What a day!
Our final release of VisionX 2.2 is out and it's the best piece Software we've ever released.

We worked very hard during the last 5 months to reach our goals and to make it happen. The new version brings many new productivity features and contains many bugfixes. The focus was and is still on end-users. But in VisionX 2.2, we have many new features for Software developers and Oracle Forms users as well. It depends on your license if you see more or less options.

So what's new? First, VisionX is compatible to Java 8 and can handle Lambda expressions without problems. This isn't relevant for end-users but for all developers. VisionX 2.2 still runs with Java 7 but it's no problem to switch the Java version to 8.

VisionX 2.2 has our brand new JavaFX UI integrated. If you have Java8, it'll be possible to start your applications as JavaFX applications or to export JavaFX standalone applications.

The new release is based on JVx 2.3.

So let's talk about Features

• Java 8 support

  VisionX reads Java 8 syntax and if your project was set to target version 1.8, VisionX will create action listeners with lambda syntax. VisionX got new global configuration options:

  <options>
      <java>
        <source>1.8</source>
        <target>1.8</target>
        <compliance>1.8</compliance>
      </java>
    </options>

  It's also possible to configure single applications via Eclipse settings, for Java 8. The configuration will be read from VisionX automatically.

• Vaadin 7.5.0

  VisionX 2.2.403 includes our current vaadin UI and it's based on vaadin 7.5.0.

• OpenShift

  VisionX supports application creation for OpenShift. You'll need a special license for this feature. The integration contains a new wizard and is available as new option in new application wizard.

  OpenShift

  OpenShift - New application

• Multi-IDE support

  VisionX 2.2.403 creates project files for Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ. Simply open existing projects and start coding.

• Config file encryption

  It's now possible to encrypt configuration files.

  Config encryption

• Corporation style

  VisionX applications have a new UI style for web mode. It's the corporation style for applications with many screens and big menus. Simply switch the style via VisionX.

  Corporation style

• Edit JDBC Url

  VisionX supports custom JDBC Urls (Developer feature). This feature could be relevant if you have an Oracle RAC or complex JDBC parameter.

  Edit JDBC Url

• JavaFX UI

  VisionX got support for JavaFX applications. Simply start the live preview or create a desktop JavaFX application in three clicks.

  JavaFX Live Preview

  JavaFX desktop application

• New deployment modes

  VisionX supports WildFly 9, IoT applications and latest Tomcat versions.

  Deployment modes

• Edit panel (aka Morph panel)

  The Edit panel is a brand new component. It's also called Morph panel because it changes the style.

  Inline mode		Popup mode		Split mode
  Tabset mode

  You can use this panel to show e.g. a table of records and open detailed information as popup, as replacement of the table or show the details as split or tabset. Don't change the screen to show different modes.

• More features

  Use custom css files for your web application,
  Use mobile preview applications available for Android and iOS,
  Spreadsheet reports will be created as XLSX instead of XLS,
  Full CORS support for your web application,
  Full CORS support for application logic called via REST, ...

Simply try out our new VisionX.

If you're already customer, please check your download area!

Have fun with our new VisionX release - it's really powerful.

A new version of EPlug is available. It's a smaller bugfix release.

Changes:

• Fixed that all dialogs (including trial) would not be displayed
• Resource detection for Maven projects should now work correctly
• Fixed NullPointerException, if "check databooks while typing" was active and a file was edited that was not a Java file
• Fixed possible NullPointerException in the DataBooksView
• "Auto Reload" and Auto Select" are now properly disabled if EPlug is not active on the project

Simply "Check for updates" in your Eclipse IDE.

We're happy to announce that JVx 2.3 is available. The minor version update is more than a small update. It
comes with a bunch of new features. We think it's an update worth:

Here's the list of changes

• Support linking with RoboVM

  It wasn't possible to create iOS applications with JVx because it had an internal problem. With 2.3 it will work.
  There's still a problem with RoboVM because JVx contains swing UI but if you remove the UI from the jar, everything
  will work!

• Download via REST

  It's now possible to call actions which will return instances of IFileHandle, via generic REST services. The content
  will be sent back as binary stream (download).

• CORS for REST

  Simply set the parameter: cors.origin to the allowed domain names (a comma separeted list).

