Servoy 4.1 Pre-Release Now Available!

Well – it’s HERE! Servoy 4.1 pre-release is now available for download. You can read the release notes on the forum.

What’s the big deal in Servoy 4.1? Well, it’s all about the power of customization. In addition to a bunch of fixes and enhancements, the big “new” thing is the SolutionModel node in the Solution Explorer.

This new SolutionModel node allows you to modify or create new forms and form objects – on-the-fly at runtime! Oh yeah, it also works in the Web Client!

This means that you can modify any form, create a new, blank for – or programatically use form inheritance (new in 4.0) to make a derivative of an existing form. Now, there are lots of other tools in the market that will allow you to create new objects on-the-fly at runtime, however, no other tool allows you to create objects and have them function automatically the way that Servoy 4.1 does.

For example, all the objects you create will automatically “just work” – including data broadcasting and full AJAX functionality – just by adding a single line of code to your solution.

This will work for all types of form objects including: forms, fields, labels, buttons, and tabpanels (portals coming in b2). You can add whatever controls you want to any form – and for the first time you can even change any of the properties on objects (even the databinding!) on any object at runtime.

When adding or changing forms you can add/change the parts of a form at runtime to create sub-summary reports on-the-fly! You can even assign global methods to all of the form events (onShow, onHide, onLoad, etc.) as well as all of the form methods (onNewRecord, onDeleteRecord, etc.) This really opens up the world of possibilities for customization of your applications by end-users.

There are, of course a couple of caveats:

1. You can only change the properties of an object on a form that is not currently visible;
2. The changes only persist as long as the client session does. So if you want to keep the changes between sessions – you need to code your solution to restore the changes the user made.

Remember – this is PRE-RELEASE software – so make SURE you back up your databases and workspace before trying it out. The best thing would be just do a FRESH install of 4.1 into a new directory and new workspace, and then import the solution(s) you want to work with – that way you can continue your “normal” development in 4.0 and try out the new SolutionModel in 4.1 and not have to worry about it.

We would love your feedback on what you plan to do with this new functionality. Please either leave a comment here – or post it to our Online Forum.