I'm happy to announce that VisionX 5.6.457 is available.
It's one of this magic moments where everything is perfect.

VisionX 5.6 is the biggest update after 5.5. It contains many bugfixes but even more new features. The new features are described here. We still have so many ideas to improve the development process and to help people creating own (enterprise) applications, so be curious what else is to come.

After a release is before the next release, so our next release will focus on UX and Smart Bricks. A smart brick is a small unit with big features. Think about user management. Sounds simple, but can be complex if you think about user and roles. Such simple thing can be a smart brick in VisionX. Simply use the user management smart brick and get full support for user and roles management without additional thinking.

We're going to do a little update to our UI designer to save mouse clicks and make simple things even easier.

If you have a question or want to know more details, just leave a message.

The download area already contains links to the latest version of VisionX.
Have fun, creating your own applications.

We are happy to announce that our EPlug 1.2.43 is out.

EPlug is our Eclipse plugin for JVx applications and also for our low-code platform VisionX.

The main improvements were a complete redesign and a big performance tuning.
For sure, we have some great new features like:

• Support for ColumnViews
• Support for MasterReferences
• Support for SortDefinitions
• Support for new Var(...)
• Metadata cache improvements
• Avoid compile Errors when columns cannot be checked
• Show element in tree (one click)
• Bugfixes

Feel free to try out our new version and send us your feedback.

-> Eclipse Marketplace

Our latest release is now available, just in time for the holidays. Our elves… ahem, our developers... have been very busy this year building the functionality you’ve been asking for. With this release you should be able to build amazing applications with even more functions, faster and easier!

We’ve put our existing native clients on completely new technological footing. The mobile client is developed with Google’s Flutter framework, which makes it possible to develop truly native mobile apps for iOS and Android with a single code base. This means that apps can look identical on both platforms or iOS apps can have the typical Apple look (Cupertino Controls) while Android apps appear in Google Material Design.

The user interfaces of VisionX mobile applications are now 1:1 identical with the web applications, so any mobile application can be implemented according to the customer’s individual requirements. If very specific UI elements or features are needed, the mobile app can be extended at the Dart code level in the Flutter framework, or even with native Object C or Android SDK code. Customizing examples are provided, as well as an API. With all of these changes, visual designability in VisionX is still preserved. And while we’re talking about mobile, the new comprehensive responsive functionality of VisionX is very helpful - see below.

Previously you could only preview mobile views directly on a device. Now you can look at a live preview in your browser with the mobile simulator. This makes designing for mobile much faster and more intuitive.

And if all of this is Greek to you, don’t worry. It simply translates to easier design and testing of mobile apps with better user interfaces.

Responsive design refers to a flexible web design approach that “responds” to the size and capabilities of the device. For example, on a phone users would see content shown in a single column view; a tablet might show the same content in two columns. Images may be resized and menus might be displayed in a completely different form.

We have made our existing responsive design designable through the VisionX User Interface Designer. You can now determine which group of elements are automatically wrapped on smartphones, or if you should determine yourself how the elements should be arranged. The frequently used editing panel already contains the typical default settings, and so all new screens are automatically responsive, including detail view. This applies immediately not only to web apps but also to mobile and desktop applications. So you can be sure your apps look great, no matter what device the user has or what size the window is.

Most apps don’t stand on their own; they connect with internal or third-party apps and databases to send or retrieve information, most often through REST APIs. VisionX support for REST services just got easier.

In addition to REST support in the workflow engine, we’ve now added powerful CRUD REST support. This makes working with REST services as easy as working with database tables, with just a few clicks. Out of the box we support more than 50 REST services from various standard software and SaaS services. Through Zapier (an amazing web app that allows you to automate actions between different web apps) we can actually support over 2000 apps with countless services.

Just a few of the many popular applications we directly support: SAP, Salesforce, Sharepoint, Zapier, OData, Asana, ClickSend, Google, Jira, OneSignal, Slack, Stripe, Trello, Twitter and Cronetwork.

You can also configure CRUD REST services yourself for other REST services more easily than with other vendors, in order to integrate any system with your VisionX applications.

