Check out my profile for contact info. Thanks for the product status info!

I been using Excel's Power query. They are completely automatic and there's no VBA coding required, but I use a small macro to disconnect the data connections for external distribution. I did these sales and payroll projects a couple of years ago where the cover worksheet ("CombChart") has miniature versions of the larger charts on their own worksheet.

Wow!

Nice job.

Yea well you're Connex! 

Dan,

Is Power Query ADO based? Do you bring in raw data and use Excel VBA for your presentations? Do you run into limitations (syntax) using the ProvideX ODBC driver?

If someone were doing extensive analytics / BI, mirroring to a SQL server would make sense. (or use Premium)

There are ADO functions available, but I didn't use them (nor would I know how). No VBA is required. No macros need be assigned to the charts. Just "Refresh ALL". 

A cool think about Power Query is that it accepts Crystal Reports SQL statements (sans the double quotes). So, if your comfortable with Crystal, you can get a jump start on creating a Power Query result set on which to base your charts. Just use a "Blank Query" and replace "SELECT..." with your query in:

= Odbc.Query("dsn=SOTAMAS90", "SELECT...")

I bet Sage 100 Premium could be more efficient if some of the logic in business objects were stored procedures / functions.

Sage's argument might be code exposure.

Definitely issues with the ProvideX ODBC like only one Left Outer Join. Although, the C/S ODBC can help a lot in an advanced environment. One can push criteria to the server (convert those date constants to Providex) and reduce network traffic and speed performance.

Perfect world as I see it would be install Premium on each workstation (installing only modules required) and point to a common SQL server.

WindX client / server needs to retire.