APPX Server 3.2 Release Notes

Run-time

  • APPX no longer requires all editable items on a screen to contain valid data if the user has pressed CANCEL. (# 74)
  • The COPY Option on the Query Record Selection screen will now update the Selection Expression for each COPY made. (# 1284)
  • APPX will now report a message in the status area whenever a request for a locked record waits for more than 10 seconds. Where possible, the message will include the process id of the process which holds the locked record. (# 1737)
  • Release 3.2 introduces an "in-progress" display (rather than a true percent-complete). You can enable this display by setting the environment variable: APPX SHOW PROGRESS=true (# 1894)
  • On "Cassert" displays, the descriptive error message (currently displayed by pressing the INQUIRE key) has been moved back onto the main Cassert display. (# 2001)
  • On the QUERY record selection screen at run-time, an end user is allowed to enter up to 30 alphanumeric characters for their selection criteria. Entries of more than 22 characters entered on the Right Hand Side of an 'EQ' selection are now evaluated correctly. (# 2422)
  • Action (error) logs for consecutive files now properly present key values. (# 2460)
  • The keymap files are no longer reserved for exclusive access when the keymapper (appx -k) is being run. (# 2489)
  • A particular combination of table lookups in an OUTPUT function could cause a "PCITM.C.359" (bad tdlu read - Error - No More Records), followed by a "PCITM.C.363" (bad tdlu delete - Error - No Record Currently Held), the first time an EM was being built. This has been corrected. (# 2580)
  • Field level security on a key field, such that the user has READ access to that field, but does not have MODIFY access to that field, will now let the user enter the key during key-entry phase. (# 2585)
  • Modification Logs will now print from INPUT processes that are called from JOBs. They will also print from children INPUT processes that are called from a Parent INPUT. (# 2665)
  • QUERY processes (and IF statements) will place leading spaces in alpha fields that are right justified before making a comparison. (# 2673)
  • When a user attempts to startup APPX while another user is running the keymapper (appx -k), the startup user will no longer get an error message "APPX Startup Failure: Can't find a keymap for this terminal/user". (# 2808)
  • Under VMS, the Select Database menu pick no longer fails due to an internal mismatch of the Application Design PARAM file structure. (# 3188)
  • An error introduced in APPX Release 3.1 that caused empty logfiles to be produced from UPDATE processes has been corrected. (# 3205)
  • The 'Direction' and 'Group By' fields in APPX SQL are now toggled by pressing Option/3. (# 3244)
  • New option to send report as e-mail added to the Report Display utility within APPX. Currently only implemented on UNIX platforms. While viewing the report, press option-7. (# 3295)
  • When the plug is pulled on a workstation running APPX, that APPX task will now terminate. (# 3300)
  • When traversing a file (using Next Record or Enter) in a non-scrolling input process and a held record is encountered, the record following the "Already Held" conditioned will no longer be displayed twice. (# 3352)
  • When a workstation locked up for whatever reason sometimes not all the time an orphan process was created which chewed up cpu time and held the records that the user had held when they locked up. This has been corrected. (# 3422)
  • In response to the issues of Presentation Clients not executing a .profile startup script, APPX now understands a new general config file called "appx.env" to pull environment setting from. APPX will look in two different places for this file. One is a system wide file, the other is a user override file. The system wide file should be in the $APPXPATH/data directory. If APPXPATH is not set, then APPX will assume the "/engine location/data". The user override file must be in the users home directory under UNIX and in the c:\ directory under Windows®. See the sample file in the "tools" directory for the correct usage. (# 3460)
  • The optimized engine has been used in the field enough that we will now be shipping APPX with this as the default engine. To use the standard engine, you will need to use the "appx.slow" instead of the "appx" executable. (# 3547)

