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APPX 6.2.0 Features

This page provides an overview of the new features in APPX 6.2.x


Overview

This release is primarily focused on the repair of bugs, found in both the 5.5.x & 6.1.x versions of Appx, along with a few enhancements.

Noteworthy enhancements include updates to the JSON parser API, XML Writer APIs, the Appx Data API, APIs for encoding/decoding base64 data, the addition of the ability to enforce limited user licenses and the ability use the Html client to develop and debug APPX applications.

Changes in Release 6.2.0

Here is a list of the changes in Release 6.2.0:

Unicode Field Alignment

Unicode fields no longer must be aligned on a 4-byte boundary. Though performance maybe in enhanced if Unicode fields are aligned on 4-byte boundary, the previous error message is no longer presented to the developer.

If you would prefer to have the previous error message behavior, you can set the environmental variable APPX_CHECK_UNICODE_ALIGNMENT=TRUE.

IF statement relational operators RI and RS

The IF statement relational operators, regular expression case insensitive (RI) and regular expression case sensitive (RS) have changed and they are now coupled with the newly predefined field TEXT LENGTH.

Now, when a search is done, If a match is made, in addition to TEXT AT POSITION being set to the starting position of the match, TEXT LENGTH is set to the number of characters matched in the search.

JSON Parser APIs

You can use the following APIs to parse a JSON file or string:

--- .JSON PARSE
--- .JSON PARSE FILE

XML Writer APIs

You can use these new APIs to create a well formatted XML file.

--- .XML WRITER OPEN
--- .XML WRITER CLOSE
--- .XML WRITER ELEM START
--- .XML WRITER ELEM END
--- .XML WRITER ADD DATA
--- .XML WRITER CDAT START
--- .XML WRITER CDAT END
--- .XML WRITER ADD ATTR

Base64 Data Encoding/Decoding API

You can now encode up to 24k and decode up to 32k of Base64 data, The two new routines are: .CONVERT TO BASE64 and .CONVERT FROM BASE64

APPX Data Services API Enhancements

The data API now takes advantage of the new JSON PARSE subroutine. The new subroutine provides the incoming data as Unicode. As the side effect, the PATH field in JSON file cannot be a key anymore since its size is larger than Appx key size limit. As a work around you can use PARENT RID to read through the hierarchy or use PATH HASH which is the hash value of the PATH field.

Based on the selected ‘Mode’ setting for each data services command, the parsed JSON will be written to a different file. For example, if the ‘Mode=small’ the parsed JSON is written to the file 0LA RAWJSONS, if ‘Mode=medium’ the data will be written to 0LA RAWJSONM and, for ‘Mode=large’ the data will be written to the 0LA RAWJSONL file. You can check 0LA WEBSERVICES JSON MODE to find out where the parsed JSON records were written.

Note again that the incoming JSON data no longer has a limit. If the incoming data is more than 1M characters, APPX writes the data to a file, then parses the content of the file.

Limited Access User Rights

The requirements of the limited access user rights have been implemented in this release.

To review, starting in APPX version 5.0.3, the license agreement defined Limited Access User Rights as follows:
Limited Access User Rights, if specified on the License Key, carry certain limitations and restrictions. Users logging in under Limited Access User Rights are allowed no more than 30
minutes of continuous operation, must be casual, occasional, transient users, may direct output only to a local (non-network) printer, and may not have access to Application Design,
System Administration, or Database Management utilities.

Further, users running under, Limited Access User Rights, are excluded from running up to four simultaneous sessions,

Finally, Limited Access users may be either “Named” or “Anonymous” but only one User ID may be designated as the “Anonymous” Limited Access user.

Several environmental variables are available to customize the limited user implementation and are as follows:

APPX_SESSION_WILL_EXPIRE_STR – can be used to override the default the session expiration message which reads “As a 'limited user', your session will expire in 1 minute...”

Note: The message is limited to 80 characters and any additional characters will be ignored.

APPX_LIMITED_USER_SESSION_TIME_LIMIT – can be used to override, shortened only, the 30-minute limited user session time limit

Note: The limited user session time can be shortened by up to 29 minutes thus, a value of 10 means the session will last for 10 minutes.

