OpenL Tablets Change Log

Version 5.1.1

This release contains several new features, improvements in the build process and, as always, bug fixes.

IMPORTANT NOTE. Due to the change in the Rules Repository Schema, you would have to scrap the old version of the repository. Don't forget to save your rules somewhere else before doing this.

The Formal Introduction of the OpenL Constrainer

While Constrainer have been a part of the OpenL Tablets distribution for a while, now is a good time to introduce it formally. This is an exciting piece of the technology that definitely deserves it's own project, but we have made the decision to keep it under OpenL Tablets umbrella. There are a few reasons for this

OpenL Constrainer is the main technology behind our almost patented Decision Table Consistency Checking algorithm (see below)

Reversely, the Constrainer benefits from other OpenL technologies, for example, mathematical constraints formulas look nicer with operator overloading, logical problems often look better in the table form, as our new Tutorial 6 conspicuously called Sudoku Puzzle may demonstrate

New Features

Decision Table Consistency Checking for under-coverage and overlapping between rules

OpenL Repository now supports user-defined tags

Improvements

OpenL language now supports BigDecimal and BigInteger arithmetic

Build process have been streamlined to work with Maven2

Data Tables now allow to enter the Fake Primary Key for the types that do not have a primary key field.

Bug Fixes

In this release a lot of efforts have been spent on streamlining build process, improving compatibility with other products and platforms etc. Therefore most fixed bugs and issues had internal nature.

Here are a couple of bugs that may be of interest to users:

JIRA-257 Firefox 3 inserts an extra wrong symbol in Table Editor

JIRA-339 Bug in Decision Table in formulas like '=1

For more details on new features and improvements see documentation

Version 5.0.6

This is mostly a maintenance release with several bugs fixed

Most important bug fixes:

Saving non-string cells in Table Editor caused formatting issues

Repository and Web Service deployment demo documented and configuration issues fixed

Optimized decision tables had problems when variable names were misspelled (wrong case)

Version 5.0.5

New Functionality

JCR-based Repository

AJAX-based Table Editor

Vocabulary

Business Expression Language(BEX)

Using Java Proxy to wrap OpenL Module

Major Bug Fixes

Using OpenL Wrapper in multi-threaded environment - create local copy of RuntimeEnv

Adding operators to handle long arithmetic

Version 4.1.1 Build 7

Performance Optimization

Decision Tables performance has been improved. Indexing has been provided for certain types of conditions resulting in significant performance improvements, especially for the large tables.

Benchmarks

Interactive Benchmarks have been added for all methods. User can run and compare benchmarks. Added Tutorial 5 with Performance and Benchmarks examples

Web Studio Start Screen Customization

Simple customizations can be applied to Web Studio start screen. Now you can impress your boss and your clients with custom look and feel by defining the following System Properties:

-Dorg.openl.webstudio.header.image - for header image file

-Dorg.openl.webstudio.intro.html - for right frame initial html or jsp file

-Dorg.openl.webstudio.tree.bcgr - for project tree background color

Bug Fixes

Fixed new "Simple OpenL Tablets Project" template. It contained an obsolete reference. The problem could be fixed by running "Generate Wrapper..." script in Eclipse.

Version 4.0.1 Build 14

Project Display Name

To change the display name of the OpenL Tablets project go to build/GenerateJavaWrapper.build.xml and change the property "displayName". Then run "Generate ... Wrapper" command from Eclipse Run menu and refresh the project in Eclipse. If WebStudio is open, refresh the project in WebStudio

Business View and Developer View

To address the important issue of having business people involved at the early stages of the project development when business-friendly UI have not been developed yet, Web Studio now provides two display modes: Business and Developer. It defaults to the Business Mode.

To switch between modes click on "Web Studio" text on the Top Menu.

Developer Mode is more or less "show all" mode.

New Functionality in Web Studio

Unit Tests

Run

Trace

Explanation

Advanced Search

Improved look of Excel tables in Web Browser

Web Studio now displays Excel tables using Excel formats for numbers, dates and borders. There are still some compatibility issues due to the fact tha Excel and Html are not 100% compatible, but for the most commonly used Excel formats the results will be very close

Session Timeout

Tomcat default timeout is set for 30 min in conf/web.xml. After a timeout Web Studio will display message and restart web application.

OpenL Changes

The only change worth mentioning was the change of in semantics of the == operator for Strings. Now it is different from standard Java semantics - it still works with nulls, but if both operands are not null it uses equals() for comparison. If this change is accepted by the OpenL community, we are going to expand this semantic change to Dates and other quasi-primitive types.

Version 3.1.0.7 Build 20

Build 20 contains some minor changes that were required for Web Studio introduction

Web Studio prototype is available. Installation

Updated documentation, added Web Studio simple manual and screenshots

Code changes

OpenL Version and Build are now programmatically available using org.openl.main.OpenLVersion.getVersion() and org.openl.main.OpenLVersion.getBuild() methods. Main modules now display version and build when start. It will become handy when (if?) people start coming with support requests.
Nobody came so far. I still wonder is it a good sign?

Fixed problem with empty nodes in Indexer, they were inadvertently inserted there after failed search

Version 3.1.0.7 Build 19

Emergency fix for missed re-export of org.apache.ant plugin

Version 3.1.0.7 Build 18

Cleaned up build, removed unnecessary jars

Removed obsolete Configuration Project

DT API now reflects more structural information (was required for the converter)

Version 3.1.0.7 Build 16

Added Tutorial 3 - Advanced Data and Decision Tables

Added OpenL Tablets Deployment.htm

Version 3.1.0.7 Build 15

Added Data arrays of primitive types

Added Tutorial 2 - Intro to Data Tables

Fixed few problems, most important - "for" loop error

Version 3.1.0.7 vs 3.1.0.6

Configuration

Ant-based and property-based configuration now 100% optional. All configuration can be done through Java classes + import statements within spreadsheets

There is no need to install lang.config project

There is no need for org.openl.rules.java.ant.properties file

Environment Table has new field "import". It is responsible for all the package imports. This is to be used instead of .properties file

The name of language configuration is by default "org.openl.rules.java". Therefore field language is now optional.

Functionality Upgrade

Decision Tables now support other return types than void. This is done by using new RET(return) columns. They work like regular actions with only exception: once RET action is executed, the result of action is immediately(!) returned as return value of Decision Table method. This feature is very useful for all Decision Table with lookup-like functionality. The type of RET column(s) must be compatible with return type of Decision Table Method Header.

Documentation

Updated Getting Started

Added OpenL Tablets Structure and Semantics

Tutorials and Examples

Modified existing examples to reflect changed configuration mechanism

Created Tutorial… step-by-step set of self-documented examples that demonstrate OpenL Tablets features

Bug Fixes

Method OpenLTool.makeOpenLMethod() did not validate return value type properly - fixed