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Visual Expert Release History

Visual Expert 2026

Shared Documents & Views in VE Web

A new module is now available in VE Web, enabling teams to save, share, and collaborate on code analysis results directly from their browser.

  • Share Analysis Results & Views
    Share Code Explorer views, CRUD matrices, Code Inspection results, AI reports, and documentation snapshots with your team via a unique URL. Duplicate detection prevents redundant shares for the same content.
  • Shared Documents Hub
    A central dashboard to browse, search, and manage all shared documents. Documents are organized by project, owner, favorites, and trash, with search, view count, and tooltips.
  • Access Control & Permissions
    Per-user and per-group access levels (read, edit, owner) on shared documents. When access is denied, a dedicated page guides the user to contact the document owner instead of displaying a blank screen.

Notification Service

A complete notification infrastructure is now available across VE Web and VE Desktop, powered by a dedicated service endpoint.

  • Event coverage
    Alerts are triggered by project events, analysis completions, user registration and lifecycle changes, shared content activity, password changes, and system reliability incidents. Notifications are delivered both by email and directly within the VE interface.
  • Configuration UI
    Notification settings are configurable from both VE Web (My Account > Settings) and VE Desktop, with a dedicated notification settings panel in each interface.
  • Background processing
    The notification engine runs as a background service in both the Windows Service and VE Web, ensuring alerts are delivered without interrupting user workflows.

Documentation Dashboard

The Documentation Dashboard in VE Web has been redesigned. The accordion layout has been replaced by interactive treemaps, giving a navigable visual overview of your project's documentation structure.

  • Schema treemaps with hyperlinks to individual objects and total values
  • Optimized tile layout with improved tooltips and direct links to each object
VE 2026 Documentation Dashboard with Treemaps

Macros

Migration to .NET 10

  • Visual Expert Engine, VE Web, and VE Desktop are being migrated to .NET 10, reducing the duration of the code analysis phase, bringing better security, and long-term support. Legacy binary serialization has been replaced with a modern JSON-based storage format.

PowerBuilder 2025 Support

  • VE Projects can be created and analyzed using PB 2025 source code.
  • Code Inspection rules updated for improved deprecated syntax detection and migration readiness.

Improvements

  • License end date — now displayed in both Desktop and Web interfaces.
  • Forgot Password — users can now reset their password directly from the VE Web login screen.
  • SMTP Configuration — available in both VE Web and VE Desktop, with improved defaults and a test connection button.
  • User session management — administrators can disconnect active users directly from the VE Web interface (Active Users and Waiting Room views).

Security Improvements

  • SQL Injection protections — additional protections applied, including handling of hierarchy ID edge cases.
  • TLS/SSL hardening — insecure protocol versions removed from the VE Web configuration.
  • Access control — exposure of sensitive services mitigated; access control management reinforced across VE Web.
  • Session cookies — VE Web now detects whether the request is served over HTTP or HTTPS, allowing development and test environments to function correctly while maintaining strict cookie policies (HttpOnly, SameSite, Secure) in production.
  • Password Policy — configurable password strength rules, allowing administrators to enforce minimum complexity standards across all VE Web user accounts. (Coming next release)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issues with favorites not updating immediately after marking or unmarking a document.
  • Eliminated duplicate entries in project name lists and shared-users popups.
  • Corrected date display in Recent Files when projects, analyses, or users were deleted.
  • Fixed blank pages when opening shared documents after the corresponding project was deleted, or when accessing shared views for the first time.
  • Standardized "Open in new tab" behavior across shared pages for consistent navigation.
  • Fixed an issue where loading a shared view caused VE to incorrectly open the License & Product Information screen on restart.
  • Fixed empty tab when rapidly clicking CRUD Matrix links in VE Web
  • SMTP test connection now correctly validates the email address before sending
  • Fixed "undefined internal error" when right-clicking on blank space in the CRUD Matrix
  • Fixed installation issues on fresh machines — setup and first project creation now complete without errors.

