OpenInsight 9.2 and the Universal Driver 4.7

Development on OpenInsight 9.2 continues and this release is scheduled to include the following new features:

OpenInsight for Web (O4W) - A web development toolkit that empowers OpenInsight Developers to rapidly create browser based forms, reports, menus, dashboards and programs. I have been playing with this over the last few days and it is very, very nice indeed, clearly the best web development tool to come out of Revelation.

SQL Connector - With this new connector, SQL tables are now seen as native tables to all components of OpenInsight including forms, reports, popups and stored procedures. I have also had a quick look at the SQL Connector and, using the built in wizards, it is child’s play to set up and use SQL tables from within OpenInsight.

D3 Connector - This connector will allow OpenInsight to be a front end application development tool with the D3 database from Tiger Logic. I am yet to get my hands on this one.

Bitmap Indexes - Bitmap indexes have nothing to do with images, but rather with bit arrays (the 'bit map'). OpenInsight developers do the work internally with bitwise operators. They are mostly used for indexes where the number of indexed values are relatively small; e.g. Sex (M, F), Active(Yes, No), etc. Basically, there is one index node per index value, as opposed to OpenInsight's Btree or Xref indexes, which could have many nodes per value, or multiple values in a node. Bitmap Indexes are extremely fast, and are much faster than existing Btree indexes.

TCL Enhancements – Mike has also recently shown me some really nice enhancements to TCL, including displaying list results in a grid control that you can manipulate and copy to the Windows clipboard from and also support for some long lost ARev Softkeys – watch for a video on this soon.

In conjunction with the release of OpenInsight 9.2 Revelation will also be releasing the Universal Driver 4.7. The Universal Driver 4.7 replaces the Universal Driver 4.6 and will be offered in two versions. The free bundled version supplied with OpenInsight 9.x network user licenses (NUL) and the standard version to be used with OpenInsight 8.0.x and below as well as Advanced Revelation.

Both products are expected to be released in Q2 2010.