APPX_LIMITED_USER_EXPIRE_MESSAGE_TIME – can be used to override the time before the session ends that the session expiration message is shown to the user

Note: By default, the session expiration message is shown to the user is 1 minute before the session expires. This can be set in whole minutes only.

HTML Client APPX Application Development

During this current Appx R&D development cycle (i.e., for Appx 6.2.0 since the Appx 6.1.0 general release) the html client has been updated so it can be used to create/edit images and ILF code as well to debug ILF code. The html code editing capabilities can be used on earlier version of Appx such as 5.5.1 but has limitation since some functionality had to be added to the engine, thus that functionality isn’t available in the earlier Appx versions. As well, not all development functionality, that is available in the Java client, is available in the html client. See know issues below for further information.

Image Editor on HTML Client

Image editor on html client works the same way it does on desktop client with a couple of minor differences. As you can tell, the toolbar got changed a little bit. We added “Add a Field” and “Delete Selection” buttons and removed “Show Character Interface” and “Data Palette” buttons. These buttons are not supported on html client yet. Also, we grouped the buttons in a more logical way. Hovering over the buttons gives you shortcut key you can use instead of clicking the button.

Another difference is that when you move an item, the border color indicates if the move or resize is valid or not. If the border becomes red, then it means the action is not valid.

  • Dotted red border means the item overlaps with another item.
  • Solid red border means the item has the same position as another item on the screen.
  • Solid green means the move is successful.
Like move, resize also does an initial check to make sure the new size is valid. Red border tells you that the new size is not valid.

Another new feature that we added to html client’s image editor is guideline. Guideline is a dotted green line that shows up when the left side or top side of the widget you are moving is aligned with another widget on the screen. This is an easy way to align your widget with another widget on the screen.

Next difference has to do with Row Texts (text typed on the screen). We generally discourage using row text on html client and have limited support for it on html client. To add/modify row text using the html client, you must double click on the area of the screen that you want to add row text to. It then opens up a text field for the whole row for you to add your row text. Keep in mind that if you have a widget on that row, you cannot add any row texts after that widget. This is an html client limitation. Also, make sure that you are in change mode, otherwise double click doesn’t work.

Next difference is the enhanced widget view for some widgets. We added some icons to some widgets, so widget type can be recognized easier by looking at it. Also, we added the style of the widget to the widgets, so it is more like what you see during the runtime. Hovering over buttons also gives you the option number of the buttons.

The new image editor on html client should also work on release 5, however there are 2 known issues with release 5:

  1. Multi widget editor doesn’t detect the selected items on the screen.
  2. Screens that use the first row as the title bar don’t show up correctly.

ILF Editor on HTML Client

ILF editor on html client works the same way it does on desktop client with the exception of a few know issue that are listed below.

  1. HTML Client - In the ILF editor, the search, replace and jump button items are not functional (We expect to deal with this issue in the next release)
  2. HTML Client - In the ILF editor, some audit information will be truncated or missing (We expect to deal with this issue in the next release)
  3. HTML Client - In the ILF editor, the ILF code end marker [END] will not be present on APPX versions prior to 6.2.0
  4. HTML Client - In the ILF editor, statement(s) commented as a multi-line comment, will not be shown as being commented on APPX versions prior to 6.2.0

Bugs Fixed

6.2.0:

The following bugs were addressed in this Release:

New Features/Enhancements

6.2.0:

The following features and enhancements were implemented in this Release:

Known Issues

  • HTML Client - The cross reference tool screen (i.e., under Tools->Cross Reference->ILF Statements) is missing the ILF verbs and shows extra and missed formed text in APPX versions prior to 6.2.0
  • HTML Client - When selecting ILF code statements, the highlighting maybe be misapplied if the page keys are used in APPX versions prior to 6.2.

For an up to date list of known issues, use Bugtracker & search for bugs in Release 6.2.0. These are the known bugs that we expect to fix in the patch release.

Comments:

Read what other users have said about this page or add your own comments.


-- BrianRyan - 2022-04-13

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Topic revision: r100 - 2024-10-07 - BrianRyan
 
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