A more efficient approach to live specs

Until DBDOC 11.1, "live specs" were a kind of live loop annotation.  Although simple conceptually, this caused a number of problems in practice.  For one thing, although "live" specs are live, in the sense that they may change, they very rarely do, and certainly not at live data fetch timescales.  So having live specs turned on for a block could cause the repeated fetching of tens of items, clogging up bandwidth for no benefit whatsoever.

In addition, it is laborious to compare the live spec values with the static spec values.

The solution in 11.1 is to display live specs integrated with normal layered specs on CADs/CLDs.  The live specs are fetched only once (or if you refresh them), and the static to live spec value comparison is done automatically, with discrepancies visually highlighted.

Note that you have to choose "Enable Live Specs" from the "View" menu in order to get this capability!

Grand Unified Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is the central unifying index of a DBDOC project file.  Until DBDOC 11.1, the "Classic" text view table of contents listed every document in the project, in a grand (and sometimes very long) list.  Although there was a certain elegance of simplicity to this presentation, when the index became tens or hundreds of pages long, its utility was somewhat compromised.

The Treeview Table of Contents was developed in response to the shortcomings of the Classic toc.  It presents a sensible hierarchical view of the project contents, and has served well.  Minor shortcomings have included the fact that it is not directly searchable, and not every index visible in Classic form can in fact be viewed view the Treeview.  Internally, of course, it also required separate maintenance.

In DBDOC 11.1, we have bitten the bullet and merged the Classic and Treeview table of contents in .  The new table of contents is hierarchical -- just like in Treeview TOC, you see the chapter headings at the top level, but instead of a tree, you simply click to display appropriate sub-indexes. 

The merged hierarchical table of contents is a solution that should capture the best of both worlds.  Now all the chapters are listed at the top level, just like in the Treeview table of contents, and you can load any of the chapter indexes with a single click. 

In future versions of Hyperview, the Treeview toc will disappear entirely, except for XP and Server 2003 systems, or when it is explicitly enabled on the command line.

DBDOC 11.1 is ready for download!

DBDOC 11.1 is a minor release that nevertheless makes considerable usability improvements to DBDOC 11.0.  If you've been holding off on upgrading from version 10.7, this is definitely a good version to move to.

Improved Hyperview startup performance

The first thing you will notice is much faster Hyperview project load times, particularly for large projects and when the dbdoc file is being loaded across a network.   Startup time is now generally faster than for equivalent 10.7 M14 files, sometimes significantly so.

New and improved table of contents

In DBDOC 11.1, we have bitten the bullet and merged the Classic and Treeview table of contents in Hyperview.  The new table of contents is hierarchical -- just like in Treeview TOC, you see the chapter headings at the top level, but instead of a tree, you simply click to display appropriate sub-indexes.  

Read more here...

Special treatment for live specs

Live specs are now handled in a far more efficient manner, fetched only once or when refreshed.  They are now automatically compared to static spec values, and discrepancies are visually highlighted.  

Note that you now have to choose "Enable Live Specs" from the "View" menu in order to get this capability!

Read more here...

File support improvements

Other notable improvements in this release include support for the new form of 800xA MDB files (800xA Version 6.0 and above) replacing Harmony Tag Exporter support that ABB removed. In addition, there is now support for Symphony Plus Engineering (SPE) 2.1 and 2.2 using PostgreSQL backups.  GPI, HGS, and HPG files are also now supported.

A wide variety of build configuration options have been added and improved as well.

Please see the Release Notes for details on the changes in this release and other releases.