What's New
New to AQT v 9.0.5
New Features
- You can now Export to Excel using a Native Export, which will export directly to an Excel file. The previous method involved invoking Excel, then sending commands to it. This was slow, and could be unreliable depending on state of Excel. With the Native Export:
- you do not need to have Excel on your PC to export to an Excel file
- this export runs faster than the other Excel export methods
- Grid Printing has been improved so you can specify portrait/landscape, and can specify the printer.
- On the Database Explorer window, when you right-click an object you now have an option to Add to Favorites. This makes it a lot faster to add objects to favorites. When you right-click a favorite object, you now have an option to Delete from Favorites.
- The Run SQL window now has an option View > Show special characters to see the blanks, tabs and line-feeds in your text.
- You can now customize the background color of the text-editor in the Run SQL window.
- Options > Diagnostics has now an option Show Errors. This will show you any errors that have occurred during your AQT session. This can be useful diagnostic information for Cardett Associates should an error occur.
Bug Fixes
- The Run SQL window:
- occasionally crashed while scrolling or moving the cursor. This may be due to a bug in the text-editor component we use. We have upgraded to the latest release of this component; hopefully this will resolve this problem.
- when running a very large script, it took a long time for the Run Multiple Statements window to open
- when using Format Data on selection range of text, some text was sometimes removed
- Export to > SQL Window failed
- the edit toolbar sometimes overlayed the text box
- when your SQL used unqualified table names, the column-list for a table was sometimes wrong
- sometimes copied the wrong object when Ctrl+C was hit
- sometimes prompted the user to save a query when it had not been changed
- Export to Table didn't handle a query which had user-defined parameters
- did not handle multiple <file> statements
- The Database Explorer window:
- sometimes had problems Reconnecting to a database
- the Filter window had the wrong caption
- there was sometimes an error when a key was hit to move to an entry in the middle grid
- DB2 z/OS Package Statement text was unreadable (was not converted from Ebcdic to Ascii)
- you can now view the detail of large text cells by double-clicking the cell
- The Data Display window:
- File > Generate Report failed with an error
- the wrong Layout File was used when displaying a query
- Link to Related table did not work well for a table whose key values were binary
- Find Rows > Standard failed if some columns had been hidden
- when the Get More Rows feature was used, the query SQL could not be returned to the SQL window
- did not always display binary values in the format specified in Options > Display Format
- in inline-edit mode, Ctrl+V didn't paste the data into the cell
- in inline-edit mode, did not behave well when there was an error updating a row
- The Data Loader
- got message "Old format or invalid type library" when loading from an Excel file
- loading from an Excel file in batch failed with message "Object reference not set"
- when deleting the contents of a DB2/UDB table, it erroneously displayed the message "Unable to delete contents as delete command will affect entire table"
- Data Compare
- gave you an error when you clicked on "Find non-matching row"
- gave you an error message when it was run in batch
- Export
- some some German/ Scandinavian national characters were not exported correctly when Unicode mode was not selected
- Run Procedures
- purge History appeared to be doing nothing
- could not view a DB2 XML parameter
- when the Copy to SQL Window option was used, the length of a parameter was sometimes set incorrectly
- the display of large parameter values has been improved
- A few issues with the Admin Component:
- for DB2 z/OS Tablespaces, clicking on the DDL button showed you the Alter Tablespace window
- for DB2 z/OS Tablespaces, "DDL for all Databases" only showed you the tablespaces in the current database
- error altering the pagesize of a DB2/UDB Tablespace
- error doing a Preview from the Create Stored Procedure window
- did not generate Foreign Key DDL correctly for DB2/UDB
- errors starting the Create Table window for SQL Server
- some admin windows didn't allow you to add rows to the grid
- the Rename Table function incorrectly showed the Rename File dialog
- in the Alter Procedure window, the Abort button was not active when the Edit in External Editor function was used
- The Query Builder:
- sometimes positioned new tables out of sight behind existing tables
- when there were multiple Where clauses, the order of these clauses was sometimes incorrect
- on the Where Clause window, Get Values sometimes retrieved the values for the wrong column when the "Only show cols which are in the query" option was used
- the Options window:
- did not allow a Display Format of HH:mm:ss
- had an error when changing the read-only mode setting
- Misc
- AQT behaved more sensibly for a user for which the AQT install had not been run, and for a non-admin user
- Get Values did not work when the table name had spaces, minus signs or other special characters
- Compare all tables in schema did not show you the compare-columns window when you clicked on a table
- a few improvements to the behaviour of the Search Table window
- when running in batch, AQT erroneously gave a message that a trial version of AQT v9 was being used
New to AQT v9.0.4
New Features
- in the Run SQL window
- there is now an option (View > Display Multiple Grids) to specify whether you want multiple Data Grids displayed.