• Connection pooling

  It was possible to use connection pooling with JVx but with some limitations. The current support is an official solution without demand for additional source code. The only thing you should consider is that the initialization of the database should be moved to an event. The DBAccess class got new methods: eventConfigureConnection and eventUnconfigureConnection.
  Use configure to prepare the database session before you

• Server-side hooks for event processing

  JVx 2.3 got invokeLater for server-side calls and we introduced the new interface ICallHandler.
  It has some very useful methods for better server control:

  public CallEventHandler<IBeforeFirstCallListener> eventBeforeFirstCall();
  public CallEventHandler<IAfterLastCallListener> eventAfterLastCall();
  public CallEventHandler<IBeforeCallListener> eventBeforeCall();
  public CallEventHandler<IAfterCallListener> eventAfterCall();

  public void invokeAfterCall(Runnable pRunnable);
  public void invokeAfterLastCall(Runnable pRunnable);
  public void invokeFinally(Runnable pRunnable);

• Better Deployment support for VFS

  We had some crazy tweaks especially for some application servers with virtual file systems like JBoss. We removed the dirty code and replaced it with a more generic approach and now we have nice support for VFS and no more problems with WildFly.

• Filter/Sort events added to IDataBook
  public DataBookHandler eventBeforeFilterChanged();
  public DataBookHandler eventAfterFilterChanged();

  public DataBookHandler eventBeforeSortChanged();
  public DataBookHandler eventAfterSortChanged();

• Integration of external property files

  It's possible to include external property files into your application' config.xml:

  <application>
     <include>/configuration.properties</include>
     <securitymanager>
        <accesscontroller>dummy value</accesscontroller>
     </securitymanager>
     <property name="property.value" value="${value}"/>
  </application>

  The property file (configuration.properties):

  securitymanager.class = com.sibvisions.SecurityManager
  securitymanager.accesscontroller = com.sibvisions.AccessController
  value = value1

  The virtual result for reading values:

  <application>
    <securitymanager>
      <accesscontroller>com.sibvisions.AccessController</accesscontroller>
      <class>com.sibvisions.SecurityManager</class>
    </securitymanager>
    <property name="property.value" value="value1"/>
    <value>value1</value>
  </application>
• Autodetection of tnsnames.ora

  It was possible to set the system property oracle.net.tns_admin for an oracle JDBC driver. New JVx tries to find the location automatically and sets the property if path was found.

• API changes

  We did two smaller API changes. The first one:

  LoggerFactory.destroy is now public

  The class AbstractSessionContext was removed without replacement. The only method, getMasterSession, was moved to ISessionContext. It's now easier to access the current master session in life-cycle object. It shouldn't be a problem for you because AbstractSessionContext was meant as internal class and not for public use. If you had a cast to AbstractSessionContext, simply remove the cast and everything will be fine.

We also have some smaller changes and bugfixes for you, but above list only contains the most important changes. For a full list of changes, please read the Changelog

Great news for everyone who uses, or plans to use our Eclipse plugin called EPlug, a new version  is available! Version 1.2.0 brings a whole truckload of new features and bug fixes.

Changes (Pro and VisionX)

• Completion for resources is now more reliable
• Sped up the time it takes for VisionX to reload a file if a change was made in Eclipse
• MetaData changes are now properly handled
• When selecting from VisionX to Eclipse it will be made sure that the server and client class both show up
• Added the "Checkl File (EPlug)" command, which allows to easily re-run all checks on the current file
• The hyperlinks for server calls/actions are now "fuzzy", which means that if there is no function with that signature, the next best function will be the target
• Improved the error messages if there was a problem when checking databooks
• Added completion for generic resources, which means you now can get completion for any resource in your project
• The call to UIImage.getImage(String) is now checked at compile time if the resource exists
• By default, databooks are now checked while you're typing for instant feedback. This can be disabled in the project properties
• Added a view that displays all databooks in the current file, including column name and type
• Added support for the constructor of UIEditor
• Dramatically increased the speed of compile time checks

Eclipse Mars

Also we have tested and developed EPlug with Eclipse Mars, which means that you can use it in the latest and greatest Eclipse release version. Of course we haven't dropped support for older versions, EPlug should continue to work even on Eclipse Juno.

