I have been busy creating a new version of Data Crow. Not a minor version this time, but a major one. As this is taking its time I am releasing what is called a beta version. This is essentially a test version – an uncompleted version of Data Crow 5.0.
It can be downloaded from here.
Word of warning: this is a test version (beta) and has therefore not been fully tested. So be careful. I supply this for testing purposes. Reporting issues you encountered will help me greatly making a stable final Data Crow 5.0 build. I would not advise to just upgrade your current installation (although I just did).
If you are going to do this: make a backup first!
A better option is to just use the -userdir parameter to use another working directory for your Data Crow 5.0 Beta installation (see help: https://datacrow.org/docs/starting-data-crow/#3-toc-title).
What’s still left to do?
The web server is being rebuild. The old web server, based on Java Server Faces (PrimeFaces), is dropped. In its stead a new, for now, read-only Web version is being build. Over the next few beta versions you see the addition of;
- a REST web interface API
- a web application based on ReactJS
This has been decided to future proof the Data Crow web server. The web application will be completely decoupled from the Data Crow main code through the use of the REST web api interface.
The web application could therefore also be deployed on a separate web server and is therefore no longer integrated in the Data Crow server. It will still needs the Data Crow server as this is the server that hosts the data, making it available through the REST web interface (JSON based).
This also makes it possible, although unlikely that someone will do this, to integrate with the Data Crow server.
So what’s in this beta II version at the moment?
[New]
- Picture management has been completed changed; Data Crow now allows for unlimited number of pictures to be added.
[Updated]
- Scrolling performance has been significantly improved for the card list.
- Updated libraries as used by Data Crow to avoid exposure to vulnerabilities: Apache Maven plugins, IZ Pack, Metadata-extractor, Log4j, Bouncy Castle, twelvemonkeys.imageio, org.apache.tika, org.apache.pdfbox, org.jsoup, com.google.code.gson, Xalan, org.hsqldb, org.apache.xmlgraphics.
- Improved the preview for the find and replace.
- Improved the find and replace regular expression support.
- Added failed login message if credentials are incorrect.
- Added clear option to the update all form.
- On startup the report versions (based on modification date) are checked against the systems reports. If the system reports are newer, the reports in the user folder are updated.
- Also added the picture preview pane to the icon browser.
- Create Multiple now adds items in top to bottom order
- Jasper Reports libraries have been bumped up to version 7.0.
- XML Export has been updated;
- XML Import has been updated: No longer need to select the module for which the items are imported. The items as part of the XML know to which module they need to imported for. IDs are respected
- Small layout improvements for the item form and the login dialog.
- Extended the supported image types for the local art import for movies and music files.
[Fixed]
- Right-click menu on attachment: icon size too large.
- Icons in main window were blurry.
- View never updated the status bar when only 1 item has been selected.
- Attachments menu was missing icons.
- XML export: schema errors fixed.
- An issue has been fixed where Data Crow is not correctly positioning itself on the main monitor.
- The open library book search showed a file not found exception if a book cannot be found by its ISBN.
- The service information was incorrectly stored for the open library online book search. This fix only works for newly added items (after this fix).
- Password could not be reset from the client (client – server mode)
- Linux: resizing dialog/forms from the right hand side scrambles the dialog
- Sorting on multi-reference fields was incorrect.
- Backups created on Windows do not restore correctly on Linux.
[To be verified]
- Possible fix for Quick View not showing (to be tested) – issue cannot be reproduced