Kexi/Releases/Kexi 2.2

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Kexi 2.2 is planned to be the first stable release in KOffice 2 series. It will be released within KOffice 2.2

See also Kexi TODOs and KOffice 2.2 Feature Plan.

List of changes

  • This is the first release within the KOffice 2 series. Most of the works were devoted to match feature set of Kexi 1.1 as much as possible.
  • Completely new user interface with tabbed toolbars introduced for easier extensibility
  • New component: Report Designer
    • Offers sections, visual designer, previewing, printing
    • Exports reports ad PDF, ad spreadsheets (KSpread) and as a web page
  • New property editor pane added with improved user experience
  • Widgets bound to data source show data source names in forms
  • Displaying large number of graphic item (using Object data type) has been optimized in table view.
  • MS Access (mdb) import plugin is now included in Kexi, so no additional installation is needed
  • It is possible to import external data as a single table into the current project

List of missing or discontinued features compared to version 1.1 is also available.

Missing or discontinued features in 2.2

Table Designer

None known.

Query Designer

None known.

Forms

Forms are provided as a usable preview with slightly limited features, not experimental. Compatibility issues are presented to the user when a form is opened.

  • The following widgets have been disabled because are not working yet and replacements are planned for Kexi 2.4 with a different work flow:
    • Autofield widget. Thus, drag & drop of field names onto the form is not available. Users can separately insert labels and data input widgets and assign data sources by hand.
    • Layouts (including the Spring element). Users should place the widgets onto the form based on pixel position. For Kexi 2.4, it shall be possible to apply layouts to forms created in previous Kexi releases.
  • Widget properties
    • Disabling widgets is not possible.
  • Forms API
    • binary/source incompatible with Kexi 1.x
    • is still private for 2.2 and no compatibility is declared yet

Reports

  • A new report plugin debuts in 2.2.
    • This is a complete rewrite of the previous (unreleased) reports, a forked openRPT.
    • Replaces simple printouts
    • Marked as experimental for developers' safety.
      • Main reason: file format or behaviour can change so compatibility can be broken.
      • We are declaring the will for providing converter after 2.2 if needed and if times allows.
  • Widgets:
    • binary/source incompatible with Kexi 1.x
    • is still private for 2.2 and no compatibility is declared yet

Database drivers

  • SQLite
    • Minimum version of the SQLite database, default engine of Kexi has been increased to 3.6.16. This means there may be no backward compatibility if user creates new tables or new databases in Kexi 2.x and try to open the resulting file in Kexi 1.x.
    • SQLite 2 is now unsupported. Users can run Kexi 1.x to import the SQLite 2-based database into the SQLite 3 format, and then switch to Kexi 2.
    • Compacting the database files shows no progress (caused by SQLite limitation, workaround is planned for Kexi 2.4).

Other

  • Simple printouts are discontinued and replaced with the new reports plugin. Using reports may be recognized as more comples compared to the simple printouts. To address this, autoreports are planned to cover very similar use cases as simple printouts, among others.

Notes

Database drivers

  • MySQL Embedded is still not supported. Support is planned.
  • Minimal SQLite version is 3.6.16. Recommended version is 3.6.23 for security reasons (secure-delete feature is available there).

Scripting

Scripts are still provided as experimental feature, without guarantees for full backward compatibility.

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