- there is now a function View > Clear all grids to clear all the existing display grids.
- you can now rename a grid-tab
- you can right click a display grid and select Revert to this SQL. This will change your SQL back to the SQL that was run to display the data in this grid.
- there is now a shortcut key for Format and Unformat (Alt-F and Alt-U)
- there is now a script statement for setting the Max Rows Displayed
- the bottom part of the History window is now sizeable
- there is now an option for AQT to run a commit after every statement. This is useful in some environments in which AQT doesn't fully release locks.
Bug Fixes
- The Database Explorer window
- was slow to load as it retrieved the list-of-schemas twice
- sometimes didn't display column information for Sybase tables
- didn't display DB2 package information
- didn't display columns for a DB2 for iSeries SQL Procedure
- when you right-clicked an object in the right-grid, Next and Prev sometimes did not work
- the Filter box now gets (slightly) larger as the screen is resized
- Help > Database Details sometimes got error "Form that is already visible cannot be displayed as a modal dialog box"
- In the Run SQL window:
- there was sometimes a severe error while scrolling to the end of the SQL
- Format SQL and UnFormat SQL failed when there was no connection to the database
- sometimes the status-bar became too high if it was displaying a large message
- sometimes got an error while running a large script
- AQT failed when running SQL containing unicode characters and Options > Unicode > Use Unistr option was selected
- a lot of CPU was used when editing a large amount of text
- Get Columns for Table (F2) did not always work when a table name was unqualified
- files with German characters were not saved or retrieved correctly
- Intellisense popup of table-list did not work for DB2 for iSeries
- output from the Sybase / SQL Server Print statement was not being displayed
- sometimes got an error when activating the Run SQL window from the Query Builder
- a query could not be aborted prior to it retrieving 1000 rows
- the Open/Save window sometimes did not set the directory box to the name of the directory being displayed
- On the Run Multiple Statements window:
- the grid did not have line numbers
- the SQL was not displayed well when it contained blank lines or comments
- On the Data Display window:
- Inline Edit sometimes did not update a row if only the current cell was changed
- Only show rows with this value did not work for Oracle Synonyms
- German characters were only displayed correctly when Unicode mode was selected
- Compare To Saved Results did not always work correctly
- when copying a date value from the grid, the copied value would have a different date format
- error selecting multiple cells or selecting a column when the data was grouped
- there were a few problems with creating new user defined relationships
- the Abort button was disabled if doing a Refresh and the Linked Table panel was shown
- On the Row Update window:
- DB2 Time values were not displayed correctly
- Extended Edit incorrectly retained the list of values from the last time the form was displayed
- Export
- when this was run from the Data Display window, it didn't work well if the columns were moved or hidden
- PCs defined with a non-english locale got error "Old format or invalid type library"
- For batch scripts:
- when mode=online specified, AQT terminated as soon as it started
- failed to run SQL statements which were spanned over multiple lines
- With the Data Loader
- saving a load spec failed with invalid file name
- opening a load spec sometimes failed
- failed to load an Oracle date value when Insert Using Inserts was specified
- failed to load columns which had a REAL data type
- The Run Procedure window:
- failed when a Parameter was a CLOB or BLOB data type
- Retrieve from History was not working
- A few fixes to Options:
- Always Quote Table and Column names was not working
- Display multiple result-sets in the same window was not working
- change to the Date Format did not have any effect
- Other
- sometimes scroll-bars were displayed, which disappeared once they were clicked
- there was a problem whereby multiple clicks were needed on the AQT window-list bar to activate a window. This was due to the tooltip sitting on top of the button. This is a known (Windows) problem with the way this tooltip is positioned. We have circumvented this by not showing tooltips when the window-list bar is positioned at the bottom of the AQT window.
- after adding a new column to a table, AQT sometimes showed the old column list for the table. This is due to AQT's table cache, which is needed to avoid repeatedly getting column information for the tables. This problem can be avoided by using a new function Tools > Reset table/index cache (from the Database Explorer window) which will reset this cache.
