Data Access Worldwide has announced that DataFlex 2019/19.1 is released – the latest version of it’s Web and Windows application development tool.
What’s new in DataFlex 2019/19.1?
DataFlex 2019/19.1 includes many new features and improvements to help you develop Windows, web and mobile applications easier and faster than ever. Here’s a summary of just a few of our favourite new features, but you can find all the version 19.1 new features documented in the new web based DataFlex help.
Language and code cleanup
DataFlex has been around a long time and that is something to be celebrated. However, through the decades, coding ideas and approaches have changed and DataFlex 2019/19.1 brings with it an opportunity for you to ’dust off’ some of your old code and embrace new thinking.
This is, of course, an optional process and is mostly handled through a new compiler warning system. Your existing applications will continue to run the same. There are some cases where your existing application may generate compiler errors, but these are easily addressed.
Data Access believes that clean code is the way forward and has documented the steps they have taken to in the direction of this holy grail. See How we cleaned up our own code.
For more information, including details of obsolete commands and classes and If/Else/Case Debugging see Language and Code Cleanup.
Improved security and performance for SQL queries with parameterized queries
Using parameterized queries enables you to protect against SQL Injection attacks (e.g., a user entering malicious code when asked for user input via a web page) as the query itself and the parameter values are sent to the SQL server separately, which enhances security.A second advantage of using parameterized queries is the performance gain achieved when a query is prepared once and then executed multiple times with different parameters.
For more information and examples, see Parameterized Queries.
Web Framework Enhancements
- HTTP Request Handler – This is a big deal. All that REST stuff that Mike Peat has been banging on about for the last few years, has just been made much easier to do directly with DataFlex. See the help topic HTTP Request Handler.
- Meaningful URLs and History Management – In a nutshell – the Back button works! In addition, the Web Framework supports “deep linking”. You can see how this new capability works running the WebOrder and WebOrderMobile sample applications and read about the complete Meaningful URL and History Management interface.
What’s changed in DataFlex 2019/19.1?
For existing DataFlex users, find out how changes may affect you, from the following topics in the ’What’s New’ section of the help system:
- Working with a new Release
- Migrating Studio Workspaces to DataFlex 2019 / 19.1
- Suggestions Implemented in DataFlex 2019 / 19.1
- Bugs Fixed in DataFlex 2019 / 19.1