Below you'll find a brief overview of new functionality implemented in Axiell Designer 7.10.0, including links to more information.

Backwards compatibility

Using new (Collections-only) Designer settings in your application and database definitions will always break compatibility with older versions of Designer and Collections and other Axiell software* using the same BaseAPI, although removing those new settings will often restore that compatibility under the condition that the SQL table structures haven't changed because of those settings: if the SQL table structures have changed too, then a SQL database backup from before that change is required as well to go back to the previous state. The Designer release notes always note the compatible version of Designer and Collections, but this applies to below list of other Axiell software too. For a full list of compatibility issues through the different versions of Designer and Collections, see the Axiell Designer compatibility topic. The Axiell software which needs to be updated to the latest version once new Designer settings have been applied (only if you have a license for that software of course) is the following: Collections, AdMove server, Workflow client, Ingest, WebAPI, SDK, AnalyzeData, Migration, ConvertInternalLinks, IndexCheck, InternalLinkCheck, LinkRefCheck, RemoveLanguageFromData, RemoveTagsFromData, DBtool and ValidateDatabase.

Designer versions which shouldn't be used

Designer versions older than 7.7.1.316 (at least down to some versions of 7.6) and specific version 7.8.0.3855 should not be used: changing the database server name in a specific .inf would empy all translations from all enumerative field definitions in that .inf. This would not affect your existing data, but enumerative fields (drop-down lists) in Collections would no longer show user-friendly values. In Designer 7.8.0.3859 this bug was fixed again.
Version 7.6.19234.1 (as recommended for Adlib for Windows users) doesn't have the bug, so it can be used safely by Adlib users.
If enumerative field definitions still have their neutral values while they have lost their translations due to this bug, all these translations should be copied back to the relevant field definitions manually, using a backup of your application or an appropriate model application if you do not have a backup of your own application. Please contact our helpdesk for further assistance.

New options and functions for Axiell Collections make further use of Adlib for Windows impossible

New settings in Axiell Designer pertain only to applications run within an Axiell Collections environment. If such new settings are applied, then the resulting application can no longer (reliably) be opened in Adlib for Windows. Since development of Adlib for Windows has ceased quite a long time ago, these new options are not supported by Adlib for Windows. Even if Adlib would ignore the relevant option, you could no longer reliably work in Adlib too, so altered applications using Collections-only functionality should never be opened in Adlib again.

Import.exe and Designer import job editor/manager deprecated for running import jobs: use importtool.exe instead

Import.exe and thus the Designer import job editor/manager (because Designer effectively calls import.exe when an import job is being run) need to be able to read the .inf of the target database for the import. This is only possible if this software recognizes all options and object properties that might have been set in the relevant .inf. If an option or property isn't recognized, running the import job returns an error 172 (system file processed with newer version of software than version with which it was called). With the late 2022 introduction of importtool.exe (using newer technology) as an alternative for import.exe and the Designer import function, development on the latter import functionality has ceased. This has the consequence that when you use import.exe or the Designer import job editor/manager to run an import job for an .inf that has new options (say those that were introduced from Designer 7.6 and up), there's a chance you'll get an error 172 because import.exe has no support for the new property. In that case you'll need to start using importtool.exe to run your import jobs from now on. However, as long as you don't get the error, you can keep running your import jobs as you always did and you can even use the latest version of Designer (recommended) for any changes to your application. Just keep in mind that you may activate a new option or property sooner or later, after which import.exe or an import with Designer will throw the mentioned error and you'll still have to move to importtool.exe.
Import jobs still have to be created in Designer (preferably use the latest version), so that doesn't change. Note that XML files cannot be imported yet and CSV files must have a first line containing the English field names pertaining to their columns, just like a CSV for Collections import requires (and the field mapping in the import job is ignored).

Contents

ADAPL OPENURL function extended to save call response in field

IndexTool improvements

Performance of certain searches in Full Text indexed databases greatly improved

New field tag and occurrence attributes for field nodes in record XML

XML documentation stylesheets updated

 

2023-05-10: release notes Axiell Designer 7.10.1

The following new functionality for Axiell Collections version 1.16.3 has been implemented:

ADAPL OPENURL function extended to save call response in field

You may sometimes want to save the response of a successful OPENURL call to a field in the currently processed record or a field in an opened FACS database, to be able to access the contents of the response in the adapl itself. For that you can use the new mode 3. Only when using that mode, you'll need to provide a third and fourth argument to the OPENURL call, specifying the target field tag and the target occurrence number. A response text will only be stored in the field when the response code is 200 (successful). See the full topic for more details.

2023-03-06: release notes Axiell Designer 7.10

The following bug fixes for Designer 7.10 and new functionality for Axiell Collections version 1.16 have been implemented:

IndexTool improvements

IndexTool.exe 1.11.1 now also writes a file called indextool_rejected_fields<date>.csv with all the values that failed validation during indexing.

