Cincom Smalltalk™ Delivery 2012 — Key Items in the Upcoming Releases

Encryption

What: External Encryption
Why: External encryption gives our customers more options, including some very big performance increases.
How: New API that’s integrated to make new work easy for customers to adopt.

Store

What: Speed and functionality improvements for Store
Why: Now that Store (our code repository and management system for CST) has been completely overhauled for future improvements, we have begun improving Store performance. Store performance is important to customers with a significant CST code base.
How: We have worked with customers who noted areas or particular contexts where they requested performance improvements.

API Refinements and Tools

What: WSDL 2.0/SOAP 1.3 new API refinements and tools
Why: WSDL (Web services definition language) and SOAP (Simple object access protocol) protocols are used by many large CST customers. The protocol changes were significant.
How: We worked closely with requesting customers to ensure that the work not only met specifications, but worked to their requirements and context. This work extended to providing the best set of tools needed by customers.

Database Driver Refinements

What: Database driver refinements, enhancements and performance; SQLite support
Why: We continue to consolidate, improve and add capabilities as the databases we support continue to change.
How: Work is largely driven by customer requests, and product management requests for consolidation.

Polycephaly

What: Polycephaly moved to supported
Why: Polycephaly is our extremely popular and attractive framework that gives developers “easy concurrency” and often results in 3-5X performance improvements. It was engineering’s answer to a product management challenge for a “Smalltalk simple” framework to allow customers to leverage multi-core computers.
How: Polycephaly is stable and widely used; code moved to supported.

Polycephaly II

What: Polycephaly II in preview
Why: Polycephaly II improves on Polycephaly by adding grid computer capability. This means you can harness other computers from an application in addition to multi-cores in a single computer.
How: Added to new release.

Garbage Collection

What: Garbage collection performance improvements
Why: VM garbage collection performance was improved as part of our continued work to continually improve the product. Performance improvements in garbage collection are well received because they improve application performance for all CST customers simply by using the new release.
How: VM refinement work delivered.

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Modeling Tool

What: Modeling tool enhancements
Why: The modeling tool is a powerful feature tool for ObjectStudio.
How: Engineering continues to add desired features and refine behavior from customer feedback.

Mapping Tool

What: Mapping tool enhancements
Why: The mapping tool is a powerful feature tool for ObjectStudio. The mapping tool allows applications to quickly and capably integrate with relational databases.
How: Engineering continues to add desired features and refine behavior from customer feedback.

Oracle Cursor Support

What: Cursor support for Oracle
Why: Customers requested support for this RDB feature from ObjectStudio applications.
How: CST API enhanced to support this feature.

Unicode Support

What: Unicode support for databases
Why: Unicode is the computing industry’s encoding standard. We make product changes to support changes and new encodings.
How: Database drivers updated to accommodate newer Unicode standards.

Trippy Inspector

What: Trippy inspector
Why: The inspector used for ObjectStudio has been upgraded to the powerful “Trippy” inspector.
How: The capable “Trippy” inspector has been integrated into the ObjectStudio development environment.

Other Refinements

What: Many refinements and fixes
Why: Customers tell us where our product is not meeting their needs—we respond.
How: Our support and AR process allow us, support and engineering to work together to address customer issues with existing features.

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Note: Many of the VisualWorks improvements are included under “Foundation” since the work will benefit both products.

User Interface

What: “Skins” UI work introduced
Why: There has been a longtime debate about what is better: native widgets or emulated widgets. Both have pros and cons. “Skins” is an innovative solution that gives native OS rendering along with emulated flexibility, which many consider to be the best of both worlds.
How: Skinnable widgets are introduced into the product—two widgets (buttons and scroll bars) initially.

64-bit Windows

What: VisualWorks 64-bit Windows moved to supported
Why: A 64-bit VisualWorks VM and image were created to allow customers to utilize the capabilities that a full 64-bit application can give. The most obvious advantages are a vastly larger object space. This has been a critical need for some customers.
How: Feature stable; moved to supported.

64-bit Support