Visual Expert Release History

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.

Code Explorer

• Navigate and explore your application structure directly from your browser.
  

Code Inspection

• Analyze code quality and check coding standards through the web interface.
  

Documentation

• 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.
  
• 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
  
• 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)
  

Code Inspection

• Generating code inspection reports in JUnit and JSON formats
• Code Inspection Profile to set expectations and pass/fail statuses
• New version of the Jenkins plugin
• New set of rules for migrating to PowerBuilder 2022 and higher
• Updated documentation for Code Inspection rules

Performance Tuning

• New Profiling feature for PowerBuilder code

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

• New Quick Search option to speed up global 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.

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.
  
• Cumulated Execution Time
  Identify objects and methods affecting performances in relation to their execution frequency :
  [Average execution time * number of executions]
  
• Most Executed Objects
  Find the objects that were most frequently executed during the user sessions traced
  
  

Engine migration to .NET 6

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

Code Inspection

• New inspections rules (List of rules)
• Improved rules

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
  
  

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.
  

SVN Integration

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

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

• This optional feature allows users to download and install updates automatically if they want.

New Treeview Macros

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

Code Inspection

• New inspections rules (List of rules updated)
• Drilling down with sub-dashboards and lists
• Enhanced tooltips in Dashboard
• Configuring inspection rules

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

• Editing a Database Connection
• Editing a VE project name
• Enhanced filtering of Oracle & SQL Server objects
• Advanced settings for Oracle Code Parsing
• Collaborative: sharing the connection to a VE Repository

VE UI Enhancements

• Expanding/Collapsing Tree View branches
• Searching & Filtering among previous Code Analyses
• Code Review: New “Code Review” tab in the Ribbon menu
• Treeview : enhanced tooltips on errors
• Treeview : enhanced tooltips on 2nd treeview column

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.

• Check your code against 300+ predefined rules 
• Precisely locate the code that needs to be fixed in the Visual Expert GUI. 
• Generate comprehensive HTML reports
• Visualize  key metrics and remediation cost in a dedicated dashboard
• Use the Jenkins Plugin to integrate continuous code inspection in a continuous integration workflow.

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

• PowerBuilder Code Inspection
• Oracle Code Inspection
• SQL Server Code Inspection

VE UI Enhancement

• Navigation bar reorganization

New Code Analysis features

• Item Names Dictionary: List and sort DB objects by name to check and improve name consistency.
• New Diagram: Call Tree Diagrams, to visualize chains of calls
• New Macro: Find DLL functions called from PowerBuilder
• New Macro: Most Referenced Objects and Tables
• New Macro: Largest Tables (per number of records)
• New Macro: Most frequently executed procedures
• New Macro: List the views based on a given table
• VE Project: Analyze several databases at the same time
• DB parsers: New options to filter DB Objects - include or exclude
• DB parsers: Filter DB objects by Name
• PB Parser: Support for RESTClient objects
• PB Parser: Support for HTTPClient objects

New UI features

• Source Code view: you can now export the script or object displayed
• Ribbon Menu: New tab page “Cross References”
• New dashboard to guide users a startup (when no project is opened)
• Guided Tour: interactive animation to introduce VE to beginners
• Source code view: you can now Zoom in / Zoom out to adjust the size of the code

New Integration Features

• Support for GIT: analyze code hosted in a GIT repository
• Support for SVN: analyze code hosted in a SVN repository
• Ability to execute a script/command line before or after a code analysis
• Ability to execute a script/command line before or after generating a documentation

Enhancements

• CRUD Matrix: support for synonyms, now listed in the columns of the CRUD matrix like tables. User can visualize references to each object separately (table or synonym).
• VE Sample Projects: now add DB synonyms examples
• Code Review Report: now includes Naming Convention verification
• Source Code view: when printing a script, its path is now included
• Source Code view: tooltips now show the path of the procedures referenced
• Ribbon Menu: tooltips added for all Ribbon controls 
• Connection to Oracle: connection settings improved
• System Resources: if Video RAM is too low, a warning is now displayed