Flex2SQL v12.2 Will Introduce Many New Features

At Mertech, we are working hard on the next version of Flex2SQL, v12.2. It will include many improvements that will enhance developers’ productivity and flexibility. Key new features include support for MS SQL Server 2014, MYSQL 5.7, PostgreSQL 9.3, and DataFlex 18.0, as well as an improved API for LOB access.

MS SQL Server 2014 was released to the public by Microsoft on April 1, and provides options for deploying database solutions both on-premise and in the cloud with Windows Azure, new in-memory transaction processing capabilities, and many other new features. Released earlier in the spring, the latest version of Oracle’s open source server, MYSQL 5.7, has improved its capabilities for working with 64-core servers, which enables faster performance, and has increased the number of database connect and disconnect actions allowable within a specific time period, which is useful for large web applications. Many other new features were introduced, you can read more here. The latest version of PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL 9.3, includes many improvements such as better JSON functionality, writable external data, and much more.

We have also improved the API for LOB access (BLOBs and CLOBs) to remove the previous 16k size limitation and provide faster performance and more consistency across all the Mertech drivers.

Finally, DataFlex 18.0 has introduced two new features that improve upon the interaction between a Visual DataFlex application and an SQL backend through database drivers. These features are i) support for SQL filters at the DDO level and ii) support for declaring and editing native data types in the VDF 18 table editor.  The DD SQL Filter feature allows developers to optimize data-aware grid populations by having “constraints” executed on the server rather than being filtered on the client side. This approach significantly reduces network traffic, reduces the load on the server and increases the speed of filling grids that may use very complex filtering. Mertech has supported this feature via custom commands for quite some time, but having it built directly into the runtime and DD classes will ensure that DataFlex developers use it as a part of normal DataFlex programming rather than as an enhancement through custom commands in the driver.

The second new feature, native type editing, allows DataFlex developers to use the Studio Table Editor to set the native backend data type of table columns instead of being limited to using only the column mappings from DataFlex types to native types.  For example, the Mertech driver natively supports GUID column types for some backends.  Using the Studio Table Editor in DataFlex 18.0 with Flex2SQL v12.2 will enable developers to set a column type in the database to GUID even though DataFlex doesn’t have a native GUID type.  Prior to DataFlex 18.0, developers needed to use the Mertech Migration Utility to do this, or edit tables directly in the tools provided by the database vendor.

The new version will be available two weeks after the release of VDF 18, once we conclude our final testing.  If you are interested in receiving a beta now, please contact Mertech Sales.