ODABA Releases TODBMS and Tools 12.0.0

The latest version of the Terminology-Oriented Database Management System (TODBMS) ODABA has been released on Tuesday, February 21th, 2012. This is a major version providing exhaustive new features. Bug fixes are reported in change logs for this version. This version also contains the final release for the GUI component support. Email communication features have been improved.

Several tests have been made in order to remove run-time errors in optimized code and critical memory updates and a number of memory leaks have been removed.

• Detailed changes (ODABA)

  ODABA 12 contains minor changes in the system object model. Changes made in the system model do not require database upgrades.

  • ODABA Database kernel (base)

    ODABA Version 12 provides several new features.The system model has not been changed, i.e. no so database upgrade is required. Following features have been released or have been provided under LGPL now:

    • LibreOffice document generation

    Using OSI document templates in LibreOffice documents allows generating flexible documents including tables and recursive call of text blocks. Text formatting defined in ODE text edit fields including links and picture references are included in the generated document as well. Comprehensive documentation is provided at

    www.odaba.com/content/downloads/demos/DocumentTemplates.zip

    or in the ODABA online documentation under User's Guides/Generate documents from database content.

    • Relational data storage

    Relational data storage type been released as Open Source component (LGPL). This allows storing ODABA data in MySQL, ORACLE or MS SQL Server databases. Moreover, the feature provides mapping rules between object-oriented database models and relational database models.

    • XML data storage

    ODABA also supports generating the database schema as XML schema and storing data in XML files. One also may create XML dictionaries (resource databases), which plays a rule when importing or exporting data.

    • Synonyms for data types and properties

    ODABA supports synonyms for data types and properties. This helps keeping terminology consistent with names used in applications. Moreover, this allows defining multilingual data type definitions.

    • The email interface has been improved by using the curl library. When no curl is available, the simple email connection (using pop before smtp) is still active.
    • In order to support UTF8 and other encoded text files, text file functions accept a BOM with encoding information. Textfiles without BOM assume default encoding.

  • ODABA Application Program Interface (base)

    Some minor changes and bug fixes have been made for the ODABA API.

    • New functions

    The interface is compatible with version 11.2.1 interface. Only a few functions have been added.

    • String encoding has been improved. The default encoding, which is used for all STRING fields, can be defined as option variable.DefaultEncoding (LOCAL by default). CHAR is used for technical strings and must not contain national characters (ASCII, only).

    More details are described in Changes_opa.txt, but many changes, which are not listed in the change and release logs might be checked in the git repository.

• Detailed changes (GUI)

  The GUI framework and ODE tools provide additional and extended features. Several bug fixes have been made.

  • GUI Framework (gui)

    ODABA 12.0.0 provides several new features for the GUI framework. Moreover, a number of bugs has been removed, which are reported in the change logs.

    Essential features provided with this version are:

    • New control styles for day and month calendar

    New control styles will be supported in the GUI framework (not yet released for Designer) in order to display month and week calendars.

    • Support for tool tip events

    In order to provide specific tool tips depending on mouse position in a field, an event handler for handling before tool tip events has been provided.

    • Hyperlink event

    Hyperlinks within text fields are supported by hyperlink click events.

  • ODE tools (ode)

    Several extensions have been provided for ODE tools, especially for ClassEditor and Terminus in order to support new database features as document generation and multiple storage support. Moreover, several changes made in the GUI framework will enrich the application behavior. Besides new features, several bugs have been removed, which are reported in the change log.

    • Terminus tool

    Terminus supports several kind of document generation for different object types (e.g. hierarchy topic documentation or terminology object type documentation).

    • Upgrade terminology model to database model

    Terminus model setup from terminology model to database model has been improved essentially.

    • Document generation

    Document generation for theme tree and T-Models has been provided for LibreOffice. Moreover, HTML documentation may be generated.

    • ClassEditor tool

    ClassEditor supports generating data type, module or project documentation. Moreover, one may generate UML specifications for data types.

    • Generate SQL data models

    ClassEditor provides actions for generating several types of SQL data models by means of table definitions. Thus, an ODABA object model may be converted into a relational database model in order to run ODABA with relational data storage.

    • Terminus tool

    Converting terminology models to ODABA object model has been improved.

• ODABA Documentation

  Documentation has been extended. Especially, documentation for new features (component support) has been provided. If anybody needs specific topics or areas to be documented, we will consider this in our documentation priority list.

• Installing ODABA

  ODABA, including applications and libraries, is available for free under Open Source licenses (GPL). ODABA runs on various hardware configurations, operating systems and works on many desktop environments. ODABA can be obtained as source code distribution and in various binary formats from http://sourceforge.net/downloads/odaba/

• Previous Releases

  When running ODABA 11.x.x, no upgrade is necessary. When still using ODABA 10.x.x, resource databases and databases referring to ODABA system data types need to be upgraded. Details about how to call a database upgrade are described in the readme file for the ODABA 11.0.0 installation.

  With this release of ODABA 12.0.0 we declare the end of live for all previous released ODABA versions. Bug fixes on 11.2.1 version are provided on demand.

• System Requirements

  In order to get the most out of this release, we recommend to use a recent computer with at least 1 GB of memory and and 2 GHz CPU or better. In order to install the binaries, about 100 MB are required. Installing sources requires about 50 MB. 80 MB are required in addition, when installing the documentation locally.

• About RUN-Software

  RUN-Software develops database management system ODABA and tools since 1994. Besides general and particular software solutions, RUN-Software publishes theoretical works about database theory and terminology in connection with data modeling.