 

Visual Expert 2025

Visual Expert Web - GA

Visual Expert Web evolves into a comprehensive web platform, offering developers, database administrators, and project managers powerful tools for code analysis, project management, and team collaboration. This release transforms the browser-based interface into a mature solution with enhanced features and improved user experience.

Visual Expert Web Workspaces

Code Explorer

Code Explorer VE Web
Navigate and explore your application structure directly from your browser.

Code Inspection

Code Inspection Dashboard Web
Analyze code quality and check coding standards through the web interface.

Documentation

Code Documentation Dashboard Web
Access and review your code documentation online.

Code Analysis Tools

  • Interactive CRUD Matrix with contextual tooltips
    Visualize and analyze all database operations across your applications with an interactive matrix view.
    Online Interactive CRUD Matrix
  • Interactive Object Dependency Matrix
    Map and explore relationships between components to understand code dependencies.
  • Source Code Navigation History
    Navigate through your code with forward/backward navigation and keep track of your analysis path.

Advanced User Management

  • Unified Access Control
    Comprehensive permission system including project creation, user management, repository settings, and administrative rights, all managed from a single interface.l
    Manage VE user in
  • Waiting room feature for concurrent access management
  • Streamlined administration (password reset, user tracking)

Enhanced User Interface

  • Guided tours to assist with new user onboarding
  • Enhanced Tree View with state preservation
    Tree view remembers your navigation state and expanded nodes for a seamless user experience.
  • Responsive design for all screen sizes
  • Multilingual support (English, French, Japanese, Spanish)

New Macros

  • Package-Level Dependencies
    A new macro to visualize dependencies between database packages, helping teams understand the structure and coupling of their code

Code Inspection

  • Security Hardening Rule Group
    A new "Security Hardening" category has been added to Code Inspection rules, covering exception handling, dead code elimination, use of deprecated features, and maintainability practices that reduce long-term security risk.

Performance Improvements

  • Macro Result Caching
    A new two-level caching system (in-memory and file-based) allows macro results to be reused instantly. Macros now run up to 4x faster, especially for repeated queries on large projects.
  • Oracle Extraction Multi-threading
    Oracle source code extraction has been refactored to support multi-threading, resulting in up to 3x faster extraction for large schemas.

Support for PowerBuilder 2025

  • Visual Expert now supports PowerBuilder 2025 applications. Projects can be created and analyzed using PB 2025 source code.

Enhancements

  • Search into Selected Components (VE Web)
    Search scope can now be restricted to selected components in VEWeb, a feature previously available only in VEDesktop.
  • Performance Metrics Filtering (VE Web)
    A new Performance Settings dialog allows users to filter performance metrics by time period (1, 5, 15, 30, 180, or 365 days).
  • Firefox Support (VE Web)
  • Jenkins Plugin
    Improved license management (release after each action, sequential execution).

AI-Assisted Code Analysis (Beta)

Visual Expert introduces AI-powered macros to help developers and business analysts understand, document, and improve their code. AI macros can generate code summaries, business-level explanations, comments, optimization suggestions, and propose fixes for Code Inspection issues. Available for PowerBuilder, Oracle PL/SQL, and SQL Server T-SQL code.

Visual Expert 2024

Code Inspection

Performance Tuning

Cross References

  • Added macros for SQL query analysis in PB events and functions.

Performance and Speed Improvements

  • Faster execution time for treeview macros
  • Reduced duration of code analyses

Full-text searches

Core features

  • New licensing system based on lines of code.
  • Ability to create projects using PowerBuilder targets in Source Control.
  • Improved dialog boxes for connecting to Source Controls.
  • Enhanced support for FIPS encryption for connections to both VE Repository and Projects.

Visual Expert Macro Development

  • Enhanced CRUD matrix for DataWindows.
  • Introduction of a new Macro for the performance-oriented Smart Explorer.
  • Added 'Most Defective Items' macro for both the Application and Code Inspection root nodes.

