What's new

Highlights

DataWindow painter views

The DataWindow painter provides six views: Design, Preview, Control List, Data, Properties, and Column Specification

Views are nonmodal and synchronized. You can see many views at once, and work in one and then in another. The changes you make are reflected in all views appropriately

For how to manipulate views, see Manipulating views

Using stored procedures to update the database

DataWindow objects can now update the database using stored procedures, which allows you to enhance database security, integrity, and performance. Since stored procedures provide for conditional execution, you can also use them to enforce additional business rules

Automatic naming of controls in DataWindow objects

The DataWindow painter automatically generates names for all controls (formerly called objects) in a DataWindow object. You can define prefixes for control names

DataWindow painter task quick-reference

The quick-reference includes information on new tasks and changed tasks

Unlimited undo/redo

Undo/redo works for as many operations as needed. Property changes, control additions/removals, column specification view changes, and data view changes are all tracked

DataWindow object wizards

Each DataWindow object presentation style has a wizard to guide you through the process of defining the DataWindow object

Improvements in setting property values at execution time

Setting property values at execution time is now tightly coupled to setting property values in the DataWindow painterThe Properties view has buttons next to properties whose values can be set with expressions evaluated at execution time. Clicking the button next to a property lets you define an expression for the property. This keeps together the setting of a property in the painter and the use of an expression to control the value of the property at execution time

New image formats

GIF and JPEG images can be read and used by any control that previously supported bitmaps