APPX 3.4 Release Notes

Run-time

• On a scrolling INPUT process, the user can "fill up" the last field in the current scrolling record. In APPX for Windows®, the cursor then moves forward out of the current scrolling item's IMAGE area. When the user then presses ENTER (or an optional child), any edit changes to the current record will be inadvertently lost. This has been corrected in 3.4 under the JAVA Presentation Client. This behavior remains in 3.4 under the Windows Presentation Client, and non-Presentation APPX for Windows. (#3194)

• The subroutines to allow programmatic setting of an application's "Operational Phase" did not work properly in 3.3 due to a mis-coded PASS statement. Similarly, panning capabilities could be lost after having used the print on screen feature. Both problems have been corrected. (#4045)

• Copyright dates have been updated on all screens. (#4055)

• An APPX registration can now be created as an "Application Server". This is a lower cost registration that is limited to execution of locked applications with less then 50 files. (#4129)

• In a new installation, on the first execution APPX will now automatically create the system administration files, and add a record for the installer to the User file. These actions will be logged to the file APPXINS?.log in the APPX print file directory. (#4131)

• The Windows version of APPX will now intercept "General Protection Faults" and display a message to the user rather than crashing back to the operating system. (#4132)

• Appx now implements an ODBC driver so that Appx can act as a data source for ODBC clients. (#4134)

• Using the Appx RDBMS interfaces (under release 3.3 only), inappropriate duplicate records could get returned when end-of-file was encountered. This has been corrected. (#4136)

Designer

• If you changed a process name and pressed option-1 to go into the toolbox to add some documentation, when you returned to the process it's components (ILF code, frames, images, etc.) could be lost. Also simply changing the name of a menu process would result in the position and size information to be incorrectly replaced. Both problems have been corrected. (#2983)

• Multi-occurrence "substring" fields are now definable in the APPX data dictionary. (#3207)

• After doing a Change All References, Application Ids, in an application that was just design transferred all from another app, the 'Substring of' field for SUBSTRING fields, the 'Synonym of' field for SYNONYM fields, and the 'Thru field name' for GROUP HEADERS was incorrectly cleared. This was fixed in a prior release of APPX but failed to make it into the release notes. (#3288)

• The Cross-Reference feature has been expanded so that multiple applications can be searched. Applications to be searched can be specified by accessing the "Define Applications to Search" option on the "Cross Reference Options" screen. (#3479)

• Design files could remain open after exiting Application Design. This has been corrected. (#3521)

• When you encountered a compile time error during developement, and you 'drilled down' to the offending line & fixed it, then returned & continued development/testing, APPX would not stop at any more TRAP statements. This has been corrected. (#3689)

• The "Toolbox" utility, "Comma Delimited Update" can now generate code to handle multiple occurrences of fields. (#3799)

• The interactive browsing option when doing a cross reference was not navigating properly when the hit was found in an inquiry process. This has been corrected. (#4015)

• In the Y2K application, using the option to limit the cross reference to ILF statements where a date field is interacting with a non-date field, some extraneous statements were showing up. This was when a field outside of the source application was involved and that field referred to a domain. This was corrected in release 1.1 of the Y2K application and distributed with APPX 3.4. (#4060)

• When you generated a standard output from the toolbox menu, the image size was incorrectly being set on the RECORD frame. It is now correctly being left blank, thus defaulting to the size of the frame. (#4062)

• On the main Application Design screen, if an invalid application id is entered, an option will be given allowing the application record and the design files to be created. Similarly, if design files are missing, options will be given allowing design files to be managed or created without having to exit Application Design and go to System Administration. These options will function only for APPX System Administrators. (#4064)

• In System Administration, Applications File Maintenance now provides access to Design File Management as a child process. Similarly, under Databases, Related Applications provides access to Database File Management. (#4065)

• Incorrect results could occur in data dictionary fields after running Change All References and changing the App Id to a new value if the App Id being changed was the application you were currently in. Using Change All References to change the App Id of the source application has been prohibited. See the help text of the "From App Id" field for more information. (#4089)

• On the Interactive Cross Reference screen an additional access key has been defined. The results can now be accessed by item searched for (the default key) or by where the reference was found. Accessing by the default key also remedies an earlier problem of the results not always being sorted properly. (#4107)

• Beginning around release 3.2.5, adding a token field could result in the unnecessary error message, "Error - Record Has Been Modified by Another User or Stream". This has been corrected. (#4119)

• The APPX 0-apps (0AD, 0DB, 0LA, and 0SA) will now be shipped as full applications as part of the APPX release. All source code will be shipped, but the 0-apps will be design locked. (#4135)

• ILF Verbs (BEG READ, READNEXT, BLINK, etc), along with embedded literal text (such as HOLD, FAIL, STORE AREA) can now be translated using the --- MESSAGE file. (#4138)

