QiD Version 1.4 was released in June 2008. The focus of this release has been on improvements to the Metadata aspect to provide more attributes and finer control over the collection process. There have also been a large number of changes aimed at improving the functionality and performance of the product in general.
The following list summarises the significant changes compared to V1.3 up to and including the latest point release (V1.4.1.2):
Implemented drag and drop behaviour in the Project, Result and Metadata trees. This allows nodes to be copied and moved within the tree, e.g. to move a sheet between projects or to copy a chart and apply it to a new result set. Previously drag and drop worked only on the Project tree and not in a generic fashion
Enhanced Metadata to provide finer control over the extraction process:
Control over whether table rows will be counted
Control over whether distinct values for a column will be counted depending upon the number of rows in the table (if counted)
These settings can be specified for the metadata source overall and on each metadata Include rule so can be altered depending upon any combination of the database, table and column
Other Metadata enhancements:
Improved Metadata alias generation to handle spaces the same as underscores. So ‘Top 10 Product List' will be given the alias ‘T10PL'
Implemented ‘fast positioning' for all databases. This speeds up extraction for a given database / table / column
Changed from using Information_Schema to direct access to system tables / views for SQL Server and PostgreSql. This is more reliable and faster in most cases
Added column attributes (data type, size, precision, scale, nullability, title, format, default value) to support Datamap feature and other uses. Some of these attributes are not available for some databases
Reduced the occurrence of (suppressed) errors during Metadata extraction for all databases. For example not querying on a column when the DBMS does not allow 'count(Distinct ...)' on that data type
Changed the 'Edit' function on Metadata nodes so that each level has its own dialog rather than passing the operation up to the Root node. Also improved the layout of the detail form for Root nodes
Added .Cmd script command to allow Windows Shell commands to be issued during execution. For example to invoke Zip to compress a file, to delete work files or to launch an application like Excel and have it open a set of results
Significant improvements to the charting functionality:
Enabled scrolling and zooming on 2D XY and 3D charts
Added a range of 2D and 3D Spline chart types
New chart labelling options: Display text patterns {A}, {S}, {V} can be used in the point label definition for argument, series and value respectively
Improved chart point selection popup to show all values rather than just the argument and value
Changed chart internal storage to XML which will facilitate .Chart script command
Added ‘Create Script' command to viewers in the Result tree in order to place an equivalent .Export statement in the clipboard for later use
Normal, Vertical and Pivot grid settings associated with a data viewer are now retained if the dataset is saved between sessions
Enhanced Pivot grid to allow the summary function (Sum, Count, Min, Max etc) on cell fields to be specified through the user interface
Added ‘Export to Table' command in the Result Tree. This allows existing results to be sent to a database table in the same manner as when a ".Export Table=..." command has been issued. The difference is that the new method can be invoked on results post-facto rather than having to be setup before the source query is executed. The same options to specify the connection, table name and CREATE, APPEND or REPLACE are provided
Numerous improvements to general dialogs and controls:
Added an option to control whether the splash screen is displayed at startup
Changed manager dialogs for Project, Connection, Metadata etc to preserve their state within the same session. This is much more convenient for the user and also faster to re-open the form
Improved all progress displays to suppress the '-1 of Unknown' label when there is only one operation or the number of operations cannot be known in advance
Changed many detail forms to have <Enter> invoke the Save command. <Esc> has always invoked the Cancel process
Improved the initial column width setting for all tree controls
Numerous minor bug fixes and improvements:
Added MHT, PDF and RTF formats for Normal Grid export
Fixed a bug with formatting when exporting to an Excel file that was already written to in the same session
Added Block Comment (<Ctrl>+/) and Block Uncomment (<Ctrl>+<Shift>+/) to the editor
Added checking of script command words against the valid list to highlight unknown commands
Modified symbol parsing and highlighting to accept dynamic variable references {$name}. This is for the future implementation of dynamic variables
Fixed a bug where new projects were not added to the list of all projects in the same session
Fixed a bug where cancelling an Add operation in one of the trees could result in a blank node being added
Fixed a bug where nodes could be added incorrectly to the Result tree if a Job node was given ‘Expand All' command rather than progressively expanding the children level by level
Improved the speed of removing dependent step and unit information when deleting jobs either manually or automatically. Also added progress display to this process
Changed from .resource to .resx to fix a problem with embedded icon resources introduced by the change from VS2005 to VS2008
Improved export from Grid to Excel. Better formatting of data types such as dates and strings
Reposition normal grids to row 1 after sorting operations
New skin: McSkin
Re-instated PostgreSql support since the latest provider (beta) now supports ADO.Net 2.0.
Numerous third party component / driver updates:
Changed development environment to VS2008. Still targets .Net 2.0 rather than .Net 3.0 / 3.5