UI/UX

  • Optimized layout for enhanced user experience with improved arrow navigation and context menus for tree-view elements.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolution of issues with Oracle Performance.
  • Fixed the Macro PowerBuilder open IDE issue.
  • Resolved issues with the Auto Update functionality.
  • Added post-processing display and enhanced PowerServer syntax checks in the parser.

 

Visual Expert 2023

New PowerBuilder Performance Tuning Macro

Visual Expert 2023 includes a new set of features to improve the performance of PowerBuilder code.

  • Generate and Consolidate Traces
    Collect Performance data from multiple user sessions/workstations.
  • Slowest Code
    List the slowest objects and methods in a tree view, regardless of the number of times they are executed in runtime.
    Slowest PowerBuilder Code
  • Cumulated Execution Time
    Identify objects and methods affecting performances in relation to their execution frequency :
    [Average execution time * number of executions]
    PowerBuilder Cumulated Execution Time
  • Most Executed Objects
    Find the objects that were most frequently executed during the user sessions traced
    Most Executed PowerBuilder Objects

Engine migration to .NET 6

  • The Visual Expert engine has been migrated to .NET 6.
    Code analysis is now 30% faster

Code Inspection

Impact Analysis

  • Enhanced Impact Analysis on DataWindows
    Support of references between controls and DataWindows, to improve Impact Analysis results.

VE UI Enhancement

  • Enhanced tree view paging
    Pagination is now activated by default from 500 results onwards
    Pagination of Results in Visual Expert Treeview

Support of Large Database

  • Enhanced support of large Oracle database: a pre-filter can be applied on DB Owners for DB containing more than 500,000 objects. This greatly accelerates the process of filtering DB objects and allows focusing the analysis on a relevant subset.
    Filter DB Owners

SVN Integration

  • Enhanced display of the code taken from SVN to accurately represent the structure of the application
    SVN targets

Visual Expert 2022

Treeview Paging

  • New Paging System to speed up the display of large results in the treeview.
    Users can enable it or not, and choose the number of items displayed at once.

Automatic Updates

New Treeview Macros

  • Get Information table on Table
  • Find all system functions
  • Naming Consistency

Code Inspection

New Sources of Code

  • Support for SQL Server Azure
  • Support for Oracle Cloud Database
  • Support for Oracle 2020c
  • Support for ODBC connexion to Oracle
  • Support for ODBC connexion to SQL Server
  • Support for PowerBuilder 2021
  • Support for PowerBuilder PBG files
  • Support for AWS CodeCommit (Source Control)
  • Support for TFS PB targets (Source Control)
  • Windows Authentication for Repository connection
  • Windows Authentication for VE Service
  • 64 bit Support for Visual Expert Service

VE Project Configuration

VE UI Enhancements

Others

  • Windows Authentication for Repository connection
  • 64 bit Support for Visual Expert Service

 

Visual Expert 2021

Code Inspection Features GA

Visual Expert 2021 officially includes the new code inspection features set to improve the security and quality of your PowerBuilder, Oracle and SQL Server code.

Visual Expert scans your source code to automatically detect security vulnerabilities, bugs and maintainability issues.

Read the following articles to learn how to inspect your code with Visual Expert:

VE UI Enhancement

 

Visual Expert 2020

New Code Analysis features

New UI features

New Integration Features

Enhancements

Visual Expert 2019 R2

New Features

Enhancements

Visual Expert 2019

New Feature Set: Generate diagrams from your code

Visual Expert 2019 introduces a new feature set to visualize the design of your application with diagrams.

They are automatically generated in the UI, and synchronized with the code, to combine design-level and code-level visualization.

Several models available from the start, additional ones will come step by step:

A Diagram Editor is automatically installed with VE to Edit, Export and Share the diagrams generated by Visual Expert.