Download

You can install EPlug directly from the Eclipse Marketplace.

Since last year we are offering an Eclipse Plugin that integrates  the JVx workflow into Eclipse. Now that EPlug 1.2 has been released, we believe it's long overdue to give you a guided tour of the experience that EPlug is offering.

Trial

We offer a free trial period so that you can test EPlug without any problems. The first time you start Eclipse with EPlug you will be asked if you'd like to only test EPlug, or if you'd like to select an already purchased Pro license.

When clicking the Trial button, a new trial license will be issued and you'll be able to evaluate EPlug with all features for 30 days.

'First Run' Wizard

One of the biggest usability improvements compared to previous versions is discoverability of how to use and activate EPlug. With the new version we have added a "First Run Wizard" which allows to directly activate EPlug on selected projects.

Usage

EPlug integrates seamlessly into Eclipse, but to use most of its features it has to be activated on each project you want to use it with. This can be done in the previously shown First Run Wizard, or by right-clicking a project and selecting "Activate EPlug" under "Configure".

From there on you will be able to use code completion, compile time checks and all the other features on this project.

Better and extended commands

A handful of commands are added by EPlug, which make it faster to navigate in JVx projects.

Go to complement class

It's often the case that you want to go from the server to the client class, or from the client to the server class. Most of the time in Eclipse this involves expanding trees and looking for the correct class in the Package Explorer. That is why we've implement the command "Go to complement class", which enables you to quickly jump from the server to client, or the other way round.

As you can see the command is available from the context menu, but you can also bind it to a key in the "Keys" preferences.

Open Declaration

The "Open Declaration" command, sometimes known by its key binding "F3", allows you to jump to the declaration of whatever is currently under the cursor. We've extended this command with the possibility to jump to the declaration of event handlers (actions), server methods and storage's. If the item underneath the cursor is not handled by our extension, the default "Open Declaration" command will be invoked.

The declaration:

Because we've extended the "Open Declaration" command, you can bind the "Open Declaration (EPlug)" command also to "F3" and enjoy faster navigating in your JVx files without any downsides.

DataBooks

The biggest and most important feature of EPlug is its support for data books. EPlug offers code completion, compile time checks and more for column names on remote and local data books.

Code completion

Everytime you want to get or set a value, or wire up an editor you will receive code completion suggestions with all column names that are in the databook, it doesn't matter if those are remote or added locally.

Compile time checks

Of course we also added compile time checks, which means that you can never mistype a column name ever again.

With the newest version, these compile time checks are even active while you type!

Text hovers

When hovering above a column name, a simple text hover will inform you about the type of the column.

Storage support

RemoteDataBooks require to have the correct name set so that the server side storage is found, of course we do also offer code completion, compile time checks, text hovers and hyperlinks for this.

The DataBook View

And last but for sure not least, with the newest version a feature has been added which I've been looking forward to for quite some time: The DataBook View. A view similar to the Outline view, which displays all databooks in the current file and all of its columns.

Actions/Events and server calls

Support for actions, events and server calls is the second big EPlug feature. For events and actions we support a very Lambda-like system that uses reflection and strings. Obviously the compiler was never able to understand this system and provide feedback or support for it, but with EPlug this has changed.

Code Completion

Whenever you want to wire up an event, you'll now receive code completion for all fitting methods in the used class.

Action methods:

Remote calls:

As you can see in upper image, we also provide a fast and convenient way to create methods if necessary.

Compile time checks

During compilation the actions, events and server calls are checked for their correctness, and if there is a problem it'll be reported to you.

You can also see the quick fixes for this problem, which do not only offer to create the missing method, but also suggesting methods with similar names in case a typo happened.

Text hovers, hyperlinks and refactoring support

Additionally EPlug provides text hover and hyperlink support, that means that you can now jump to the methods by using your mouse (Ctrl+Left Click) or the "Open Declaration (EPlug)" command. Refactoring support has also been added, which means that you can now rename action/event handlers without having to manually search for all uses and change those.

Resources

Dealing with resources can often be a pain in the neck, especially if you constantly have to look up the path and check if you're now using the correct image. Because we also felt these pains, we've added functionality to EPlug to make sure that working with resources becomes easy and painless.