Furthermore, some new command-line options have been added:

-f or --fulltext will only perform Full Text indexing.

--settings will create a file called indextool.settings (a json file) where some internal values can be adjusted, buffers and such, the tool will pick up the file if it exists or use the defaults if the file doesn't exist. For advanced users only.

--log-debug will make the tool log a bit more information than it does normally.

--log-trace (not implemented yet, for future use), will eventually log details about every record.

-b or --bulk-mode will attempt to set the SQL Server database recovery log option to BULK_LOGGED instead of FULL during indexing in order to minimize the SQL server database log file size.

Performance of certain searches in Full Text indexed databases greatly improved

To improve performance of certain searches in Full Text indexed databases, yet another column can be/has been added to the dbo.<database_name>.fulltext tables in the SQL database. This column is named "strippedterm" (not to be confused with the "stripped" column or the "term" column). The difference between the contents of the strippedterm and stripped columns is that the contents of the strippedterm column is truncated to 100 characters (while the stripped and value column may contain longer strings, up to 2GB in fact).

If your filled or empty SQL database is already Full Text enabled, you may (optionally) add the new column to all relevant Full Text indexes by starting Designer in administrator mode (right-click AxiellDesigner.exe in Windows Explorer and select Run as administrator in the pop-up menu), and executing the Create missing tables option on the \data folder (right-click the \data folder in the Designer Application browser and select the option in the pop-up menu). Be sure to log everyone out of Collections before you change the database structure and recycle the application pool afterwards.
Instead of executing the Designer Create missing tables option, you can also run the latest version of indextool.exe with the -x argument and the appropriate path to the \data folder, from the command line, with something like:

indextool -p <path to data folder> -x

If you didn't have a Full Text indexed database yet and you are implementing it for the first time, you already get the updated version immediately.

Other Axiell software (besides Collections and Designer) that's been updated to deal with the strippedterm column, are: IndexTool, WebAPI and the Move server.

The performance gain does not apply to left truncated searches.

New field tag and occurrence attributes for field nodes in record XML

From Collections 1.16, field nodes in record XML (both unstructured and grouped) get the field tag (tag) and occurrence number (occ) as their attributes. For example:

<priref tag="%0" occ="1">3</priref>
<input.time tag="tx" occ="1">13:45:25</input.time>
<term.type tag="do" occ="1">
 <value lang="neutral">OBJECT</value>
 <value lang="0">object name</value>
 <value lang="1">objectnaam</value>
 <value lang="2">nom d'objet</value>
 <value lang="3">Objektbezeichnung</value>
 <value lang="4">إسم_قطعة.فنية</value>
 <value lang="5">nome dell'oggetto</value>
 <value lang="6">ονομασία αντικειμ.</value>
 <value lang="9">föremålsnamn</value>
</term.type>
<input.date tag="di" occ="1">2022-12-08</input.date>
<input.name tag="ni" occ="1">erik</input.name>
<input.source tag="vi" occ="1">thesau&gt;thesau</input.source>
<term tag="te" occ="1">painting</term>

This has no impact on existing XSLT stylesheets, but it does allow new or adjusted stylesheets to do something useful with the tag and occurrence number of a field node too. In particular, this functionality has allowed the model application 5.0 all-fields-unstructured.xslt stylesheet (set up as the All fields overview (containing data) with tags display format for the Report viewer) to be updated to a new version which is applicable to all model application versions (whereas the 5.0 version only applied to model application 5.0).
The upgraded stylesheet can be downloaded here. Simply copy it to \xslt folder of the target application and overwrite the existing file with the same name. If the file does not appear in the folder already, then this "inline" output format has not been set up in the application yet (as is likely in model applications older than 5.0).

XML documentation stylesheets updated

The Linked field list (CSV).xsl and the Application and image field list (CSV).xsl stylesheets for generating documentation about objects in Designer have been updated. Also a new RecordType Access Rights stylesheet for .infs has been added to list any Record Type Access Rights for every field in the selected database(s): when multiple access rights are definied for a field, that field will appear multiple times in the list.

The XML Documentation style sheet Linked Field List (CSV).xsl now includes columns for:

Linked field properties

- Search filter
- Selection list format string

Relation fields

- Preferred field
- Equivalent field
- Broader field
- Narrower field
- Related field
- Semantic factor field
- Pseudonym for field
- Pseudonym field
- Range start field
- Range end field
- Context field
- Relation format string

Link screens

- Link search screen
- Link screen
- Do not show link screen
- Link screen adapl
- Zoom screen
- Zoom/Edit screen
- Detail screen

User interface texts

- Relation text
- Reverse relation text

The XML Documentation style sheet Application and Image Field List (CSV).xsl now also includes a column for Disable download condition.