WaveMaker 8.4 - Release date: 20 December 2016
Here is a summary of key features, known issues and bug fixes offered in 8.4 Release.
WaveMaker version 8.4.0.2: Release Date: 2 January 2017
This is a minor release to fix the following issue.
- For some databases, like Oracle and MySQL, filtering based upon datatime and boolean fields was not being honored. This issue has been addressed.
Highlights of v8.4.0
1. Release Management Beta
WaveMaker introduces Release Management through one-click deployment, apps portal, and app versioning. A typical App life cycle involves various phases i.e. development, testing and live. A Deployment or Release Pipeline involves setting up these phases to the respective teams in order to prepare the App for delivery.
By default two phases – demo and live are provided along with the service configurations, like a database, services, and security, picked from app development settings. For the Live phase, you can change the configuration settings and push your app from demo to live without re-building the App. WME users can add phases like QA & Stage to the existing list of Demo and Live.
2. Web Socket Services
WebSocket represents the next evolution of web communications a full-duplex, bidirectional communications channel that operate through a single socket over the Web.
With this release, you can integrate third party WebSocket Service into your WaveMaker app and build real-time data apps. Just like a REST service you can import a WebSocket Service and through a WebSocket Service Variable bind the response to Widgets like Charts, Data Table, Lists, etc and have them reflect data in real time.
3. SAML Integration
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML-based standard for exchanging authorization and authentication data between security domains.
SAML Configuration in WaveMaker helps you to configure the WaveMaker application with any SAML 2.0 compliant Identity provider, like AD FS and OneLogin. The profiles that are supported are Web Browser SSO Profile and Single Logout Profile.
4. Mobile Offline Data Support Beta
With WaveMaker’s offline mechanism, you can enable offline access to select database entities and data. Any changes made to these selected entities will be stored in the storage layer and the data server will be updated once the mobile app comes online. You can also bundle persistent data into the installer thus ensuring data access offline.
5. Prefab Development
With the new publishing option, now Prefabs development is easier than before. Using this option you can:
- publish Prefab to the workspace – publish the prefab to the workspace and it is accessible across all the projects.
- update Prefab to an app – will update the Prefab in a specific project which can be updated when the project loads
6. Project Configuration
App Configuration is externalized at each service through configuration profiles. Configuration for DB, REST servers etc. can be separated for Development and Deployment environments through Profiles. The profile can be accessed from the Settings option in the Main Menu.
WMO users can no longer create Custom Profiles, however, the existing custom profiles will be honored.
7. VCS Enhancements
Version Control has been enhanced with the commit history option. Using the Commit History option you can view 10 commit messages at a time.
Merge Conflicts dialog has been enhanced to allow selection of multiple files for conflict resolution. You can also Discard Pull Changes if needed from this dialog.
8. Data Table Widget Enhancements
- Column Grouping feature has been added in order to allow you to group several columns under a single heading. #doc
- Row Class and Conditional Class options can be used to customize the display style of a given row based upon the data values within the row. This is similar to Column Class behavior. #doc
- Message configuration for Editable Data Table has been enhanced to include CRUD operation messages. #doc
- Added an exportdatasize property on the data table. This property specifies the number of records that can be exported. #doc
Enhancements
- Live Form and Form widgets can be configured to be displayed Inline or as Dialog. During the configuration of these widgets, you can set the Type property to Inline or Dialog. #doc
- New Chips Widget has been added which can be used to enable the user to search data and add, delete and edit the same. #doc
- Mobile Enhancements
- localFilePath and localFile properties are exposed for a Mobile Camera Widget and can be used to manipulate the images returned by the widget. #doc
- Custom plugins can now be added to a mobile project. Currently, WaveMaker Mobile project supports a set of Standard plugins that are tested in WaveMaker, plugins other than Standard Plugins can be added with the new release. #doc
- Mobile developers can use the Utils.isIpad and Utils.isIOS methods to customize the app behavior based on the device type.