Designer

  • The default Update Type for a Use Query has been changed from "Normal" to "Clear" to allow the most expected behavior when a job loops back upon itself. (# 187)
  • Technical Documentation can now be printed in background. (# 933)
  • Application Locking is now a feature that can control execution and design access to a locked application. See a separate document on how to use this feature. (# 1040)
  • You can now use auto-sequence with one digit numeric fields. (# 1633)
  • The Toolbox Option that creates a Domain from a given Field has been added back to the Domain Toolbox Menu. (# 1655)
  • Printing Tech Doc on an INQUIRY process will now print all of the components of the INQUIRY process. (# 1974)
  • The print out from Tech Doc of fields on an image are now in the same order as on the screen when one does an INQUIRE on an image. (# 1985)
  • Running cross reference for UPDATEs now picks up UPDATEs run from within the ILF. (# 2300)
  • Cross Reference on Fields will now show all references to the given field. (# 2534)
  • You can now run technical documentation by date changed - e.g. for all processes changed since mm/dd/ccyy. (# 2625)
  • When you convert an index in a file from "Alternate" to "Alternate/Unique", the Restructure process will now check that all records in the file are, in fact, Unique. (# 2801)
  • The keyboard will now work correctly under the ILF debugger on the Sun platform. (# 2849)
  • A user who is precluded via record-level security from viewing certain records in a file can now restructure that file without APPX filtering out the records that user does not have access to. (# 2892)
  • If you are editing ILF code, and attempt to ADD a line, the line at the current cursor position will no longer disappear. (# 2907)
  • When running "Check Images for Item Overlap", APPX will no longer freeze. (# 2909)
  • When running a Cross Reference of a file, processes with the file as their PCF will now show up. (# 3042)
  • Work Fields design transferred to an application where the fields already exist will now overwriting the existing fields instead of creating new fields. (# 3045)
  • During ILF edit, external copy, using "SEARCH", will now search correctly. Previously, it would find anything and thus move the cursor 1 space at a time. (# 3046)
  • IF EXIST statements will now return correct results on files defined in database management as using another database's file (USE DB). (# 3064)
  • When a file is being designed transferred and the file already exists in the target application, all of the additional attributes for the fields will be correctly update to the new values. (# 3098)
  • When printing technical documentation for Files, the file's User Documentation and Technical documentation are now included in the output. (# 3110)
  • The ILF editor will no longer lock up. (# 3135)
  • When a modified SUBR is Design Transferred into a local application, and another process calls that SUBR via a GOSUB stmt, that other process will now trigger rebuilding its EM. (# 3225)
  • The generate OUTPUT process options in the Data Dictionary toolbox will no longer generate duplicate EM names. (# 3226)
  • Printed Cross Reference reports no longer miss breaks between types of items (App Id, Domains, Files, Fields, process types, etc.). (# 3231)
  • If a restructure attempt fails, an error log is produced (with a report file name of "RESTRUCxx"). The key values which are supposed to display on the error log are no longer all zeros. (# 3261)
  • If you change the Default Value on a field in a file, it can no longer disable the "Delete Protect" File attribute. (# 3277)
  • Upon entering Change All References for App Ids for the first time mode is CHANGE and a From and To App Id may be entered. After pressing ENTER APPX will execute the change, then redisplay the input screen prompting for another set of App Ids. Previously, at this point MODE appeared to be blank and the App Id fields were not modifiable. This has been corrected. (# 3285)
  • The "Check Images for Item Overlap" utility now checks for items that also touch, but do not overlap. Direct navigation has been added to the results screen so that you can jump directly to the image in question. (# 3293)
  • In the ILF Editor, TAB DOWN will now recognize a tabbable field in the left-most column. (# 3299)
  • The APPX Cross Reference utility now allows interactive browsing of cross reference hits, the context information describing where the hit is found is shown, along with the ability to "jump" into the application at this location. (# 3311)
  • The "Check Images for Item Overlap" utility will no longer give a "Run Time Error Detected" message and then crash. (# 3322)
  • Three problems fixed with Change All References for Fields. 1)"To Field Name" is now required. 2) A warning will be given if the "To Field" does not currently exist. 3) APPX will now change the actual field itself only if the "From Application" and the "To Application" are both equal to the "Source Application" (the application currently in) and if the "To" field does not already exist. (# 3490)
  • You now have a flag in System Administration, Applications to force APPX to bypass the validation of EMs. This will allow you to distribute and install applications that do not contain all of the design elements. (# 3548)
  • APPX now understands how to parse CGI encoded data fed to it on stdin, pick out field names and data values, and automatically set the named APPX fields to the CGI data values of a running APPX process. See a separate document on how to use this feature. (# 3549)

