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An Overview of What's New in Witango 6

For details on specific updates, improvements, and fixes, please see the release notes for the Development Studio and Application Server.

Witango Development Studio

The Witango Development Studio has been completely rewritten as a standalone Java application, resulting in increased cross-platform support, longevity, and application stability.

Interface

The Studio was developed to maintain the look and feel of previous versions of the Studio. There are, however, several significant differences:

1) Previous versions contained an Action bar on the left, and a workspace (Data Sources, Objects, Project, Snippets) on the right. Studio 6 combines these two elements into a Workspace pane that can be placed to the left (default) or right.

2) The layout of the Studio is now a hybrid of the previous Action and Browser views. The Window is split into upper and lower panes. The upper pane contains the action tree and looks like the Actions view in the previous version. The lower pane contains a text editing box which allows for quick view and modification of the Results HTML, No Results HTML, and Error HTML of the selected Action.

Objects

Witango Class Files (TCF) can now support multiple classes per file. As such, a TCF is now a collection of Classes, allowing developers to produce libraries. This can help developers create more portable code and provide for better organization when building class files. Note that if you intend to open a TCF in a previous version of the Studio, you need to maintain a single class per file.

COM Object support has been removed from the Studio. This is due to two main factors. First, there is no convenient COM interface available for Java applications. Second, COM has been superseded by .NET and although Microsoft has not officially removed support for COM, it is widely believed to be a deprecated technology. Users who use Witango Server on the Windows platform can still access COM technologies by using the @CREATEOBJECT and @CALLMETHOD Meta Tags. This functionality will continue to be supported.

Compatibility

To assist in the transition to Studio 6 from previous versions, there is a "Save As Version 5.5" option under the File menu. This will write a TAF or TCF in a format compatible with the version 5.0 and 5.5 Studios. Note that any Actions or Meta Tags introduced in Witango 6 will not be compatible.

The structure of the Project file has been updated to XML. Opening a previous project file (TEP) in Studio 6 will require a conversion. This conversion can not be undone, but the new project will save with a different file extension (TPF).

J2EE compiling has been temporarily removed from the Studio. This functionality will be restored in a future version of the Studio. If you deploy with J2EE you will need to maintain an active copy of the previous version and make use of the "Save As Version 5.5" feature to save files. You will not able to use any of the new Actions or Meta Tags introduced in version 6 at this time.

Data Sources

The Studio supports JDBC and ODBC Data Sources. Oracle native support (OCI) has been dropped, and no other native interfaces are currently supported. ODBC is automatically supported on Windows. On Mac OS X, ODBC Data Sources are configured using JDBC due to lack of support from Apple. For JDBC support, customers must download and install the JDBC driver (a JAR file) from the database vendor.

Witango Application Server Licensing

The server licensing has been changed to support three editions of the server: Free, Standard, and Advanced.

The Free server edition is limited in the number of user sessions (10) and threads (5) that it can process at any one given time. The Free server is officially a replacement for the Lite, Small Business, and Developers licenses. It is also intended to be used for pre-purchase trial and testing, to support validation, demoing, and burn-in on new systems and it can be used to support small hobbyist and personal sites.

The Standard and Advanced servers do not have user sessions or thread limitations. They will use all available processing power. The biggest difference between these two editions is that the Standard license will only operate on systems with 4 or fewer physical cores. Also, only the Advanced server supports multiple instances running on the same server.

Support for CPU affinity, specific data sources (FileMaker, Oterro), and the Lite edition has been removed from the server.

New Actions

Mail Actions

File System Actions

Other Actions

The new Web Call Action improves Witango's ability to interact with web services and other web accessible content. It supports all HTTP methods including GET, POST, HEAD and PUT. It allows for POST arguments to be entered using drag-and-drop values and supports all common and custom HTTP Headers. It also supports HTTP authentication and SSL.

Updated Actions

File System Actions

All File System actions can now also interact with an FTP server.

Data Source Actions

End Transaction Action is now linked to a data source and supports nested transactions.

New Meta Tags

<@EDITION>

<@EDITION> is a new tag which returns the edition name of the licensed Witango Server. This will be either "Free", "Standard", or "Advanced".

<@ISALPHANUM>

<@ISALPHANUM> is a new tag which evaluates whether the provided string consists of letters (of either case) and/or digits and no other characters.

<@ISDECIMAL>

<@ISDECIMAL> is a new tag which evaluates whether the provided string is a number and contains a decimal character.

<@ISINT>

<@ISINT> is a new tag which evaluates whether the provided string is a valid integer.

Updated Meta Tags

<@PRODUCT>

<@PRODUCT> will now resolve to the string "Witango Application Server". If the license being run is a limited time trial license, then TeraScript Server (64-bit) will resolve to "Witango Application Server (Trial)".

<@VERSION>

<@VERSION> will now resolve to the version of the software in x.x.x format, eg. "6.0.3", where 6 is the major version (which aligns to the license), 0 is the minor version, and 3 is the revision. For more explanation about version numbering, see the FAQ.

<@PLATFORM>

<@PLATFORM> will now return one of three possible values: "Windows (32-bit)", "Mac OS X (32-bit)", or "Linux (32-bit)". This tag is meant to signal which platform the Witango server is operating on in a general sense. The bitness following the platform is currently always shown as 32-bit. This is a known issue and will be updated in the future to properly display the bitness of the operating system.