- the Create Table window sometimes did not convert data types correctly when copying the table definition from a different database type
- when generating DDL for DB2 z/OS indexes, an error message was given and the index columns were omitted
- the Query Builder didn't enclose table or column names in quotes when this was required
- the History file name did not replace ww with the week number
- History was not written from the Row Update and some other windows
- On the Signon window, Prompted Signon failed
- the System Monitor sometimes got an error displaying SQL text in the lower panel
New to AQT v9
AQT v9 is a significant redevelopment of AQT in the .Net environment. This gives AQT a modern platform; this provides a number of benefits plus will allow AQT to progress into the future.
Some of the new features of this release are described at AQT v9.
As part of this change, we have implemented:
- a new grid component. This has a number of differences in behaviour, which are outlined in the following section.
- a new text-editing component. This provides a number of extra features, principally the ability to show a drop-down list of table names, column names, column functions or keywords when you are building a query in the Run SQL window.
Changes to Behaviour
The new grid component behaves differently than the grid used by AQT v8. For an description on how to use the grid, see Grid usability concepts. Differences with the v8 grid are:
- Selection. Cells can no longer be selected by dragging the mouse over cells. Instead you must click a cell, hold down Shift then select a second cell. All the cells between the two clicked-on cells will be selected.
- Hiding Columns. In the Data Display window, columns can no longer be hidden by dragging them "away". Instead, you must right-click the column and select Hide Column.
- Ungrouping Columns. In the Data Display window, you can group by a column by dragging the column to the group-by area at the top of the grid. This works the same as with AQT v8. To remove a column from the group-by area, drag it to somewhere outside the group-by area. The column will have a cross, which may indicate that you are dragging it somewhere invalid; however once you drop the column it will be removed from the grouping.
- Moving Rows. The grid doesn't have any in-built ability to move rows. In places where you need to do this, there will be buttons Move Up and Move Down.
- Filtering. Filtering is used when you use the filter box, or in the Data Display window when you use Edit > Find. Filtering is slow, so should be used with caution when you have a large amount of data.
New features of the new grid component are:
- Styles. You have flexibility of the style used for displaying your data. You can select between a number of in-built styles, or create your own.
- Column Totals. On the Data Display window, you can now get totals for numeric columns by clicking on View > Totals (Ctrl+T) or the Totals toolbar button.
- Printing. The grid has two different ways of printing the data - Print Data plus Generate Report. Print Data is a a basic print of the grid. The data Display window also has Generate Report, which gives more flexibility and styles of the printed data.
New Features
Options
We have made a lot of changes to the way Options are stored. This provides a number of benefits:
- Options can be exported and imported. This allows Options to be saved and moved between machines
- you can have different options for different databases and database types
- it is now much easier for system administrators to set a fixed option which cannot be changed by the end user
As a result of these changes, most options are now held in a different part of the registry than the v8 options:
- when you run AQT v9 for the first time, the v8 options will be migrated to the new v9 options
- after this point in time the two sets of options are separate. If you change an option in AQT v8, it will not be reflected in AQT v9 (and vica-versa).
Minor Enhancements
- External Editor. You can now use an external editor other than Notepad. The editor to use is specified in Options > General.
Note that, in the Run SQL window, the Edit SQL using Editor function now works slightly differently. In the past it waited until the editor program ended. Now, you click on the Abort button for AQT to get the updated-SQL back from the editor.
- Query Builder. This now allows you to specify (simple) Where clauses on the Columns tab.
As with the Run SQL window, you can now display query results on this window. This feature is turned on/off with View > DIsplay query results on this window.
You can revert back to an earlier form of your query by right-clicking one of the query-results and selecting Revert to this query. This provides a basic undo capability for the Query Builder.
Some Technical Things
AQT now has:
- Improved multi-threading. AQT can now run more than one query at once, plus has improved ability to cancel queries. The AQT Cancel Queries task is no longer required.
Note that AQT can only run a single query from each database connection. Most ODBC Drivers do not allow a single connection to run more than one query simultaneously.
- 64-bit support. AQT will have the ability to run as either a 32-bit application or as a 64-bit application. There will be separate AQT executables for each of these. This is important if you have 64-bit database clients. For more on this see Installing AQT on a 64-bit version of Windows.
Note: the 64-bit version of AQT hasn't yet been completed.
- Full unicode support. Previously, there were some items (such as window captions and status bars) which were unable to display Unicode characters.
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