Upgrading (2025)

As the release date for Genero 6 comes nearer (due for mid-December 2025) I have seen a few questions where people have asked what is new in this version?, or the question is asked to cover a longer time period as they have not updated in a while, so for example, what or how do they upgrade from Genero 3.20 to 6?

It is a tough question to answer because every customer is different and what I might emphasise to one customer is different to what I might emphasise to another.   I feel that the questioner is asking for a silver bullet when in reality the questioner will have to do some research, do some reading, and determine what applies to your usage of our many products.

If I think back to an earlier article I wrote on Upgrading, the first thing I said was “make upgrading a habit”, that answer does not help in the short term.

You may think you are using our products the same as everyone else but …

• on one hand a typical ISV customer upgrades every Genero release, participate in Early Access Programs, has been using incarnations of Genero Web Client for a long time, whilst a typical Enterprise customer has upgraded less regularly, doesn’t participate in EAP, and is still using TUI or GDC Native user interfaces.
• some customers use a lot of the newer form file syntax whilst some customers screens could still run on an 80x 25 character screen.
• some customers use Genero Studio and/or VSCode whilst some still use vim and other character text editors
• some customers have a wide ranging API whilst some have never used Web Services
• some customers have not used Informix databases for many years, whilst some are still using Informix or even Informix SE
• some customers use code generators and generic code, some copy and paste boiler plate code.
• some customers use Genero Report Writer, some still produce text reports.
• some customers are in containers in the cloud, some are using on-prem servers.

… and so on.  What I might emphasise for one customer might not be relevant to another customer.

There are 3 levels or sources of information you should look at when upgrading …

• Release Announcements – the release announcements that you see in the Product News section of our website, and in the Product  Announcements board of our developer forum will highlight some new features, not all.  These are what we think are important and what we think you would most likely use going forward.
• Documentation – tips for reading our documentation at upgrade time, make sure you read or note …
  • “New Features” – Fun to Read, includes any new syntax. (BDL/FGL New Features) )
  • “Upgrade Guide” – Must Read, includes details of any code/configuration changes you need to review. (BDL/FGL Upgrade Guide )
  • Multiple products – make sure you read these equivalent sections in the appropriate documentation for each product,  Don’t just read BDL/FGL documentation, make sure GAS, GBC, GDC etc. documentation is also on your reading list.
  • Note the various “Starting In…” entries you might see in the New Features for items that are added in maintenance or minor releases.
  • GBC is released nearly every month so every month there is a New Features/Upgrade Guide page for that product.
• Issue Tracker (public) – the Issue Tracker lists nearly all the individual pieces of work our developers have put into our products.  The additional items you will see here that are not in the documentation are typically bug fixes.  A few gotchas or tips for use of the Issue Tracker
  • Learn to use the Fixed In field, if you are skipping versions, you can enter an expression that gives you all the issues between your current version and the new version you are going to.
  • There are more product codes than products as the releases we ship can be many internal products bundled together.  The main gotcha is GWS is bundled in with the FGL release, don’t just look in FGL product, also look in GWS, WCG etc.
• Issue Tracker (private) – occasionally we will make a deliberate decision not to have an entry appear in the Issue Tracker.  This is typically for security or commercial reasons.  I mention this because occasionally you might identify a change, look in the Issue Tracker to see if there was any work in this area, and not find a case. (the other reason you might not see a case in public is because we forget to mark it as public!)

Other sources of information that can also have useful information about new features or what is in a release …

• Early Access Programs (EAP) – participating in the EAP gives you exposure to the new features and the draft documentation before they become available in the release.
• WWDC – typically there will be presentations that show how to use new features.  In my Product Review presentation, as it was our fist WWDC for a while I went back and covered a lot of what was new in 4 and 5.
• Ask-Reuben – I will typically add some articles here showing how to get the most out of some new features, look out for some in the new year.

I am conscious that a number of customers have skipped releases and so some terminology may not be ingrained in your knowledge.  As a reminder …

• Current Version Support – we support the current plus two previous versions.  We did make a minor change in that rather than ending support on the day of the latest release, we will support an expiring version until the end of that calendar year.  So with the release of Genero 6 in 2025, Current Version Support for 3.21 ends 31st December 2025.  This change gave more certainly so since the Roadmap announcement in April 2024 that Genero 6 would be GA Dec 2025, this implies Genero 3.21 Current Version Support ends 31 December 2025.  There is an easy to remember URL for our latest roadmap 4js.com/roadmap that you should have bookmarked
• Supported Platforms can always be found in the Products and Documentation pages on our website as well as the easy to remember URL 4js.com/supported
• Semantic Versioning – some will question, why this release is 6.00 and not 5.02 or 5.10?  That is because a few years ago we adapted Semantic Versioning.  Have a read of this 2023 article. Key benefit, you know with the release of version 6 that the latest version 4.XX and latest version 5.XX are the two earlier versions under Current Version Support.
• Universal Rendering – as an organisation this is something we have been working on for over 10 years as we move from maintaining many different native front-ends to having a single universal front-end constructed using web technologies.  We did run a six month EAP program with 4.00 in 2021.  If you are only just now encountering Universal Rendering, look back at the 4.00 announcement and documentation for that release.
• GBC Customisation – one of the benefits of Universal Rendering is that you can use GBC Customisation to enhance your User Interface using the wider range of web technologies (js/css/html). As a minimum, my expectation of everyone is that they would use GBC Customisation …
  •  to change the primary color of their application away from our blue
  • change the favicon from our Genero g icon to your application logo
• Responsiveness – this was one of the flagship features added in 4.00.  If you skipped 4, make sure you review responsiveness if and when you catch up.
• Front End Delivery – Starting with Genero 5 we introduced the concept of single Front End Delivery.  With the release of Genero 6, the Genero 6 GDC, GBC, GMI, GMA, GWA will be what is used with FGL 4 and 5 as well as FGL 6.

In terms of tips for development environments, my main tips to help facilitate upgrades are …

• download individual products rather than using what is shipped inside Genero Studio
• install these products into a directory containing a version number
• use Four Js License Manager in your development environment to license the different versions using a single license.
• make sure you understand where you need to use unique port numbers and directories to run multiple versions of Genero on the same machine.
• make sure you can do a recompile all of your application, where code no longer compiles review Upgrade Guides
• have some QA tests for your application

If you want some tips as to what to look at closely in Genero 6 from me …

• look at Prometheus for all products
• look at the TagEdit widget, there are many places you could probably incorporate this in your application.  The recent PhoneEdit and Color Widget are also neat but there is only so many phone number or color fields in your application.
• pay attention to database drivers for Informix, this is something Informix users have not had to pay close attention to before
• note the licensing enhancements

When it comes to Upgrades don’t be afraid to ask for help.  As well as normal support, our Professional Services teams can also be engaged to assist you through the Upgrade process.  If you seek outside assistance for an operating system upgrade, or a database upgrade, you can get similar assistance for a Genero upgrade.