignment in multiline headings and footings and new StyleSheet macros and paging, heading, and footing controls. Performance Features The new DEFINE compiler evaluates requests at TABLE time, compiling only those directly called by a FOCEXEC. For example: SET DEFINES=COMPILED CNTRY3/A3=EDIT(COUNTRY,’999’); PROFIT=RCOST-DCOST; FEET=LENGTH/12; END TABLE FILE CAR PRINT LENGTH RCOST DCOST FEET PROFIT BY COUNTRY BY CAR BY MODEL END In this case, FEET and PROFIT would be compiled, but not CNTRY3. This is significant whenever requests aggregate only a few of many fields created with DEFINE statements. If you work with DB2 data, you will be pleased to learn that we support the READLIMIT feature in DB2 7.1, which is equivalent to RECORDLIMIT with FOCUS files and asks the RDBMS to extract and return only the specified number of rows. The key here is where the selection is made. Previously, DB2 users wishing to limit output had to return the whole set of suitable rows to FOCUS and then apply the limit in FOCUS with RECORDLIMIT. Finally, the new SET SAVEDMASTERS option permits you to store up to 99 Master File Descriptions in memory removing the need to reparse the Masters in subsequent TABLE requests. Database and Master File Enhancements There’s a new GROUP keyword in FOCUS Master File syntax for providing an alternative name for one or more contiguous fields. Group fields can facilitate JOINs to multiple fields in a cross-referenced segment. If you define a group containing multiple indexed fields as the key, the SEGTYPE becomes S1 and MODIFY can use it as an index. You can also use indexed views in TABLE requests when record-selection criteria consists of equality tests on each component in the group. It’s possible now to declare a unique dataset name for each segment in a file through the DATASET attribute, which was formerly only available at the FILE level. While this has the same effect as using the LOCATION attribute, it frees you from having to preallocate your LOCATION file. At the field level, there is a new FIELDTYPE=R attribute for identifying read-only fields. This supports RDBMS use of auto-increment columns with relational data sources, such as the DB2 IDENTIFY or timestamp columns. Note that updates issued for read-only fields are ignored by MODIFY and MAINTAIN. Our new AnV field format and AnV character functions support processing of variable-length fields used by relational database systems. AnV fields add an extra two bytes to the value containing the actual numeric length of the string (excluding that first byte) and the added "V" tells FOCUS that the field-length may vary up to that limit (from 1 to 4,096). Finally, you are now free to employ much longer field names (66 characters), segment names (64 characters), index names (66 characters), and you can create compound long qualified field names up to 196 total characters (including the periods). To create these you can either use the new longer amper variables (up to 32K characters) or use the new IEDIT system editor call to build FOCEXECs wider than 80 characters. Where to Go for Details This general summary gives an idea of the scope of the enhancements made in Release 7.3, but is not all-inclusive by any means. To see what else was added or review details of the features mentioned herein, we invite you to visit the Information Builders Web site and download the Summary of New Features at http://www.informationbuilders.com/products/focus/pdf/NewFeat73.pdf. Thank you for your interest and we hope this release will enhance your FOCUS experience.