V. 10.1 is here with improved PDF templates. Let's shape the future of DaDaBIK together with canny.io

Hello everybody,
I am glad to announce the availability of DaDaBIK 10.1 Manarola. It is mainly a maintenance release, but it also contains some improvements.

The most important improvement is related to PDF templates: now your PDF templates can contain not just HTML code but also PHP code.

If you think this is a litte improvement, you are probably wrong. Adding PHP code to your templates opens to MANY new possibilities: just to mention an example, part of your template can now change according to some conditions (e.g. according to the user currently logged in). For a very simple example of PHP code embedded into a PDF template, check this

If you had some *.php template files, the files must be now renamed to *_settings.php (see the documentation).

Other good news:

• Nested master/details views (the items table of a master/details view is also a master/details view) are now fully supported (with unlimited levels of nesting).
  
• Primary keys composed by multiple columns are now partially supported: when DaDaBIK detects a table having a composite primary key, it automatically adds a unique, auto-increment, additional field to the table and uses it as "unique field". This feature at the moment is only available on MySQL and you have to enable it from config.php (add_additional_dadabik_id_field parameter)
  
  
• DaDaBIK now shows, for uploaded pictures, the picture itself in the edit form (you can disable this feature from config.php)
  

For the complete lists of bugs fixed and changes, see the change log. It is very important to check fixed bugs especially if you use PostgreSQL or lookup fields with default values.

You can buy your license here.

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10.1 copy from the upgrade page.

But there is more.

During all these years I've experimented several methods to track and include your feedback and ideas in the development of DaDaBIK:

• the feature requests forum, available since 2002, with more than 300 features requested since then
  
• the "Desiderata" document, shared with some of the users for planning which features should be finally implemented in each major release
  
• the skype calls I make since a few years ago with the beta testers, typically one month before publishing a major release
  

I think that most of the new features implemented in DaDaBIK have been chosen according to the comments and ideas emerged using those tools.

During the last beta test for v. 10 Manarola, one of the beta tester suggested me to try some modern tools for feedback collection. I decided to accept the advice and I've tried a few of them and I've finally decided to adopt canny.io.

While it is not perfect, I think it is what we need to easily track our preferences and suggestions. Have a look here:

https://dadabik.canny.io/feature-requests

You can upvote existing features or propose new ones. At the moment there are about 30 features and they are the result of an accurate analysis I've done considering the forum, the old desiderata documents, the skype calls and the features I think would be useful.

If you want to upvote or propose a new feature, you have to sign up for canny (signup link, top right corner). Please note that you need a valid DaDaBIK forum account to sign up and you have to use the same email you used on the forum; all the users registered without a correspondant DaDaBIK active forum account are periodically deleted.

Let me know if you have any suggestion about this new tool and please add your contribution. My suggestion is to upvote MAX 7-8 features: if everbody upvotes every feature we won't get any insight.

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

18 years of low-coding / no-coding with DaDaBIK - DaDaBIK 10 "Manarola" is here

Hello everybody,
I am very glad to announce the release of DaDaBIK 10 Manarola.

It's a very important anniversary: not only it's v.10 but DaDaBIK also turns … 18!

I published the very first 1.0 beta release in November 2001. I started to build DaDaBIK because I felt frustrated as a Web developer: I felt I was wasting my time dealing with repetitive coding tasks. What I needed was a flexible tool capable of handling those repetitive tasks for me, freeing up my time for more complex and unique tasks. The very first idea (back in 2000) was to create a smart automatic CRUD creator, one of the very first in the market. Creating such a tool seemed challenging and that was the other reason because I decided to start :)

After 18 years and 79 releases, I still use DaDaBIK to build Web applications and thousands of other people (coders and non-coders) from all over the world can also do it.

I have spent a lot of energy on this new version, I really wanted to build something special to take DaDaBIK to the next level as a low-code no-code development platform and I hope you will like it.

SO ... WHAT'S NEW IN DADABIK 10 ?

The list of new features is very long, I'll just mention a few of them here, please have a look at our release video for a more detailed analysis and check our new online demo.



DB admin
Create and alter tables directly in DaDaBIK without the need to use PHPMyAdmin or similar tools. You don't need to start from an existing database or Excel file anymore. You can create your database with DaDaBIK.

FORM configurator live preview
Stop jumping back and forth from the form configurator to your final application. You can now see a live preview of a form WHILE you are setting the form configurator, in the same page.

Conditional fields
Show/hide a field in a form according to a custom function (e.g. according to the value of another field).

Revisions / Audit (platinum only)
Track a version HISTORY of your data and see - through a convenient interface - WHO and WHEN changed your records.