With the new Query Editor, even business users / citizen developers can easily query data and use it in screens, dashboards or reports. Links between tables are automatically taken into account and group functions such as sum, average, etc. can be used. This makes it much easier to develop advanced automation for report generation and much more.

We provide a huge library of built-in actions, like sending an email or getting approval, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. With a total of more than 210 actions, business users can add a lot more functions and logic to their applications. For this purpose, we have also greatly improved the function of the Action Editor. This includes action categories, intuitive action search function and action documentation. Many new visual entry helpers are available for selecting action parameters to make it very easy to use, for instance color selection, moving actions and much more.

Here is a selection of new functions:

• Parameters to pass to screens or to save temporary values
• Duplicate record
• Make values in columns unique
• Set all kinds of UI properties
• Set style and more

User Profiles Add On - Improved:

• Save filters by name
• AND / OR support
• More filter operators
• Exclude columns from full-text filters

Usability improvement and more features:

• Preview function in the new Screen Wizard to preview the results of the selected screen layout
• Improved screen layout
• User interface designer usability improved (especially with the Advanced FormLayout)
• Performance improvements in the User Interface Designer
• Performance improvements with big data models at Postrges and Oracle
• Comboboxes have been extended with a new Master Data Edit Screen, so that the selectable values of the combobox can be edited immediately
• Installer provided with trusted Windows Certificate

And last but not least, more than 150 bugs were fixed.

The download area already contains links to the latest version of VisionX.

Please report any problems as usual and have fun turning your vision into reality!

The next VisionX release will support Docker. If you are not familiar with Docker, it's worth a try. It offers super fast deployment and app delivery without additional hardware or software installation. If you're interested in Docker simply use Google.

The whole Docker technology is a big plus for application developers and also for our low-code platform VisionX. We will support Docker deployment with our next release.

Every application, created with VisionX, requires a Java application server like Tomcat and a relational database like Postgresql in order to run. If you don't own such runtime environment, it might be tricky to roll out your application! Sure, there are very cheap hosting provider which offers root server and application hosting, but this requires lots of IT skills. With docker, deployment is getting easier for you.

With next VisionX, it will be possible to create a pre-defined docker container in seconds. Use this container to create your own docker image and use Docker to run your application.

We'll show you some impressions how this will work:

And it will also be possible to use existing Docker Hosting Provider to run your application.
We tried it out with sloppy.io:

Our docker container uses our own Tomcat definition, which can be found here. Feel free to use our tomcat image in your environment. It solves some common configuration problems like custom port definition, username, password.

VisionX 5.4.3900 is available!

It's a small bugfix release with following improvements:

• Fixed using server storage in combobox

  It wasn't possible to use a server storage in the data wizard.

• FilterEditor API improved

  The FilterEditor API change was needed to support new features of Profiles and Filter AddOn. It's now possible to better group And/Or and to disable "expert mode".

The download area already contains links to latest VisionX binaries.

Please report any problems as usual and have fun with VisionX.

If you want to add some native libraries at runtime, it was tricky with Java 8+:

This was a valid solution:

Since Java 10+ it's not possible anymore, because of: JDK-8210522
Some details from Stackoverflow

If someone still needs a solution for Java 10+, here it is:

This code won't work if you are using Java 8. If you want support for e.g. Java < 10, simply use reflection
Sounds simple, but it is not simple.....

Here's a working solution: toPDF project (search for addLibraryPath(String pPath)).

The code in detail:

Not simple!!!

Summarized: It's not easy but it's still possible. So.... why are things getting more and more complex?

VisionX 5.4.2450 is available!

It's a small update release with following improvements:

• MySql database support

  We fixed a problem with app export (from embedded PostgreSql) and re-import into a MySql database. It wasn't possible to configure combobox columns.

• Popup Menu button click

  Sometimes, a click on the arrow of a popup menu button, didn't show the popup and triggered the button action instead.

• Screen generation

  A new screen with only one table was generated with an additional "white" panel.

• Filter AddOn update

  We improved the Filter AddOn and now support And/Or grouping. It's also possible to save and load filter settings.

