Visual Expert Release History

Code Inspection

Performance Tuning

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.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolution of issues with Oracle Performance.
  • Fixed the Macro PowerBuilder open IDE issue.
  • Resolved issues with the Auto Update functionality.

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

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

 

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

 

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)

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