Support for UIImage

Whenever you use UIImage methods, you can now enjoy code completion, previews of the images and compile time checks.

Preview:

Compile checks:

Generic resource completion

For all other resources, we do only offer a "generic" code completion system and no preview. Still, this is a huge help.

Comments

One of the more simple and not so obvious features of EPlug is that it allows to have code completion of the current class in comments, and also provides the JVx category separators.

Separator:

Action/call completion in comments:

VisionX support

Now we've arrive at the big final, support for VisionX. For all of you who do not know VisionX, it is our product for rapidly building applications from scratch or migrating already existing systems. It allows to build GUIs and the respective database backend within a matter of minutes. Even though VisionX allows you to build whole applications, from time to time you'll want to do something by hand and this is the great thing about VisionX, all projects and applications are automatically and by design already Eclipse projects. So all you need to do is import the project into Eclipse and start working on it. To improve this workflow further EPlug does offer various features.

Selection synchronization

The selection in Eclipse and VisionX can be automatically synchronized, so that whatever you're working on in the one application is also visible and selected in the other

Automatic applying of changes

VisionX will also automatically refresh its current view if you change a sourcefile in Eclipse, allowing to rapidly and verify changes in a workscreen without the need to manually reload the workscreen.

How and where to get it?

EPlug comes in two flavors, EPlug for JVx and EPlug for VisionX, both are available from the Eclipse Marketplace and can be installed and used freely for 30 days. Afterwards a license is necessary to keep using all features.

I wrote a blog post about JavaFXPorts and Android some weeks ago.

At last Eclipse DemoCamp in Vienna, Tom Schindl asked me about the startup performance on iOS, because his experience with startup performance was horrible with early RoboVM versions. I had no answer because we didn't test our app with iOS and... the question didn't get ouf of my head. Sure, I knew that RoboVM was tuned in last two versions but didn't test it myself.

So, yesterday I had the time to test it out and... Startup and overall performance was same as on Android device!
The iOS device was an iPad Air2 and Android device was Nexus9. The performance may be worse on older devices.
Performance? Application start was finished after touch event (< 1 sec).

My test wasn't as simple as expected because RoboVM has some specifics and iOS needs code signing in order to run an app on real hardware. Also my JVx library (jvx.jar) wasn't usable because it contained SwingUI and one class of it was accessing a member of a parent class:

The listenerList is a member of JComponent:

But the member is not available in RoboVM' phantom class. The solution was easy: Removing SwingUI from jar.
A nice feature for RoboVM would be an ignore list of classes/packages.

Here's a picture of our DemoERP application on iOS:

DemoERP on iOS tablet

It's working but still, a Desktop application 1:1 on a tablet isn't the best idea, e.g. the device type (iPad) or WLAN icon is over the application menu. The iOS port has some problems with TextFields, but we'll report an issue.

Thanks to JavaFXports the creation and deployment of our JavaFX app was super easy!

OpenShift is a PaaS product from Red Hat.
Read further details at Wikipedia or the product site.

It's of interest to us because it's easy to use, supports deployment of pre-created war files and it offers an application server (e.g. Tomcat, JBoss) and a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL) for your applications. OpenShift also has Vert.x as runtime platform if you won't use an application server. The configuration is super easy and your server is ready in around 5 minutes.

The access to your server is protected and you should use a specific client tool from RedHat for advanced configuration or an SSH client like putty.

The PaaS service is so nice because it's the perfect deployment platform for JVx applications. There's a free service for simple tests and maybe smaller applications because there are some limits for memory usage, CPU, and number of applications.

We made some tests with OpenShift and the result was as expected: Our applications did work without problems. Sure, the whole deployment procedure could be more end-user friendly but it wasn't designed for end-users without technical know-how, I guess. It's good enough for software developers or admins.

Our test

We created a new JVx application with VisionX (because it creates the database, has a GUI builder and creates the war file for us) and the application should run with VaadinUI on OpenShift. We didn't have any experience with OpenShift, but with other PaaS products, e.g. Heroku, Cloudbees, Jelastic, AWS.

First steps:

1. Registering an account (what else )
2. Creating a first application
3. Cartridge: Tomcat 7 (JBoss EWS 2.0)
4. Setting application name and domain
5. Adding MySQL 5.5 cartridge

Above steps were enough to run our OpenShift service(s).