  Some impressions:

  Filter AddOn

  Load settings

• Filter Editor API

  We improved our Filter Editor API. It's now possible to define the Full-text Filter column names and also which column names can be filtered in general. It's possible to group filter editors by condition (or, and, ...). This enhancement is relevant for developers.

VisionX 5.4.1835 is available!

It's a great release with big changes.

The new VisionX version got updates of used open source libraries. It runs with openJDK 12 and supports openJDK 14. It comes with awesome responsive UI support for desktop, web and mobile. We support our brand new mobile UI which is still under development.

What's different?

• New MorphPanel with full responsive support

  This feature is available for Desktop, Web and Mobile devices. Create only one screen to support all targets.

  Responsive for Desktop

  Web settings

  Mobile settings

• Responsive option for Panels

  Simply en/disable the responsive feature for single panels.

  

  Responsive option

• MorphPanel navigation bar

  The MorphPanel shows a small navigation bar directly in the screen. You can use this bar to switch between the tabs without opening the customizer every time.

  

  Morph Panel navigation

• New work-screen wizard

  We have 4 types of screens: Table with Detail form, Table, Form, Empty. Each type has different layout options for Web, Desktop, Mobile and Universal. The difference are gaps and margins and default settings of elements. Some layouts include full-text search and some don't include search options.

  

  New screen wizard

• New customizable screen generators

  The screen generators are customizable for developers. Simply create your own or extend an existing generator and use it directly in VisionX. Simply create your own definition file like this one:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

  <generator>
    <group text="Table with detail form"
           image="/c/s/v/i/w/w/category_tableform.png">
      <entry class="com.sibvisions.visionx.uigenerator.WebTableFormUIGenerator"
             text="Web layout"
             image="/c/s/v/i/w/w//group_web.png" />
      <entry class="com.sibvisions.visionx.uigenerator.MobileTableFormUIGenerator"
             text="Mobile layout"
             image="/c/s/v/i/w/w//group_mobile.png" />
      <entry class="com.sibvisions.visionx.uigenerator.TableFormUIGenerator"
             text="Desktop layout"
             image="/c/s/v/i/w/w//group_desktop.png" />
      <entry class="c.s.visionx.uigenerator.UniversalTableFormUIGenerator"
             text="Universal layout"
             image="/c/s/v/i/w/w//group_universal.png" />
    </group>
  </generator>

• Live Preview without any differences

  We improved our UI for browsers. New layouts, better performance and same features.

• Shared folder support

  An awesome new feature is the shared folder support for your projects if you are a developer. Simply put your POJOs or Beans in the new shared folder and use this classes in your client or server classes.

• New domain management

  Change pre-defined or create custom datatypes. The screen is available in VisionX' Administration menu.

  

  Domain management

• Support for latest Workflow AddOn (3.0)
• Performance improvement of Designer

This is how the responsive mode works on Desktop

Some impressions of our new mobile client are available here

The download area already contains links to latest VisionX binaries.

Please report any problems as usual and have fun with VisionX.

VisionX 5.3.2 is available!

It's a minor update release with big changes.
The release got updates of open source libraries like JVx and Vaadin UI.

But the biggest changes are the integrated Java 12 support. VisionX 5.3 comes with and runs under Java 12 (openJDK).

What's different?

• Performance improvement of Designer
• Performance improvement of HTML5 UI
• New App Elements

  Save All Changes, Reload All Changes, Advanced Panel and Advanced Group Panel

• REST documentation contains admin services
• Bundled open JDK 12
• Support for latest Workflow AddOn (1.5)

The download area already contains links to latest VisionX binaries.

Please report any problems as usual and have fun with VisionX.

The support for ANT and JRE6 with Eclipse 2018.12.

The plugin was created for:

Don't forget the -clean start (read the original article for more details)!

One more thing you should do:

Photon includes ANT > 1.10. This version requires Java 8. In order to use Java 6, you have to download ANT 1.9.x. Simply download ANT and set the ANT Home to your version, via

If you try to use the bundled ANT with JRE 6, it will fail with an Exception.

Download the plugin from here. It works for us - no warranty!

More Details: Eclipse Photon with ANT and JRE6.