m-Power Gets New Interactive Reporting Templates

February 2, 2010 Alex Woodie

When it comes to adding new features to a software product, there are certain directions one can go that are sure to engender success. For starters, you can make it pretty. You can also make it easy to use, and allow it to work in real-time. Software vendor mrc says it’s accomplished all of these feats with a new class of “interactive” reporting templates in m-Power, its Web development tool for i/OS, Windows, Linux, and other servers.

m-Power is a Web application development tool that is used to generate J2EE-based Web portals, e-commerce sites, executive dashboards, business intelligence systems, and other applications. The tool utilizes a model-based development approach that takes advantage of programmers’ existing knowledge of their databases, thereby eliminating the need to learn new languages and syntaxes.

m-Power is no stranger to report generation, and has included reporting templates since it was first released back in 2004. But with the new interactive reporting template unveiled in January, mrc says it has never been easier to build powerful and graphical reporting applications.

Users can drill up and down against live DB2/400 data from a Web browser using the new interactive reporting feature in mrc’s m-Power.

One of the things that makes the new reporting capability powerful is the fact that it always uses the freshest data possible. Once the interactive reporting application has been created, it will query the underlying database whenever the report is accessed or the selection criteria is changed.

The new reporting feature allows users to start with very broad data, such as worldwide sales results for a whole year, and then drill down into specific periods with the mouse. The vendor also touts its “intelligence.” For example, if looking at sales data for a particular class of products, the software will automatically highlight other selection parameters within that product class that might be of interest to the user, mrc says.

All reports with m-Power are delivered through Web browsers, making them easy to use. And the new interactive reporting feature is also easy on the developer, according to mrc, which says developers can build a single interactive report in about 15 minutes.

m-Power’s template approach is what makes application development so fast, says mrc marketing director Steve Hansen. “We make application templates with all the powerful features built right in,” Hansen says via e-mail. “Customers literally just have to choose the template they want, point it at their data, make any adjustments they wish, and they have a new application.”

Brian Crowley, mrc’s director of development, says the interactive reporting class is one of the most functionally rich and intelligent templates the company has created for m-Power. “When you consider the power behind the application and the short and sweet build process, there’s really no equal,” he states in a press release.

A Web demo of the interactive template feature is running at http://www.crazybikes.com/mrcjava/servlet/CBB2E.R00090s. More product info can be found on mrc’s Web site at www.mrc-productivity.com.