Author: Vanessa Talbot

Vanessa Talbot
• Product Owner •Vanessa Talbot joined 4D Program team in June, 2014. As a Product Owner, she is in charge of writing the user stories then translating it to functional specifications. Her role is also to make sure that the feature implementation delivered is meeting the customer need.Since her arrival, she has worked to define key features in 4D. She has worked on most of preemptive multi-threading new features and also on a very complex subject: the new architecture for engined application. Vanessa has a degree from Telecom Saint-Etienne. She began her career at the Criminal Research Institute as a developer for the audiovisual department. She has also worked in media and medical fields as expert in technical support, production as well as documenting new features.
Product
Vanessa Talbot
4D Database: Search in array attribute

Search by linking array attribute query arguments

Object fields, introduced with 4D v15, allows to store and index unstructured data. This could be a common set of data, like first name, last name, birthday. It could be different data in each record, such as a shop that will need different attributes for shoes (size, color), computers (CPU, memory), printers (color, ink), a list of values or all in any combination.

Here is a real User Story from a 4D customer :

“My badge application manages the access rights for each person to a building and for a time slot. This information is stored in a database as an array of objects ( e.g.: {access right, building, time slot} ). I want to be able to look for people who have access to a building during a time slot.”

4D provides several ways to query for data, using index and so extremely fast.

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
4D View Pro: cross table

Easily create cross-tables reports with the Quick Report editor

A new step has been reached in 4D v16 R2 with the 64-bit Quick Report editor: the cross-table reports are now available!

As you probably already noticed, the new Quick report for 64-bit versions had been fully redesigned since v15 R3 to provide you and your end-user with a better user experience. After list reports which were available as the very first step, we are now moving forward and delivering cross-table reports.

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
4D Database: Sort records by object attribute

Sort records by object attribute

At each 4D release, object fields become more and more powerful.

A new 4D command for sorting your record selections according to one or more attributes is now available with 4D v16 R2. The new command ORDER BY ATTRIBUTE works the same as the command ORDER BY; you just have to pass an attribute path by which you want to order your selection – easy!

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
refactoring web area

New rendering engine for Web Area

4D is updating its internal component for embedded Web Area objects for the most up-to-date and well-maintained existing rendering engine. As we want to durably support the state of the art in HTML and JavaScript technology, we are changing to Blink (also used in Google Chrome) for the Web Area for all 4D 64-bit versions.

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Tips
Vanessa Talbot
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Detailed analysis of your database structure

Did you know that you can retrieve very detailed information on a table, field, indexes, relation or even on the complete database structure? This kind of information is always very useful for analysis or introspection purposes. Of course, you could use the 4D Pack deprecated commands: _AP Get field infos and _AP Get table info. Another option is to use the SQL system tables.

None of them allows you to retrieve all information. So why use a plug-in or SQL when you could use a 4D command? The EXPORT STRUCTURE command returns the complete database structure definition in an XML tree. This command exists since 4D v14 R4.

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
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Web Server in preemptive mode

We are moving forward with 4D v16 on preemptive multi-threading as the 4D Web Server is also becoming preemptive. Just click one checkbox and your application will support more simultaneously connected users, and process more requests in parallel. For requests using a lot of CPU time, execution can be up to 2 times faster!

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
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New preferences in Method Editor

You want to visualize occurrences of a given variable in the 4D method editor? Or you find your method code too heavy with all those block icon and lines everywhere that it’s becoming hard to read?

With 4D v16 new preference options are available in the code editor to make the 4D developers’ life easier!!

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Product
Vanessa Talbot
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New “Get 4D File” command

In 4D v16, a new Get 4D File command returns the file path to different 4D files. You can now easily retrieve the path for the following files:

  • Backup configuration file
  • Last backup file
  • User structure settings file
  • User data settings file

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