External

  • Importing Speed II files into APPX can sometimes cause a "bad portable date" error. This is due to the fact that Speed II would allow invalid dates to be saved via ILF code where APPX will not allow an invalid date. To disable this enhancement, set APPX PORTABLE DATE=true to block the message. (# 1423)
  • There is now a new utility in the "tools" directory that will attempt to recover data from a damaged APPX data file. The new tool is called "recover". This tool can also be used to reclaim space from highly active data files. The space is reclaimed by removing and/or recovering deleted records and the overhead blocks needed to track them. Just run "recover" with no arguments to get help on how to use it. (# 3031)
  • Within the 3.1 standard release files, the file rdbstub.o is now included for custom linking. (# 3170)

RDBMS

  • Scratching Files stored in Sybase will no longer produce random - "Unable To Translate Message" failures. This was caused by an uninitialized return code - the scratch actually succeeded, but an improper error message was produced. (# 3147)
  • The Sybase interface no longer only creates one index (the last one) when creating a table. (# 3148)
  • The command buffer used by the relational interfaces will no longer overflow when creating tables with a large number of fields. The internal SQL command buffer was increased from 4096 bytes to 8192 bytes. (# 3149)
  • The Sybase interface no longer leaks one file descriptor for each table opened, scratched, or created. (# 3150)
  • Sybase will no longer hang when accessing multiple tables. (# 3169)
  • The relational interface is now counting file/table usages correctly. The result is that tables are no longer closed when they are actually in use. The symptom was that occasional Seg Faults were encountered when traversing from children back to parents. (# 3195)
  • A user will no longer receive the message "can't delete proxy - record not on file" when traversing complex input processes using the Sybase interface. (# 3196)
  • When restructuring a Sybase table, a user will no longer receive the error message: *Syntax error in FMS Control String at or near (# 3198)
  • When trying to create a file stored in VISION - the CREATE files process no longer ends without returning any errors or messages. (# 3255)
  • Numeric Fields in Sybase no longer default to the value of 570.05. (# 3427)

Windows

  • If you are editing ILF code, and DELETE a byte out of the T/F registers, APPX for Windows will now accept the edited screen. (# 2906)
  • APPX for Windows: when Inserting ILF code in the middle of a bunch of lines of ILF, new lines no longer appear to get overlaid on top of the lines immediately below them. (# 2937)
  • APPX for Windows will now save and remember color choices. (# 3057)
  • When running APPX for Windows, the environmental variable APPX SCRIPT IN will now work correctly. (# 3090)
  • In APPX for Windows, the close box in the upper corner will no longer close APPX. This type of exit, created zombie processes. (# 3142)
  • APPX for Windows scrollbars have been turned off due to some problems with smaller display sizes. (# 3164)
  • In APPX for Windows, the Mouse position information at the bottom of the screen and the three line status area has been replaced with a Status Bar under Windows NT® and Windows 95®. (# 3313)

GUI Client

  • The APPX for Windows Presentation Manager will now remember the last user id, port number, and host name on a per-user basis. It will also remember the 10 most recently visited hosts. (# 3208)
  • The APPX for Windows Presentation Manager will no longer give a dialog box stating that a HEAP ERROR has occurred, due to overruns in the network buffer. (# 3216)
  • The APPX for Windows Presentation Manager will no longer generate: wm1.c.5209 "tm show failed" errors. (# 3221)
  • The APPXD Application Server program has now been ported to Windows NT. (# 3451)

 

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