• As of 3.2, the 3)Utilities, 3)Design Transfer, "4)Transfer All" utility would Merge selected design elements (Data Dictionary and Processes) into the current application, individually deleting and replacing design elements inbound from the source application. The HELP text and on-screen explanatory text incorrectly stated that the destination application was initialized, and/or that design elements already on file would not be replaced. The HELP and on-screen text have been corrected to indicate that "Transfer All" is a true Merge. (#4156)

• The "Verify Integrity of UNIXIO Files" utility new in 3.3 no longer gives false-negatives. (#4184)

• Scanning for a token value in the ILF editor, no longer ignores your selection. (#4192)

External

• APPX no longer uses shared memory or semaphores. This removes the need for the semaphore undo workarounds. (#4023)

• Authorized application authors can now be given access to generate their own product registrations on the APPX web site. Contact APPX for information on how to get set up for this. (#4044)

• An import menu has been added to the System Registration screen to allow new and updated registrations to be imported rather than having to be typed. (#4061)

• The version of appx print being distributed with release 3.3 reverted to a June'95 version of appx print (9998 bytes). The 'production' version as of 3.3 should have been 10977 bytes, and is stored in hendrix:./home/ftp/misc/. The version for APPX release 3.4 should be 11597 bytes, stored in the same directory. (See ECR #4123.) (#4122)

• If the APPX Presentation Server is installed with the appxd daemon not owned by root, or the u+s bit not set, it can appear to work, but OUTPUTs submitted by users coming in thru Presentation Client can inexplicably not print. We have put additional diagnostics in 'appx print' to detect this condition. (#4123)

• In the Y2K application, "Field Cross Reference" has been enhanced to include two enhancements made to APPX Interactive Cross Reference: (1) searching across applications (ECR #3479), and (2) additional access keys (ECR #4107). This is version 1.2 of the Y2K application. It is shipped with APPX 3.4 and requires APPX 3.4 or higher. (#4124)

GUI Client

• Users running the APPX GUI client against the winappxd.exe APPX Presentation Server sometimes get DLL initialization errors, on USER32.DLL. 3.4's winappxd fixes all known resource leaks, which should prevent this from happening. (#3688)

• The Java Client login process now displays messages during the login phase to let the user know what is happening. (#4072)

• Setting ForeGround and Background colours in Menu processes now controls the colors used by the Java Client. (#4076)

• Upgraded current Java Client code from the JDK 1.0 standard to the JDK 1.1.5 standard. This provides a much stronger and more stable runtime platform as well as the ability to add new functionality more quickly using the Sun Java Foundation Classes (JFC) also code named Swing. Some initial new features gained include Tooltips, User Selectable LookAndFeel, Scan buttons on scannable fields, designer selectable screen color overrides, report viewing toolbar, and more. (#4198)

Patch 3.4.1 Changes

• If your system-wide or application level date mask includes a 'CC' (century) portion, Standard Page Headings for reports will now include the century. You can also set the APPX STD PGH MASK environment variable to a valid date mask to override all other date masks. This environment variable only affects Standard Page Headings. (#3887/#3957)

• In 3.4.0, an INPUT process with a modifiable / Invisible item (for example a password) could cause a loop, not permitting the user to get past the screen. (#4213)

• Some characteristics (such as the title bar at the top of the main menu) were lost in the Windows GUI client under release 3.4.0. (#4219)

• The first record added to an AppxODBC database was not visible to MS Access' Jet engine. The first record added to an AppxODBC database was not visible to MS Access' Jet engine. (#4220)

• When overlaying 3.4 on top of 3.3, some 3.3 0-app EMs were inadvertently not getting rebuilt, when running 0-app processes for the first time. (#4225)

• You can now select 0AD, 0DB, 0LA, 0SA, and SQL in Design File management. This allows you to build all of the executable modules for each of these applications. (#4237)

• In release 3.4, TRAP statements were enabled through Select Database if a designer first selected an application in Application Design. (#4248)

• BROWSE mode (option 33 in output processes) are now supported for version other than '00'. Also, if the file being browsed does not have a default input process, the browse request is ignored (it produced a unrecoverable error prior to release 3.4.1). (#4249)

• There is now an entry in the VERSION file for "Engine Version". (#4254)

• The Java Client has a new login dialog box that allows connections to a local copy of APPX as well as a remote server.

• The Java Client image loader has been improved so that it now loads and displays images much faster.

• The Java Client should now connect much faster to a local copy of APPX. The previous version sometimes had to wait for the nameserver to timeout before connecting.

• The Java Client will now load the toolbar images directly from the JAR file when run as a standalone application (outside of a web browser window).

• The Java Client will now correctly position images exactly over the text area they are suppose to cover. In the prior version, they were off by 2 pixels.