V4.0 *beta* of our tools are released

FormsTool and FormsAPI Master V4.0 *Beta* can now be downloaded from our website! 

V4.0 features a new Module Analyzer tool to extract dependency information, statistics, datamodel and other useful information.
The new version is released as BETA until functionality runs stable and all the bugs are resolved.

A few notes about this release

• Anybody with a valid current license key will be able to use the V4.0 versions. 
• The v4.0 version uses a new license key format. The tools still accept V3.0 license keys (click on the link in the orange box on the right to enter your old v3.0 license key!)
• this is a beta version and i expect some bugs will still be in there
• If you find a bug then please let me know! See the "V4.0 beta" online Forum threads for more information or write me an email to support [at] orcl-toolbox [dot] com!
• The V4.0 version can be installed on the same computer as a V3.0 version without overwriting or affecting it. 

What's included in this V4.0 beta release

The main feature that got added is the new Module Analyzer tool. It allows you to extract all kind of important information from your oracle module (only *.fmb modules currently supported!) such as dependencies, data model, canvas screenshots, statistics and code and turn it all into a nice HTML report.  The extracted information can be used to gain a high level overview of your whole application system of how it's all connected together and form the basis of impact analyses as well as giving system analysts and managers the necessary information to estimate the complexities of changes. Work on this analyzer has been quite challenging and took quite a while. I almost forgot what other improvements I made to the tools, but here are are a few:

• new module Analyzer tool
• compare & search can now show the results in a flat view (often making it easier than navigating through a hierarchical view)
• compare now also does a visual canvas compare
• search got file handling features (move/copy/etc)
• syntax highlighting in compare tool
• scripts now remember parameters between runs of unsaved scripts
• scripting got a structure overview to navigate your code
• Export now uses a much more flexible templating system (based on javascript mustache syntax)
• Explorer and Comparer can now export to Microsoft Excel format
• etc

Plans for the near future

I still have some entries on my todo-list of things that i want to have implemented before the final release of V4.0 officially goes out and the analyzer tool still needs some more work (to support rdf/mmb/olb/pll).

Together with the stable release of V4.0 i plan to also change licensing and prices - currently, our licenses are for 2 years and that will change to 1 year. There will also be a bit of a hike in price (we haven't changed pricing since 2006). If you have a license that has expired or will be expiring soon and want to save some money then i suggest you purchase the renewal within the next month!

Plans further ahead

Here are a few things that are now on the top of my todo-list now:

• 3 way directory compare
• Merge functionality in compare (3 way auto merge)
• PL/SQL code beautifier 
• speed improvements (reports loading is too slow and Search is too slow)
• stability (doing multithreading and multiprocess better). Right now if you search through 500 modules and one of them causes a crash inside the Oracle Forms Open API then there is no way for me to recover from that - the solution is to have multiple processes (so only the sub-process hangs or crashes and doesn't impact our tools) but this involves some architecture rework as everything has then to be routed through interprocess communication. 

Regards,

Stefan Mueller,
ORCL Toolbox Ltd, New Zealand