Foxfire!  - Welcome to the promised land of simple, end user reporting...

Windows

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Foxfire! is a new breed  of report writer designed for everyday business people.

Use it to mine your data and produce a wide variety of useful reports, spreadsheets, charts, pivot tables, and data files - in minutes. Without becoming a database geek. 

Foxfire! creates reports for the Windows desktop or the web, and they interoperate fully. A report you create on the desktop will run unchanged on the web, and vice versa.

Of course, some database geeks love to use Foxfire!  because they can do so much in so little time - but that's another story!

If you’ve used earlier versions of Foxfire!, the new Foxfire! v8+  will blow your mind. If you’ve never seen Foxfire! before, you’ll discover you really can do reporting yourself.

Click here and see how easy reporting can be with Foxfire!

The Foxfire! Difference

Foxfire!’s usability comes from two features: an intuitive report designer that helps you visualize your results and a place for your developer/administrator to hide geeky details from view.

The Foxfire! designer is easy to learn and to use. As you design a report, you constantly preview the result. The tools are presented in plain English with graphics. And it guides and assists you at every step, by adding appropriate formatting and totals automatically and preventing wrong moves. We call it the managed reporting experience, and it’s available only with Foxfire!

Behind the scenes, Foxfire! assists by storing all the technical details  about the data and any special processing internally. Once the details are input by your technician, you won’t need to learn or remember technical details or terms.

You’ll be free to follow your hunches and focus on results instead of stumbling on database structures and mechanics.

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Introducing Foxfire! v8+

After nearly five years in development, new Foxfire! v8+ has two main goals:

• Providing everyday business users with the easiest reporting experience possible, without compromise power or flexibility
   

• Enabling technicians to achieve a glove-fit for even the most complex and challenging database architectures

The result is amazing - a reporting tool with a glove fit for each database that enables a regular business user to do far more in less time than any other tool on the market.

What’s New for Report Designers

• Design and preview modes are combined. You drag items onto a live image of the report, move them around, change appearance properties, add totals, and more. As you work, the image reflects your changes immediately. You will always know what to expect when you click Run.
  
   

• The Workbench (formerly, the Request Editor) can be repositioned wherever you want it.
  
   

• Each item’s appearance can be changed for individual reports. Change column headings, fonts, display widths, automatic summaries, and more.
   

• New items can be created on the fly while you lay out the report. Easy-to-understand forms assist with plain English explanations. As you create an item, a preview area shows how it will look.
   

• Filtering and searching and filtering have been simplified, and many options added. More options are available to end users (such as the ability to display calendars or filter on plain-English date ranges like “Last month”, “Last quarter”, or “This year to date”), where before they had to be created by geeks.
  
   

• Sorting and grouping are presented visually, making them easier to understand. At the same time, many options have been added for group changes (e.g. appearance options like custom formatting, separation-lines, or indentation, etc., and summary options like changing or suppressing automatic totals, etc.)
  
   

• Total item counts and unique-value counts (“Distinct Count”) are available in Summary Requests.
  
   

• Page formatting options when you exceed the allowed width. These are automatic but you can set them in advance and override them at will).
   

• New output formats (e.g. PDF, .doc, .rtf, formatted .xls, four kinds of XML, and email).
   

• Separate-and-send™ report pages by email. When a data group changes, you can send the current pages to a file (PDF, XLS, etc.) and email it to a email address unique to that group.
  
   

• Report definitions can be exported to a file and shared with others, who can import them into their own copy of Foxfire!
  
   

• Batches enable you to run or schedule multi-step jobs.
  
   

What’s New for Developers and Administrators

• A super-fast and simple upgrade utility can import your older Foxfire! setups in seconds, so they can be run by v8+. Foxfire! installations as far back as v2.5 (first released Oct 8, 1993) can be upgraded.
  
   

• Data Items can be organized into searchable subgroups easily with a new drag ‘n drop Data Item Group Builder.
  
   

• The Relationship Manager helps finds candidates for table relationships, then assists with entering them into the data dictionary. Once entered, Foxfire!’s powerful SQL generator uses them to create very sophisticated, optimized SQL queries automatically.
  
  Alternate relationships can be substituted programmatically behind the scenes - without the designer knowing it’s happening - when they specify a particular type of report. This means that you can offer incredible flexibility, without the user having to understand what’s happening behind the screen.
  
   

• The Date Item builder quickly creates additional date items such as month-and-year or month-and-quarter of a particular date already defined in the dictionary. These makes it easy for to filter, sort, and summaraze more flexibly and more precisely in their summary and cross-tab reports.
  
   

• The Template Editor lets you create your own report style-sheets, including logo’s, page X of Y, and more.
  
   

• The new event customizer (FFConfig Editor) greatly simplifies and organized the process of adding custom processing (i.e. your own source code) into Foxfire! events, enabling you to extend or replace Foxfire! standard processes at any key point during a startup, a reporting session, or invidual report execution.
  
   

• The Distribution Wizard makes it easy to send a copy of Foxfire! to a remote location for quick integration with an application.
   

• A new, robust object model makes it easy to operate Foxfire! programmatically, or from your own user interface. Just point directly to the new Foxfire! Request object and you’re off and running.

You must experience this tool to understand it. Get the whole picture by downloading an evaluation copy and checking it out. Or view a video to see how easy report design can be.

Want to see what's changed or individual application refreshes? View the development blog.

Here is a summary of just some of the hot features in Foxfire! 8.0:

1. Live Design surface area that previews your entire report instead of just the columns.

2. Drag and Drop fields into the detail area for adding new fields, sort orders and group breaks and re-ordering.

3. Report-specific settings. Change headers and fonts for individual data items on specific reports. You can even create new data items while building a report!

4. The Request Editor Workbench can be un-docked off the main preview page for easier previewing.

5. More group options including hiding automatic subtotals, custom formatting.

6. Data Item property sheets so changes can be made while looking at the report.

7. Support for Distinct Counts when building summary requests.

8. Our Distribution Utility makes it easier than ever before to integrate Foxfire! into an application!

9. The Import/Export and Batch features are directly built into the Request Manager so you don't have to leave what you're doing to get work done. You can even export a request directly to email to send it to others!

10. Powerful object model that makes it easier to do everything in Foxfire!

In fact, the object model is what was used to create Foxfire! 8.0's new live design surface area! Want to create your own User Interface? Just point it directly to the new Foxfire! Request object and away you go!

11. Fantastic new Expression Builder makes it easier to see what your data item will look like when it's being built!

Foxfire! is a new breed of Report Writer. It’s unique for three reasons:

1. Fast Results without the Work.

Foxfire! makes query and report creation a no-brainer for end users. It handles all the complex SQL creation and Report Painting tasks automatically. It empowers users to create complex joins or lay out reports with page breaks, subtotals, outer joins, and much more – with just a few clicks. They don’t need technical knowledge or skills because it’s all contained in Foxfire!’s data dictionary!

2. Totally Customizable

Need a new feature in your query or report procedures? You can add custom processing anywhere and everywhere. No need to wait for the next release. With Foxfire!, you can code it tonight and run it tomorrow. No other report writer can provide this.

3.  Most Bang for the Buck

Compare Foxfire!'s total cost of ownership with any other reporting tool in its class. Nothing even comes close.