Next was accessing the server via SSH client because we didn't install the RedHat client tool (We won't use client tools for cloud services - why the hell). Sure, we had to use another client tool for accessing the server via SSH, but it was working without installation: PuTTY (still strange). A nice web UI would be great... just my thoughts. We found a Java client but didn't test it.

So, what we did:

1. Creating private/public RSA keys with PuTTYgen
2. Configuring OpenShift (used the key from PuTTYgen TextArea because OpenShift didn't like other formats)
3. Testing connection

   Username was displayed in Application settings under SSH Code, e.g. ssh://<username>@app-domain.rhcloud.com/....
   Used the private key file for putty as key (Key authentication, without password)

Next task was, configuring the access to the database because SSH access was already working. It wasn't possible to access the database without tunnel - means, no direct (Internet) access from your client. This wasn't a real problem and PuTTY had support for port tunneling. Simply detected the IP address of the MySQL server. The hostname was set as environment variable and the command export displayed all variables. The variable OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_HOST had all information and our tunnel was working. There's also a property for the MySQL Port but 3306 is default.

What was next?

Deployment.

This wasn't trivial because the platform expected source code and a maven project for automatic deployment. Wrong for us. But there's an official documentation for manual war deployment.

Short summary of steps

1. GIT clone
2. Delete src folder and pom.xml
3. GIT commit & push
4. Copy WAR file into webapps folder
5. GIT commit & push

You don't need git on your client, it's available in your terminal. But... as a developer, git is one of those standard tools...
It's also possible to upload the WAR file via SCP or SFTP...

Done...

Not really because our application was deployed without problems but it didn't work because the JDBC URL was wrong. We set the MySQL servername to localhost because of the tunnel!

Here's the original config.xml:

JVx has a nice feature which allows environment dependent settings and VisionX sets the environment automatically to prod. So, we simply changed the datasource to:

VisionX sets the environment to prod, if it creates a WAR file:

Sure, the solution isn't perfect because the MySQL hostname should be read from the environment variable.
Would be better:

But JVx doesn't support this syntax (right now) -> Feature Request.

Done. Really done.

The application works fine (Login as admin with password admin).

Here's a screenshot, for the case that our OpenShift service isn't running:

OpenShift ERP with JVx and VaadinUI

Our JVx connection implementation for vert.x is up-to-date. It's now based on vert.x 3.0. We support http and socket connections - no API changes.

Updating to vert.x 3.0 from 2.2 was not funny because package structure was changed and some APIs as well. Whatever, it's working.

If you're interested in our vert.x implementation, check the github repository because we don't offer binaries.

Our current VisionX releases have built-insupport for Eclipse, because every new application is also a complete Eclipse project. Simply import an application in your Eclipse IDE and use all features of your IDE to develop/modify the application.

We didn't support other IDEs like NetBeans or IntelliJ IDEA because Eclipse was our preferred IDE and it's still the most used IDE. But nowadays it makes sense to support the big 3. So, why not

Our next VisionX release will come with support for NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA. Simply open the application and run it. No more manual project creation!

We made a short video which demonstrates our upcoming IDE support. First, an application was created in 1 minute and this application was used with NetBeans, IntelliJ and Eclipse - Open.Run.Done.

Here's the preview video:

Above video was made with current development version of VisionX and the next release, with version number 2.2, will be available in this summer.

We're happy to announce that our JavaFX UI 1.0 was released.

The release contains all planned features and some more. We have the complete MDI implementation, Zoom support for windows and the scene, a custom scene style, custom comboboxes and much more.

MDI control		Combobox

Styled Scene

Table format (cells)

Zoom

Master/Detail with Tables and Tree

All custom controls are available as separate library, JFXtensions. This library will work without JVx because it has no dependency to JVx. Simply use our MDI implementation or zoom feature for your own JavaFX application without using JVx.

Jar files are available at SourceForge or Maven central.

Our next steps?

We'll integrate the UI in our product VisionX to allow Live Preview with JavaFX. The first update release with version number 1.1. will contain smaller bugfixes and improvements based on user feedback.

So, send us your Feedback if you use our library.