Author: Ruslan Zasukhin

VP Engineering and New Technology Paradigma Software, Inc

[NEW] VStudio now is able to send a crash log file to Valentina team

In a case of crash, Valentina Studio on linux and windows now is able  to create text file that contains crash log  information (stack of calls, loaded DLLs, … ). MAC OS X version of VStudio have no need to do this because OS X itself generates such crash log.

On the next start Valentina Studio will show dialog with suggestion to send this crash log to Valentina-db.com. Please note, this crash log contains totally anonymous information. This information will help to Valentina team to see that there was fact of crash, and where exactly was crash.  You can set check box to not show this dialog future and just send a crash report automatically if it is found.

On Windows and Linux, after sending of crash log file, it is deleted from disk of your computer. On OS X it is not deleted, because OS X append them  into single file per application.

[NEW] Localisable ENUM Type

Ladies and Gentlemen!  
The first time in the world!  🙂
Localizable Enum Type in DBMS!  

We already many months have working ENUM type in 5.0 branch of Valentina. Let me remind that ENUM type is not from SQL standard, so different DBs implement it in different way if at all implement. We have implemented it using CREATE TYPE command of SQL Standard. And we have implement ENUM in way similar to PostgreSQL, because it is the most correct: you just CREATE TYPE ENUM once and later using it in all places of your database.

mySQL, in contrast, defines ENUM as part of a particular Table, right in the CREATE TABLE command. This is not good of course, because then you cannot use this type in other tables or for variables of Stored Procedures.


CREATE TABLE sizes (
name ENUM('small', 'medium', 'large')
);

It is interesting that such mature database as Oracle do not have ENUM type.

All these existed implementations have one big problem from our point of view: such enum types contains string values of only one language. Below we will describe our solution.

Continue reading [NEW] Localisable ENUM Type

[SQL][REPORTS] Improved work with FORMAT()

Work on Valentina Reports have push us to look more deeply on our FORMAT() function of Valentina SQL.

Keep in mind, that Valentina Reports DLL is tightly integrated with Valentina Kernel DLL and use its power. In particular, formatting in Valentina Reports is based on this FORMAT() function, which, in its turn, is based on IMB ICU library features.

Keep in mind, that even if Valentina Reports use as datasource e.g. mySQL or PostgreSQL server, then it still use Valentina Kernel to do many job, including this formatting.

Problem was found that if function FORMAT() is used over DATE or TIME columns then in result ICU produce “garbage” time and date values correspondently. After some research we have found way how to cut off this garbage. So now reports and SQL function itself produce expected results.

Will be available for after 5.0b41 build and newer.

Now we have v4 and v5 WIKIs

Now we have two separate wikis to keep docs of v4 and v5:

Valentina Studio v5 will to v5 section, vstudio v6 will point to v5 section, and so on.
Old url http://www.valentina-db.com/dokuwiki  will point to the docs of the current official release.

[NEW] VStudio – Check Updates

We have add into Valentina Studio feature “Check Updates”. Only Mac App Store version will not have it, because AppStore itself take care about updates.

On start Valentina Studio will send a GET query to valentina-db site. This will happens in separate thread to not delay user in the case of network trouble.

You will be able enable/disable this feature in prefs panel, also you can specify if report about beta builds of vstudio.

I want note, that in this GET query we also will send some anonymous information such as:

  • OS on which works studio
  • version of studio
  • 32 or 64 bit architecture
  • MD5 hash of MAC address of the computer.
We going to use this hash as anonymous identifier of some computer where vstudio is started. So we will be able, to see that e.g. 30% of users start vstudio  each day, 10% once per week … may be something else …
Future we going add yet automatic sending of crash log if any. Again such anonymous identifier will allow us link that crash logs together in our database.
Also we thinking about adding into Valentina Studo of integration to our Mantis bug tracker, so user can report issue or make a feature request right from vstudio.

[new] VSERVER as HTTP Server + Admin based on Valentina Reports

Few years ago we have added into Valentina Server HTTP port, so it have:

  • normal port
  • SSL port
  • HTTP port
  • SNMP port
We added this HTTP port to be able do the next step — implementing admin built-in right into VServer. So user can access from any browser this admin by HTTP. We see  the following advantages of  this:
  • it is enough install server on you mac/win/linux computer and this admin will be available immediately, without need in Apache/PHP/else.
  • this admin will allow to manage vserver from platforms where not exists VStudio or iValentina. For example Android users will be able manage VServer.
Such admin of vserver we was going implement on C++ of course.
But some time ago we have got idea to use Valentina Reports for this, which could do HTTP generation from report. We have spend some time to make couple of prototypes of this idea. And while we did them, we have already made few improvements in our Reports to support this. The most important  are:

[Imp] VReports few improvements

Thanks to Matthew Gardner, we have made few improvements in Valentina Reports engine:

  • Header section fixed to work with data from cursor.
  • Expression control that produce text, now respect FORMAT field, such as currency or date. For this engine try convert string into a number, and on success apply formatting.
  • System Color Dialog is used now for all places.

[NEW] VStudio + iValentina now sync bookmarks using iCloud

We have made first step to support iCloud technology from Apple.

Now Valentina Studio for MAC OS X (and only one, which is download from MacAppStore) will have iCloud prefs pane, that allows you to specify what to synch in the iCloud. For now this is bookmarks and resent connections to db servers.

Continue reading [NEW] VStudio + iValentina now sync bookmarks using iCloud

[Imp] VSQL: SHOW commands now can accept variables instead of e.g. db_name

To support our own development of admin task for vserver, we have extend SHOW commands to accept variables instead of db_name, tbl_name and so on.

When variable starts with @ or @@ symbols, engine easy can recognize this. But you can also use a local variable of Stored Procedure. Algorithm at first checks if IDENT is the name of a local variable. If no,  then consider this as db_name or tbl_name according to grammar of a SHOW command.

Example:

Some_Stored_Procedure_Text()
…
set CurrentDbName = ‘accounting’
execute ‘SHOW EVENTS FROM CurrentDbName’
…
end

[Imp] VSERVER – now works with SNMP parallel

Valentina Server was improved to work with SNMP protocol using absolutely independent parallel thread(s). This means that on modern 2+ CPU computers, SNMP queries practically will not delay the main job of VServer.

Also  added 2 new SNMP params:

  • “1.3.6.1.2.1.1.8.0.0.0.1” – port for regular TCP connections
  • “1.3.6.1.2.1.1.8.0.0.0.2” – port for SSL TCP connections.

[NEW] Youtube channel for Valentina (DB + REPORTS)

We have setup channel on Youtube for Valentina related movies http://www.youtube.com/user/paradigmasoftware

First of all here was moved existed video-tutorials about Valentina reports, and was added some new about Valentina Studio. We going now extend this channel a lots in the nearest time.

Into Valentina WIKI for v5 we have installed also plugin to show movies from youtube. So we will integrate movies into docs about Valentina products.