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January 11, 2018

Active Query Builder for .NET 3.4 lets add linked objects easier.

We're glad to announce the new minor version of Active Query Builder 3 for .NET WinForms and WPF Editions. You can evaluate the new version by requesting the trial. Customers can download the new version in the Customer's area.

In this version, we focused our efforts on improving the convenience of visual query building, simplifying the work with large queries and database schemas, and also increased the performance on loading metadata.

What's new in the Active Query Builder for .NET version 3.4 since the version 3.3?

• SQL expressions error handling

  We improved the handling of user errors when writing SQL expressions. Now wherever the user makes a mistake, the component alerts for this and prompts to fix the error.

• Query inconsistency alerts

  Sometimes users create queries which are syntactically correct but result in an error being executed on the server. Sometimes such queries return a dataset that cannot be correctly interpreted, which may be even worse. This happens, for example, if resultset of a query has same-named columns. The new version will warn the user about the presence of such errors to prevent further problems.

  The new version alerts for the following situations:

  • the specified alias matches the name of another column,
  • deleting an alias leads to matching this column name to the name of another column,
  • adding the expression leads to the same named columns in the sub-query.

  We will be happy to expand this list according to your feedback. Let us know what problems in queries written by your users you come across most often and we will warn the user about them in the next versions.

• Easy addition of linked objects

  Users can add a new table linked to the existing one with just one mouse click using the button next to to the field that binds these tables.

  

• Search and filtration in field list of objects on Design Pane

  Means to search, filter and sort fields in the field lists of objects in the Design Pane have are available for users via the datasource actions menu or the context menu. The user can show only the selected fields in a datasource, sort and filter the fields by their name or description.

• Keyboard shortcuts in Design Pane

  New keyboard shortcuts are added to quickly navigate over objects and fields in the Design Pane.

  • Ctrl+Tab - Displays the overlay with the list of datasources in the Design Pane. The user can select the needed one using arrow keys and press Enter to move focus to it or press Esc to close the overlay.
  • Alt+Enter - Shows the Properties dialogue for the focused datasource on the Design Pane.
  • Ctrl+Space - Displays the datasource context menu.
  • Сtrl+[Left/Right arrows] - Moves focus to the next/previous datasource.
  • Ctrl+F - Displays the search panel in the focused datasource.

• Metadata loading speed

  Internal optimisation allowed to speed up both metadata loading from the server, and display of database schemas containing thousands and tens of thousands of objects in the Database Schema Tree.

• Other improvements

  • Quick navigation area in the Design Pane with the ability to shrink/enlarge objects has been added for the WPF Edition.

  • Parameter values of stored procedures and table-valued functions are now defined using the Properties bar and can be changed at any time. In the previous versions, this was possible via the special dialogue only when a procedure is added to the query.

  

  • New buttons to edit the name and remove CTE in the top of the sub-query navigation bar have been added.

• Breaking changes

  1. Few renamings are made to the UserQueriesView control:

  • The AllowEditUserQueries property has been renamed to AllowEdit;
  • The UserQueryItemRenamed, EditUserQuery, UserQueryItemRemoved events have been renamed to QueryRenamed, QueryEdit, QueryRemoved.

  2. The GetProcedureParameters event has been removed. Use the DatasourceAdded event to specify procedure parameters programmatically. See the code sample here.

Author: Sergey Smagin at ActiveDBSoft.

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