Genero 2.40 General Availability

Developing and deploying modern, mobile Genero applications is simpler and more powerful than ever before.

Irving, Texas – March 6th, 2012 — Four Js Development Tools is pleased to announce the general availability of Genero 2.40. This release focuses on improving the web experience, the development of new applications with the Business Application Modeler, IBM® Informix® 4GL compatibility, and performance improvements.

Web applications have never looked better with the introduction of the HTML5 web client, set to become the next industry standard for graphical user interfaces. Combined with the Business Application Modeler, it’s never been easier to develop new applications for Windows, the Mac, the Web and the Cloud.

Improving the Web experience

Deploy to HTML5 browsers

The new Genero HTML5 theme is based on the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Dedicated to the latest Web browser releases and mobile devices including tablets, HTML5 gives a better user experience reducing the need to resort to JavaScript. With this HTML5 theme, you can experiment with native HTML5 rendering of widgets in the GWC.

html5_example
Sample HTML5 screen

The HTML5 Standard

Today, HTML5 is implemented in varying degrees of completeness depending on each browser vendor. Consequently, this incompleteness is reflected in the GWC HTML5 theme – certain Genero features are not uniformly implemented across all browsers; Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 for instance, does not support the ‘drag ‘n’ drop’ feature.

HTML5 theme support

Support for the HTML5 theme is therefore on an ‘as is’ basis for production applications in this Genero 2.40 release. Bugs will be fixed, but features cannot be added when the underlying framework does not exist for a particular browser.

This approach is designed to enable developers to get started now and gain valuable experience with HTML5 now so that they can be ahead of the game when the standard is finally ratified. Even though Genero proprietary ‘.4st’ style sheets are not supported in this release, CSS3 style sheets are.

Once the HTML5 standard is ratified, Four Js will be able to implement Genero features uniformly across different browsers, providing ‘transparent’ workarounds for those browsers that lag behind in their HTML5 ‘completeness’. This ‘full’ support will appear in the next release of Genero due early 2013.

Improved Silverlight theme

The Genero Web Client theme for Microsoft Silverlight has been improved to support such features as stored settings and frozen columns for tables and Genero style file (.4st) usage.

Developing New Applications

New Business Application Modeler (BAM)

The Business Application Modeler (BAM), delivered with Genero Studio, has been revisited with improved ergonomics to make generating new applications easier than ever. The Business Application Modeler can generate up to 90% of an application’s code and reduce development time by an order of magnitude.

‘Officestore‘ is a new demonstration application that highlights BAM capabilities and is entirely generated from diagrams – nothing has been hand coded. The Officestore demo is included in the Genero Studio package and can be run from the ‘Tutorials and Samples’ tab in the Genero Studio ‘Welcome’ page.

BAM diagrams improvements

  • Improved ergonomics with search feature and display of document errors
  • A new Business Records editor for reports
  • Advanced customization: File/New, dynamic properties in diagrams (Objects and Relations), Objects and Relation constraints in BA and Build rules
  • Integration with Code Analyzer
  • Preview, print, and export options

BAM code templates improvements

There is a new architecture for generated code (Data, Ui, State management) and the management of reports. These templates provide greater functionality in the generated code:

  • Master / detail (multiple levels)
  • ComboBoxes
  • Lookups
  • Navigation actions between forms
  • Menu / toolbar management (Common/ Local to a form)
  • Zoom forms
  • Complex data sources support, including multiple queries, in reports

IBM Informix 4GL compatibility

Genero 2.40 closes the gap with Informix 4GL and supports for example SQL … END SQL blocks.

Language, Feature and Performance Improvements

Genero Language (BDL) feature improvements

True to the 4GL spirit, new language features improve the user experience without the need for extra coding:

  • Use the built-in find, findnext and search actions in arrays
  • Show aggregate summaries in tables with a click of a button
  • Code insert/update/delete functionality directly in a DISPLAY ARRAY block

Genero Application Server (GAS) / Genero Web Client (GWC)

The Genero Application Server has a more efficient deployment footprint for web applications:

  • Lower memory consumption
  • Lower data traffic for tables and windows
  • Better stack management in threads and response times for end user comfort

Genero Web Services (GWS)

  • Support for SOAP 1.2 and SOAP fault, WS-Addressing 1.0,  stateful services
  • API and settings enhancements for encryption, network and security

Genero Studio (GST)

The Genero Studio experience is simplified and enhanced:

  • Execute multiple instances of Genero Studio
  • Preview your applications within Genero Studio in a browser using various themes (Ajax, Silverlight, iPhone, HTML5, etc.)
  • Upgrade and import preferences and runtime configurations of previous Studio installations
  • Select and toggle between workspaces: Document, Debug, and Normal to maximize productivity of the current task. The Document workspace, for example, is ideal for maximizing working space while you code
  • Remember Genero Studio execute states: Remember the state of the previous Studio session: opened files and projects, histories such as last searches last folders opened in File Browser, and the last positioning of your workspace views

Genero Report Writer (GRW)

Genero Report Writer 2.40 boasts a set of new features:

  • Additional output formats – Excel 2007 (.xlsx) and Word (.rtf)
  • Data matrix barcodes to encode text and binary data of variable length
  • Text and image fields as hyperlinks
  • Document meta-data such as author and subject
  • A new clip option for layout nodes
  • Report Viewer optimization
  • New API functions to produce multiple reports from the same data in a single run

See the Genero 2.40 EAP announcement for more information.

Best regards,
Four J’s Development Tools

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