Active Query Builder News

May 10, 2006

Active Query Builder 1.5 released

We're glad to announce the new minor version of Active Query Builder. You can download the newest version from the download page.

What's new in the Active Query Builder version 1.5?

• Ability to work with metadata is implemented.^*

  The new MetadataContainer property is added to provide access to the list of metadata objects used in the component. With its help, you can add or remove items manually to restrict certain tables being displayed in the component or you may even fill the entire metadata container by yourself to avoid connecting to the database.
  The MetadataContainer property is a collection of metadata objects. You may iterate through the loaded metadata objects, add or remove them.

• Ability to build queries with objects from different databases is implemented.^*

  You are able to load additional metadata information from another databases by using the LoadMetadataByMask method of the MetadataContainer collection.

  procedure LoadMetadataByMask(ANameMask: OleVariant; ASchemaMask: OleVariant; ADatabase: OleVariant);

  The first two parameters are the masks for object names and schemas respectively. The third parameter is the database name from which you want to load metadata. If you don't want to filter objects loaded by name or schema, you should use the "%" symbol for the first two parameters, so the call will look like:

  ActiveQueryBuilder.MetadataContainer.LoadMetadataByMask("%", "%", "database_name")

  or, if you want to load only the 'dbo' schema from the database, you may use the following code:

  ActiveQueryBuilder.MetadataContainer.LoadMetadataByMask("%", "dbo", "database_name")

  The ANameMask and ASchemaMask parameters will be applied to the metadata retrieving query using the LIKE operator.

• Pre-filtering of database objects is implemented to speed up metadata loading process.^*

  The new MetadataFilter property is added to implement (pre)filtration of database objects. This feature can speedup metadata loading process dramatically if there is a huge number of tables in the database and only a small set of them is operated with.
  The MetadataFilter property is a collection of metadata filter items. Each item specifies one inclusion or exclusion condition that can affect specific object types (tables, views or procedures) and filter objects by object name and schema name using masks.
  You may use "_" to represent any single character and "%" to represent any sequence of characters. You can test this feature using demo projects by opening the Properties dialog and selecting the "DB Objects Filtration" tab.

• We have created the User’s guide for end-users of Active Query Builder. You may include it into your help files freely.
• (ActiveX) We have added the AHandled parameter to the OnError event. Now you may specify whether you want to display the standard error message. To avoid displaying the standard error message, set this parameter to True.
• Most memory leaks have been eliminated.
• (ActiveX) The error resulting in displaying the "A call to an OS function failed" message in the .NET environment has been fixed.
• Connecting to the database using old OLE DB providers that do not support foreign keys resulted in error. Fixed.
• Other minor bugfixes and improvements.

^* These features will be available in the Standard Edition of Active Query Builder only.

» All Active Query Builder news