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Ganymede developer pre-release 3, dev3.tar.gz, is now available from
ftp://ftp.arlut.utexas.edu/pub/ganymede/
or
ftp://129.116.212.1/pub/ganymede/
if your client has trouble resolving a proper address for
ftp.arlut.utexas.edu.
This developer's release has a very large number of fixes,
improvements, and new features. For the first time, Ganymede comes
very close to being able to be used as a 'drop-in' replacement for
GASH. Not every GASH feature is yet supported, but enough are that
people using GASH can put Ganymede through its paces and evaluate its
functioning as a GASH replacement.
Following is the list of changes in this developer's release.
----
Ganymede Developer Release 3
May 28, 1998
CHANGES
IMPORTANT NOTE: The GASH schema and custom code have been very
significantly revised since dev2c. You will not be able to port
an existing ganymede.db file from 2c or prior for use with the
dev3 GASH schema module. As a general matter, we are not committing
to a lock-down on either schemas or classes until the initial
'production' release.
1. [CLIENT] Double-clicking on objects in the tree opens them for viewing.
It is now more straight-forward to use Ganymede without a
multi-button mouse.
2. [CLIENT] Simplified ContainerPanel Menus.
The menus attached to Object windows have been reduced in number and
made more intuitive.
3. [ADMIN CONSOLE] Fixed Initialization Exception on JDK 1.1.6 / Swing 1.0.2.
The Admin Console used to throw an IllegalArgumentException on
startup when run under JDK 1.1.6 and Swing 1.0.2.
4. [SERVER/CLIENT] Fixed a lot of things regarding the query system.
The client is now a lot smarter about handling non-String query
types, and will provide a list of choices for restricted object
reference fields. Dates are handled with a pop-up calendar, and the
client properly implements 'same day as', 'same week as', and 'same
month as' logic. A single query can handle searching on top-level
fields as well as fields in embedded objects. The whole system is
significantly reworked and improved. The GUI was reorganized.
5. [CLIENT] Custom Table Code Improved.
Previously, the table code used in the admin console and query
results windows was subclassed from the Swing JPanel class. This
caused a lot of mouse events to not get propagated to the table canvas
for some reason. The table code now subclasses directly from
JComponent and works more reliably now. Menus and row selection
occurs reliably on the first mouse click.
6. [CLIENT] Object Panel Loading Speedups.
The manner in which certain GUI components load what may be large lists
of objects has been improved, leading to possibly significant speedups
in bringing up an object window.
7. [CUSTOM] The GASH schema has been significantly revised and completed.
The GASH schema and custom code has been significantly revised.
Instead of there being a separate NISBuilderTask and DNSBuilderTask,
there is now just a single GASHBuilderTask, which generates all the
files supported by the GASH make process. The hosts_info file emitted
does not contain a list of administrators, so you will lose
information if you import GASH files into Ganymede, modify them, and
write them back out via the GASHBuilderTask.
The GASH schema has been revised so that the systems database closely
adheres to the features supported by GASH. The following changes
were made in this regard:
1. Single IP address and DNS record per interface
2. Rooms are bound to a list of networks, and the interface objects
for each system provide a list of IP network choices from the
room the system is placed in.
In addition, the GASHBuilderTask now emits an aliases_info file for
the first time. In theory, you should be able to plug an installation
of Ganymede with the GASH schema loaded into the back-end GASH makefiles
you may already have.
8. [SERVER] Client code can now use the server to send mail.
It is now possible to write client-side code that can send mail out,
even if that code is running as an applet in a restricted browser
context. The mail is sent by the Ganymede server rather than the
client, and includes a signature identifying the mail as coming from a
Ganymede client. The server supports sending both plain ASCII (rfc
822) mail, and mixed HTML/ascii MIME mail.
9. [CLIENT] Object windows and query result tables now save and mail reports.
The object windows and the query result table windows now have a menu
allowing you to save and/or mail their contents in either text or HTML
format. If the client is running in a restricted applet context, the
save option will not be available, but the client can still email
reports.
The save function uses the version of the JFileChooser provided in
Swing 1.0.2, it may not work properly with earlier versions of the
Swing GUI libraries.
10. [SCHEMA EDITOR] Fixed a few schema editor bugs.
Made the schema editor generally more robust when removing objects
types that have fields in other object types pointing to them.
11. [CLIENT/ADMIN CONSOLE] Put in some work-arounds for bug in Swing 1.0.2
There is a significant bug in the JComboBox code in Swing 1.0.2.. see
bug #4132528 in the Javasoft Bug Parade at
http://developer.javasoft.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4132528.html.
We put a few workarounds in the code, but there may still be times
when JComboBox operations will throw IllegalArgumentExceptions. I
think folks are still better off using Swing 1.0.2 over previous
releases.
12. [SERVER] Added a reserve() method to the DBNameSpace class.
Previously, a transaction could only allocate a unique name/number by
actually placing that value in a field of an object. Now custom code
can 'pre-allocate' a set of values which can then be shown to the
client as a list of available options. The newly revised GASH schema
uses this code to pre-allocate IP addresses for the networks available
in a particular room.
13. [SERVER] Fixed various elements relating to IP address handling.
The java.util.Hashtable class does not work properly for the array of
Byte representation used in Ganymede to handle IP addresses.
GHashtable was modified to wrap bare Byte arrays with a wrapper class
that enables proper Hashtable functioning.
The IPDBField class was not properly invoking a DBEditObject subclass'
wizardHook() method.
14. [DOCUMENTATION] Added more documentation.
We have added doc/editobject.html, doc/server.html, and
doc/client-custom.html. Each of these documents should be
significantly expanded in the next dev release.
15. [SERVER] Added default field permissions support for object types.
In modifying the directLoader to properly initialize permissions for
the GASH schema, it became clear that we needed a way to set the
default permissions for an object's fields to something other than the
top-level permissions that apply to the object. We modified
perm_field and PermissionMatrixDBField to add setDefaultFieldPerms().
16. [SERVER] invid_field.createNewEmbedded() returns a ReturnVal
Previously, there was no way to get a detailed error report or rescan
information from a createNewEmbedded call. We added a getInvid()
method to ReturnVal and made the client able to handle rescan requests
when adding a new edit-in-place object to a vectorPanel.
17. [SERVER] Various changes in Invid handling.
Fixed/altered a number of things involving invid binding to make
things more robust across a wider range of circumstances.
18. [SERVER] Dumped schemas now retain builder task information.
Previously, a raw schema file dump would not retain any information
about builder tasks associated with the schema, forcing end-users to
manually configure builder tasks after initially populating the
database from their data. Ganymede now saves the builder task
information in the schema file, and users implementing Ganymede no
longer need to register the default builder task.
19. [DOCUMENTATION] Added CREDITS file.
20. [INSTALL SCRIPTS] Made the install scripts provide schema-specific options.
The installServer.perl script has been made a bit smarter, and will
not prompt for configuration variables that are not applicable to the
schema selected.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Abbey jonabbey@arlut.utexas.edu
Applied Research Laboratories The University of Texas at Austin
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Download ganymede from ftp.arlut.utexas.edu/pub/ganymede/.
To see the latest design specs for Ganymede, visit the Ganymede web page
at http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/
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