This projected started as CD Library back in 2001. I released this software to the public on sourceforge.net in 2002. It was a very small product which focussed mainly on registering software (applications and games). It had a table view (which still exists) and no item form.
In 2003 I decided to renamed the product to Data Crow. My wife came up with the name during a holiday in France. The name is bit odd, granted, but I loved it. From that moment on Data Crow has grown slowly into what is today; a somewhat complex but very, very feature rich product. I have worked over the years to make the product as flexible as can be; you can add your own fields, you can created completely new modules (using the Data Crow Wizards), hide fields, change the item form, change the quick view, change the fonts, change the skin, change the user permissions, change which modules are shown, change.. pretty much anything.
Major milestones
CD Library, the prequel to Data Crow was created in 2001. It was my first real attempt at creating an application. It used Java in combination with a Microsoft Access database. Data Crow version 1.0 and 2.0 were a rebuild of CD Library (or LibCD). The MS Access database was replaced with HSQL DB, which is still in use to this date.
With version 3 in 2007, came the refactoring of the online searchers, modules and items were reorganized, a new module creation feature was added.
Version 3.1 and 3.2 introduced a module deletion wizard. The AWT components (for building the GUI) were replaced with Swing. Logging was improved with the help of Log4J. Many pieces of the code were rewritten and many performance improvements were made.
Version 3.3 was released in 2008 and introduced the web module. Version 3.4 had an improved upgrade process and online services were now pluggable. Improvements were made to existing loan functionality.
Versions 3.4 through 3.12, covering 2009-2013, had many memory and performance improvement to the loading and caching speeds. The user folder was introduced which allowed for running multiple instances of Data Crow looking using separate user directories but, more importantly, made a clear separation between the installation and data folder.
Version 4.0 released in 2014, through a complete change of the Data Crow architecture, brought forth a full stand alone application server giving Client-Server mode support. The reports were now build using Jasper Reports.
Version 4.1 released in 2015, contained the new web server as part of the existing server architecture. It allowed the server to serve both full (thick) clients as well as web clients at the same time.
Then I kind of stopped development altogether. I announced my exit. Data Crow 4.2.2 released in August 2017 was the latest version when I announced my exit on April 2nd, 2018.
In January 2019 Stacey Murphy offered to take over the project. A lot of effort was put in place to transfer the code into Git. The domain and website https://www.datacrow.net were transferred in ownership. This site is still up and running (remarkably). On February 2nd, 2019, Stacey Murphy, for lack of a better word, disappeared.
On September 28, 2022 I announced I would takeover the project once again. Since then lots of things have happened. Not having access to the .net domain made me decide to switch to this .org domain. I restructured the code, updated all libraries, moved the build process to Maven, etcetera.
And here we are… in the present. I’ll continue my efforts in making Data Crow better than ever.