- Security Configuration
- Session Timeout setting has been added to the Security dialog Login Configuration. Using this option you can set the time period of user inactivity to trigger the expiry of the session. By default, it is set to 30 minutes. #doc
- In the case of XSS White List Strategy, you can define tag rules by providing custom tag rules. Earlier this could be achieved only by uploading policy file. #doc
- Deferred Loading of Widgets can be configured for widgets whose Show behavior is determined at run-time. For these widgets, setting the Load on Demand property to will defer the initialization of the widget till it becomes visible.
- Page Title can be set from the Properties panel. It can be bound to a variable thus making it dynamic.
- The default Display Format for Data and Time can be set from the Project Settings. The format set at the Widget level will override this setting. #doc
- The new Auto Close property for Menu, Nav and Panel widget can be configured with the following options:
- outsideClick – will close menu/nav item/panel on click outside the widget
- always – will close the menu/nav item/panel when clicked anywhere on the page
- disabled – will not close menu regardless of click outside or within menu/nav item/panel.
- User selection from a Select widget can be accessed via the displayValue outbound property. It can be used to bind to other widgets or variables.
- Variables Enhancements
- Live Variables input fields of blob type can be bound to Camera/file upload widget’s output. Thus the input to these fields can be via the camera or file upload service.
- APIs generated for Service Variables based out of query data source have been improved.
- New Property Encode URL for widgets for widgets like Picture, Anchor, Iframe and Iframe Dialog that takes an URL as input. If checked, at runtime the URL will be encoded.
- Dependency on the Jasper Reports is removed, hence if you want to add JasperReports integration in your application, you should explicitly add the Jasper dependency to the project pom or add jars.
Bug Fixes
- Now, the Default Value for Switch and Toggle widgets is not mandatory. If not provided at design time the first item of the Dataset Value will be set to the Default Value.
- Provision to support the HTML5 validations for the required attributes in the Safari browsers has been added.
- Multiple issues with data types being not honored while database import have been addressed.
- The issue with dataValue of RadioSet widget within a Live Form being displayed as undefined has been fixed.
- The issue with Checkbox not honoring Checked and Unchecked value property has been fixed.
- The issue with inline filter options in Data Table widget, when set to “Select widget” not displaying distinct values, has been fixed.
- In Query editor, now the query executes even if the query input parameter value is a different language.
- The issue with Security Settings changing intermittently has been addressed.
- The issue with the insert of DateTime type column using Stored Procedures has been fixed.
Technology Stack
UI Framework
| Description | JS Library | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|
| JS Binding | jquery | 2.2.3 | |
| jquery-ui* | 1.11.4 | ||
| MVC Framework | angular | 1.5.5 -> 1.5.8 | |
| angular-ui-bootstrap | 2.0.1 -> 2.2.0 | ||
| Editor | ace-editor | 1.2.2 | |
| Styles | bootstrap | 3.3.6 | |
| Charting | d3 | 3.5.17 | |
| nvd3 | 1.8.3 | ||
| CORS support, prefabs | xdomain | 0.7.5 | |
| Built-in functions | lodash | 4.12.0 -> 4.16.4 | |
| Device support, gestures | hammerjs | 2.0.8 |
*Optimised jQuery-UI library excluding unwanted components like accordion, datepicker, dialog, progressbar, spinner, tabs, and all jQuery-UI Effects.
Back-end Frameworks
| Description | Java Library | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring Framework | 4.2.0 | ||
| Security framework | Spring Security | 3.2.3 -> 4.1.2 | |
| Java JSON utilities | Gson | 2.2.4 | |
| DB Persistence library | Hibernate | 4.3.11 | |
| Sample database | HSQL | 2.3.3 | |
| JSON library | Jackson | 2.6.3 | |
| Logging framework | SLF4j | 1.7.12 | |
| Http client library | HttpComponents | client-4.5.2, core-4.3.2, mime-4.5.2 | |
| REST API annotations | Swagger | 1.3.10 | |
| Logging framework | Log4j | 1.2.17 |
Run Time Environment
| Description | Version |
|---|---|
| JDK | 7.0 |
| Tomcat | 6.0 |