New feature set: Code Performance Analysis

  • Identify the slowest procedures or functions
  • Break-down the execution time of a procedure to pinpoint issues
  • Find the slowest SQLs in your code
  • Get the execution plan of a SQL query (for Oracle) (for SQL Server)
  • Analyze the performance of a chain of objects calling each others
  • Drill-down from object, to query and code-level

Code Review

Source Code Documentation

Enhancements

  • Improved treeview response for large volumes of code
  • New setting to select a specific parser for DB code embedded in PowerBuilder
  • Automatic shrink of the Repository database when unused space exceeds 20%
  • Dynamic references to datawindows now highlighted in the code
  • Stored Proc called: references to procedures highlighted in PowerBuilder code
  • Shared datawindow: improvements to visualize shared DW dependencies
  • Updated Oracle Connection screen and added SID field.
  • Added wait indicator on open/close and other VE events.

Visual Expert 2018 R2

Visual Expert 2018 R1

Support for Team Foundation Server (TFS)

You can now analyze source code stored in TFS.

Visual Expert for SQL Server (GA)

Visual Expert 2017 introduced a beta version of our SQL Server Code analyzers (see this post). The official version (GA) is now available with Visual Expert 2018.

Other features

  • Treeview: Compare references to an object, between 2 versions of your code

Code Comparison

  • Save “snapshots” of your code on a regular basis, and compare them anytime.
  • Run Comparison across both PowerBuilder and Database Code
  • Explore differences in a container hierarchy. Drill down to find relevant changes.
  • Filter changes for a given PBL, object, object type.
  • And more...

CRUD Matrix

Shows which program is accessing which data, and how (Create/Read/update/delete)
This feature scans all your Datawindows, PowerScript, Stored Procedures, views, etc.
Read more

New Code Analyzer for SQL Server (BETA VERSION)

Other features

 

New Features Visual Expert for Oracle

  • Treeview: SQL Performances - Columns with missing Index
  • Treeview: Code Review - Calculating the number of Lines of PL/SQL Code
  • Treeview: Code Review - Counting PL/SQL Items by type
  • Treeview: SQL Performances - Tables with missing Primary Key
  • Treeview: SQL Performances - Unused Indexes
  • Treeview: Code Review - Find Uncommented PL/SQL scripts
  • Treeview: Code Review - Large PL/SQL scripts
  • Treeview: Code Review - Find empty PL/SQL functions/procedures
  • Treeview: Code Review - Find duplicated functions/procedures

New Features Visual Expert for PowerBuilder

Improvements

  • Treeview feature/PB: Finding "Unused" items now extended to PBL Root and PB Application level
  • Treeview feature/PB: "Overrides" (methods replacing ancestor scripts) now extended to PBLs and Application level
  • Impact Analysis now indicates the type of access to tables & columns (Select/Insert/Update/Delete)
  • VE GUI: New indicator on tables & columns (red spot) when their declaration is included in the project
  • VE GUI: Selecting a table or column in the treeview now highlights their declaration in the code

Visual Expert 2015 is end-of-life. Learn more

New Features

  • Treeview feature/PB: List Computed Fields of selected Datawindows
  • Treeview feature/PB: PBL level dependencies (External References / PBL dependencies)
  • Treeview feature/PB: Large PBLs (Code Review)
  • Treeview feature/PB: Find all the Dll functions declared in a PowerBuilder application
  • Source Code Documentation: Home page, objects lists, new sections and hyperlinks added
  • VE GUI: Macro parameters can be saved and applied automatically next time
  • VE Project management: Review the history of code analyses
  • VE Project management: Delete past code analyses to free up disk space
  • VE Project management: Access Control features, secure VE projects shared between teammates
  • New Macros: Empty Methods
  • New Macros: Object Metrics
  • New Macros: Functions Metrics Summary
  • New Macros: Retrieve SQL
  • New Macro - DW Exploration - Retrieve Arguments (5.7), Controls containing (5.7) Compute Fields

Improvements

Visual Expert Featured Resources


Videos