BOI Newsletter 01/2020

We wish you a Happy New Year! In our first newsletter of 2020 we want to share exciting news with you:

 

 

We hope you enjoy reading our newsletter!

Daniele Haiböck-Sinner and the BOI Team

40 Years BOI + 2020 = (R)EVOLUTION

Starting in 2020, our visions will become reality: We are launching the development of BOI’s new maintenance tool: FreeDa!

We will keep you updated about the planning of our new product FreeDa and the development progress on our website and in our newsletter.

Launching the FreeDa development 2020

FreeDa is going to be BOI’s new maintenance system for tables from relational databases. FreeDa will offer comprehensive functionalities for data maintenance and processes for maintenance workflows regardless of the operating system involved. It is going to be data-base neutral and in accordance with the high demands of modern software architecture. We are going to develop the FreeDa product portfolio within the next 3 years:

 

  • FreeDa direct                   

First, we will offer an intuitive, online table editor for direct maintenance of different relational databases: FreeDa direct.

 

  • FreeDa Table Edition     

In 2022, we plan to launch FreeDa Table Edition: A comprehensive maintenance system for audit-proof maintenance of RDB tables. FreeDa Table Edition will offer the functionalities of TABEX4 Table Manager and MainTable on a whole new base, include additional features, and show a high state-of-the-art usability of its GUI.

 

  • FreeDa Workflow Edition            

The final development stage FreeDa Workflow Edition will furthermore offer individually configurable maintenance workflows. FreeDa Workflow Edition will be published in 2023.

 

The first step: requirements specification

We are currently working on the requirements specifications for all development stages of our FreeDa products. We conduct detailed surveys and categorize requirements of our customers and prospective new customers. As we want to make FreeDa a standard software, this comprehensive collection of requirements is crucial.

Could you see yourself becoming involved in the development of FreeDa or helping us by sending your requirements to us? We would be happy to get back to you to discuss your ideas and use cases. Contact us!

Enhancement for our BOI Support Team!

We are very happy to welcome back our former employee Joost Meuwissen!

After spending some years in the world of banks, he has now returned to BOI. As a specialist for TABEX4, he enriches our support team since January 1st. His core competences are TABEX4 for Mainframe and the database system DB2. Your requests regarding these topics are in save hands with him!

Welcome back, Joost!

News from the BOI Customer Portal

We restructured the two pages “Current releases” and “Overview Updates” for a better overview.

New page “Hotfixes”

Hotfixes correct security or execution errors with bigger impact. Thus, they are very important and should be available as easy and fast as possible. Therefore, we decided to place all hotfixes centrally on one page.

The new sorting by version and operating system enables you to install all relevant hotfixes in a comfortable and safe way.

 

New page “Releases & Updates”

All information regarding releases and updates is now on an own page as well.

The new sorting by operating system and updates allows you a quick and comfortable overview of all available releases and updates.

Another new feature is the column “Links to Hotfixes”: If a hotfix to a release is available, it will be shown there. By clicking on the associated link you directly get to the page “Hotfixes”.

Java 11

Java Versions and Distributions

We keep our products TABEX4, MainTable and JTC constantly updated - also in terms of the supported Java Versions.

The world of Java has become kind of confusing recently: Oracle's license policies, functional adaptations, and the release plan on one hand - and the related Open Source Java Distributions on the other.

Therefore, we have decided to take several actions to ensure the compatibility of our products with Java.

Ensuring compatibility with Java 11

We are happy to confirm the full compatibility with Java 11:

All our product components that are implemented in Java were tested with Java 11. In addition, we tested all non-BOI components that are delivered together with our products (such as TomEE Application Server for JTC). For those products that weren't compatible, we adapted the respective components (e.g. updating or exchanging them with a newer version). Thus, TABEX4, MainTable and JTC are now fully compatible with Java 11.

Ensuring compatibility with Open Source Java Distributions

We tested all of our related software components with OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto. We are happy to confirm full compatibility here as well.

Supported and tested Java Versions

With the beginning of our new product releases, you will now require at least Java 8 for every platform. We tested operability with the versions 8 and 11 and can confirm compatibility. However, for the Java Subversions 9 and 10 we cannot give our approval. We assume that they will not be in productive use with our customers.

Mainframe (z/OS)

With the beginning of our new product releases, you will now require at least IBM Java 8 (z/OS) for your Java components on the Mainframe. Currently, Java 11 for z/OS is not yet available, and for other (older) versions as the mentioned we cannot give our approval.

Modularization in terms of Java 11

Since Java 11 is not yet available for Mainframe, we decided to not take any actions regarding the modularization of our software. Otherwise, the adapted components would not (yet) be operable on the Mainframe. Where applicable, we will carry out the modularization at a later time, when Java 11 for Mainframe has successfully been developed.

Search by project ID in data spaces

With TABEX4 Release 5.2.0, we have enhanced the search option by project ID: We have extended the allowed data space and lifted the limitations.

Project IDs are an organizational way to manage your tables. Furthermore, they enable you to localize project-related tables at application data access by including the project ID in your search path. TABEX4 will compare the project ID with all tables in the stated data space(s) until the corresponding one is found. This table will then automatically be used for the further defined data search.

Data space extension

In former TABEX Versions, searches by project ID could only be applied to the first data space of the search path. That resulted in the limited space of only 2 GB for your tables and the respective test levels, projects, environments, etc.: 2 GB are the maximum size of a single data space.

With TABEX4 Release 5.2.0, the search by project ID can now be extended to a maximum of 10 data spaces of the search path in total. This means for example, you can now search not only the first data space, but as well the second and third, and so on. Data spaces that may be chained behind will still be searched without ID.

Distributing the tables, that are to be searched by project ID, to the various data spaces is completely and freely up to you. You may explicitly control that by using TABEX4's utility functions for table loading tasks.

Compatibility with existing structures

The now implemented extension will not affect any existing structures: Your loading processes as well as search paths will function as before and deliver identical results.

You can find a description of the new and former options for defining search paths in TABEX4 Manual BOIDOC-201 Administration & User Guide, Chapter "SHS access specifications".