Dear Visual Expert users,

We're pleased to announce that we've added a new Blog section to Visual Expert Website.
The Visual Expert blog allows you to easily find all Visual Expert articles, news and tutorials.

You can keep using the support website to communicate with our support team.

Visit the Blog | Contact the support | Read the Update List

With Visual Expert 2015, allow your users to identify themselves with their Facebook account (on top of classic username/password and Windows accounts).

With this feature you can:

• Simplify the creation of accounts, and stay up to date with the latest methods of authentication.
• Get to know your users better with information from their Facebook accounts

To get started with the Facebook account authentication feature, just add the Facebook plug-in in the Visual Guard administration consoles.

The next article will look at how to enrich Visual Guard user accounts with extended attribute parameters to improve Visual Guard’s integration into your applications.

Upcoming articles on Visual Guard’s new features include:

• The ability to synchronize Visual Guard accounts with 20 extra parameters when using Active Directory accounts.
• The ability to synchronize Visual Guard accounts with data from a functional table of users that already exists in your application.

Try Visual Guard

With Visual Guard 2015, add as many attributes as you wish into the definition of the Visual Guard users table. 

Create attributes by defining their name and type (string, integer, double, date/time, Boolean).

Sort and group by extended attributes.

Select the properties available to define the new attribute:

The user profile with the extended attributes:

Extended attributes can be used as search criteria:

The use of extended attributes allows the user table of Visual Guard to integrate with the specifications of your management applications and avoid creating another specific table for the users.

The next articles will discuss the possibility of synchronizing Visual Guard user accounts with 20 extra parameters when using Active Directory accounts.

This will be followed by articles about synchronizing Visual Guard user accounts with data from functional user tables that already exist within your application.

In 2014, more than 200 companies tested Reporting Studio 2014.

Thanks to your feedback and suggestions we are about to release 2 versions: a service pack called NRS 2014 R2 and NRS 2015.

Planned for the end of March, NRS 2015, that will include the following features:

•         Report Server (.NET server): the most awaited feature of NRS will let you view reports on Web and Mobile devices and to automatically generate reports with the Scheduler option.
•         Report Maker: allow users to create and edit a report from within your PowerBuilderapplication.
•         Report Viewer: zoom and print options
•         Crosstabs support
•         Graph improvements in the Customization window (specify the colors off each series)
•         64-bits support
•         Other improvements: Repository files compression, more rules and parameters, performance improvement and more documentation available.

Can’t wait for the official release?

Mid-February, a NRS 2015 Beta Program will allow you to test the features before the official release of the product.

If you want to be part of this new experience, join us now!  

Subscribe here

What’s next?

 NRS 2015 R2 is planned to be release in Q2 2015; new features will be in the works including:

•         Server evolution : Report Maker and Repository Manager availability on Web
•         Result Set Stored Procedures support
•         Nested and Composite DataWindows
•         Call Stored Functions in reports
•         Support for Java servers
•         Virtual Fields support (like Computed Fields) in the Repository

And much more! 

After months of testing and much appreciated feedback, Visual Expert 7 is now generally available!

Visual Expert has been completely redesigned to better meet the needs of PowerBuilder developers. 

It has an entirely new architecture and a modernized interface, with the same indispensable features:

• Generating Detailed Technical Documentation
• Transfering the knowledge of your Application between teammates
• Better exploring your code

All-new Architecture

Visual Expert now allows for larger amounts of code to be analyzed while freeing up your computer's resources!
Handle your projects by scheduling your analysis and documentation for whenever you need it, or with a background analysis whenever you're not using your computer. Access previous analyses of your projects that are stored by Visual Expert 7.
Host your Visual Expert projects server side, and let your whole team share the same analysis while delegating different tasks.

Extended Analyses

New ways to analyse your objects have been added. Your favourite macros from VE 5 are back as well.
Locate External References, Overrides, Dropdown DWs, Main PB Objects and more!
Better define your global searchwith more options

Multiple Applications

Analyze multiple applications in the same Project
Run Impact Analyses on shared tables, Stored procedures, dlls…

New Documentation

The documentation generator has been redeveloped to produce a richer documention (see an example here)
You can now schedule the documentation and update it automatically in the background

If you would like to get Visual Expert 7, please create a ticket in the support center for more information and let us accompany you through the setup process and explain the new features Visual Expert 7 has to offer.