Dream Report Version 5.0 New Features

Data Sheet

Dream Report is our primary product, and we’re always rebuilding it, making it better than it was before. Better, Stronger, Faster. Dream Report version 5.0 is another example of major improvement in all areas and making best use of the latest technologies. You’ve seen our other releases, each delivering a valuable mix of new features and benefits. While working on those, we’ve also been working on version 5 behind the scenes.

Dream Report version 5 is a big step, with all of its new features and we’re sure you will love it. But don’t wait till then, if you purchase or upgrade Dream Report today, we’ll deliver a Version 5 compatible license. You can start today with 4.83 and upgrade to 5 anytime you are ready. All earlier applications will seamlessly upgrade when you do so.

We are so confident in the power of Dream Report 5.0 and the benefits it will bring to your business, that we are making it as easy as possible to get on board. Already have Dream Report, but not on a support program? We’ve got a deal for you too. You can put Dream Report on support today and you’ll avoid our pricing increases coming next year (don’t worry – nothing major). If you’ve had Dream Report a long time without support, then we’ll cap the retro support cost at 50% of the license fee. You would usually have to pay the 18% for each of the past years to catch up.

View the Dream Report 5.0 Release Notes

New Features

NEW – Interactive Dashboards with Drill-down and Filtering
NEW – Custom Objects Builder – Gantt Chart, Circle Chart, other examples
NEW – MQTT Real-time Driver
NEW – XML Report Output Format
NEW – Cost Calculator
Enhanced – Web Portal Performance and Refresh
NEW – On-line Electronic Signature – 21 CFR Part 11
NEW – OPC DA Analytics Data Server
Enhanced – Advanced ODBC Historical Alarms Driver (ISA 18.2)
Enhanced – Alarm Filtering (ISA 18.2)
NEW – System Driver for Diagnostic Analytics
NEW – API Toolkit for Connector Plug-in Development
NEW – Tested with Windows Embedded – 7 (SP-1), 8, 10, 10 (IOT)
NEW – Server 2019 Support

A New Business Portal – Access Business and Industrial Data

Today, you know Dream Report as a solution for industrial applications, generating reports and industrial dashboards, and now Dream Report is also the ideal solution for your front office, including a dashboard technology that better fits that interactive world of business data sources.

The business dashboard delivers a wide range of new objects, all exhibiting the same ease of use and configuration that you’ve come to enjoy with Dream Report. These objects let you visualize your business data in powerful and flexible ways. They deliver data filtering and the ability to perform statistics on your business data. You get new Comparison, Relationship, Deviation and Proportion objects that take raw data and generate the information, with context, to enable your actions.

The best news is that both dashboard technologies, one designed for a fixed interaction appropriate for operators and the new dashboard, designed for greater interaction – drill-downs and the flexible filtering that management appreciates, can be applied across all the traditional data sources Dream Report delivers. In addition, this new dashboard offers its own additional data source connectivity to systems that are common in the front office such as direct connectivity to JSON, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services, PostgreSQL, SQLite, using ODBC to: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Hive, Microsoft Access, ANSI SQL, Using AZURE: Microsoft Azure Table Storage, using Other: Salesforce, Spark SQL, Web Data Source, Hive.

There is not cost for the new business portal, other than the additional CALs you’ll want to purchase for your additional users.

A More Powerful Industrial Portal for Reports and Dashboards

The Dream Report Industrial Portal has also been enhanced. The dashboards are now allow refreshing both real-time and statistical data at their own refresh rates, and without the periodic screen update. Both Reports and Dashboards have new objects to work with, a Gantt Chart, new Gages, Circular Chart and the ability to script your own Custom Objects. No time for Object development? Contact us and we’ll quote the effort.

You can now sign documents right from the Industrial Portal. This is a great addition for customers in regulated markets such as the those guided by the EPA and FDA. A new drop-down in the Industrial Portal gives you access to the new Business Portal, Slide Show and the new E-Signatures. A new Interactive Chart offers additional pan, zoom and chart reference lines- a value to everyone. The Bar Chart has enhanced performance and dashboard interactions.

The Alarm Table Object now supports variable filters to enable interactive alarm analysis in an industrial dashboard – dynamically switch alarm filters to get a true understanding of what your alarms are telling you. This is a powerful addition to support ISA 18.2.

Internal Changes to Dream Report version 5.0

Dream Report Internal Parameters are now available for reports, dashboards and external excess through OPC. Variables such as number of reports, last generated, Email and Print Status and much more. Report variables are also available externally.

A new OPC DA Server makes Dream Report data available to external products for any purpose such as alarming or notification. This OPC Server supports multiple connections with individual authentication, and defined data access per connection.

The Cost Module is a new tool to manage your date/time or variable dependent information. This is most commonly used in Billing applications where there are variable costs for Weekends, Times of Day, Holidays, or variable costs based on quantity or other statistics. Combined with the Counter Statistic, Dream Report can now monitor meter data over a period and apply the appropriate Costing data for customer billing.

XML Based Report Output will let you generate data in formats that can be uploaded to other systems. This is a common requirement for EPA data submittals in water, waste water and building management applications. Dream Report generates PDF, Excel, CSV, HTML5 and now XML outputs.

New Alarm Statistics and a new Advanced Alarm ODBC Driver make Dream Report even better for your alarm analysis and applications such as ISA 18.2.

Batch Definition has been greatly enhanced to support additional database formats and filtering of batch IDs. Dream Report can generate date and time-based statistics and can also generate statistics across any defined batch of data, the latter requiring a batch definition table of IDs, Start and End times. If this database does not exist, the Dream Report DBATCH option can perform that function.

Stepped Objects had a new option for “Calculate Steps in Memory”. This feature in the Step Table and Bar-graph Object will generate results in 1/5 the time of the standard processing.

MQTT is a common Internet of Things protocol. Dream Report will now communicate with things in real-time, able to query data for snapshot reports and use its internal Data Logger to archive data for time or batch based reports and dashboards.

New iFIX Drivers support the new features of iFIX Version 6.0 such as Long TagNames.

An enhanced Wonderware Alarm Driver offers better support for ISA 18.2.

An enhanced Wonderware IntelaTrac Driver exposes data collected from nested/conditional rounds in IntelaTrac

Subscription Licensing is now available. You can purchase Dream Report as part of an Annual Agreement. We offer a monthly rate for your calculations so that you can synchronize Dream Report with other Subscription Services that you may have. The Subscription Service delivers both a product license and a support program rolled into one.

Download the Dream Report Demonstration Version (Fully Functional and Time Limited)