HTTP API (platinum only)
Integrate DaDaBIK with other applications: authenticate and select records via an HTTP API, getting replies in JSON.

Pivot tables
Create reports using summary/pivot tables to aggregate data; use them to build dashboards.

As usual, you can find all the new features and bug fixes in the change log and, as mentioned before, you can find an analysis of the new features in our release video on youtube.

You can buy your license here. As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10 copy from the upgrade page.

A few words about the name :) After "Monterosso", "Manarola" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manarola) is another wonderful Italian village belonging to the "Cinque Terre".

Many thanks to all the beta testers, who went through three private beta releases during the last months: thanks for your time and for the fruitful Skype talks we had …. your feedback (positive and negative) contributed to shape V. 10 "Manarola" as it is released today and will contribute to shape future releases.

Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone!

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

DaDaBIK 9.4 Monterosso is out

Dear all,
DaDaBIK 9.4 is out!

This version fixes an SQL injection vulnerability which could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary SQL code. While the vulnerability was quite difficult to exploit, we recommend to upgrade: you can find all the details, together with the other issues fixed, in the change log.

There are also new features related to custom buttons and custom pages:

1) It is now possible to set if a custom button must be displayed or not according to a custom function. This is useful if you want, for example, to show a button only for a particular users group (regardless of the permissions they have on the table) or if you want to show a button according to the "state" of a record.

2) It is now possible to add a javascript confirmation dialog to custom buttons.

3) It is now possible (if granular permissons are ON) to set the permissions for a custom page as VIEW: "yes, but don't show in menu".

Again, you can see the complete list of the new features in the change log

As usual, if you are in your free upgrade timeframe, you can request your free copy from the upgrade page.

If you have a DaDaBIK ENTERPRISE/PLATINUM license and you are out of your free upgrade timeframe, you can also get 9.4 by purchasing a maintenance license (€79 / €99): https://dadabik.com/index.php?function=show_upgrade_new

Have a great summer!

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

DaDaBIK 9.3 Monterosso is out

Dear all,
DaDaBIK 9.3 is out!

The most important things released with DaDaBIK 9.3 are 1) a bug fix related to pagination and 2) an improvement that will make your DaDaBIK upgrades easier.

The bug fixed
When you displayed a recordset in DaDaBIK and the number of records required pagination (number of records > records per page), it could happen that, if you are browsing, page by page, the recordset, you saw the same record twice and, even if you read all the pages, you didn't see all the records belonging to the recordset. In other words, the "slice" of records you see might not be the one you expected. This could happen if you were NOT sorting the recordset by a unique field (more precisely, a field containing no duplication in the recordset).

Let's make an example: you have 100 customers and you show them in DaDaBIK sorted by city. Let's say you have more than one customer living in Roma. You set records per page to 10 and you click from page 1 to page 10 to see all the customers: it could happen, for example, that you saw TWICE the customer having id 34, living in Roma (in two different pages) and you didn't see the customer having id 88, also living in Roma.
The 100 customers could be the results of a search or not (just table browsing), this doesn't impact on this issue. Please note that even if you don't notice this issue, it may arise under particular circumstances (it depends on the DBMS's query execution plan).
The fix for this bug relies, as many other features in DaDaBIK, on the existence of a primary key in your tables.

The improvement
I know that upgrading DaDaBIK could be annoying if you don't keep track of the config.php parameters that you modified. I am thinking about moving most of the config.php content from the file to the database in the future, but I am still not convinced about this solution so I decided to try a different strategy: starting from DaDaBIK 9.3 you can leave config.php untouched and edit the new config_custom.php file instead, adding there only the parameters you need to set. This should make your upgrades easier: you can just keep your config_custom.php file and replace the config.php file with the one coming with the new release.

There are a few other bugs fixed and improvements; you can find the complete list of changes in the change log

As usual, if you are in your free upgrade timeframe, you can request your free copy from the upgrade page. If you have a DaDaBIK ENTERPRISE/PLATINUM license and you are out of your free upgrade timeframe, you can also get DaDaBIK 9.3 by purchasing a maintenance license (€79 / €99).

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

DaDaBIK 9.2.2 Monterosso is out

Dear all,
DaDaBIK 9.2.2 is out!

This is mainly a maintenance release, fixing a few bugs and adding a little new feature.

A few words about two of the bugs fixed:

• DaDaBIK produced an "Attack 07 detected" and / or an "Attack 08 detected" during chart generation if one or more field names contained capital letters. Fixed.



• If you changed the order of the fields in your database schema and then (without or without adding new fields to the table) you used the "Add Fields" function (DB Synchro), you lost your form configuration settings for one or more fields of the table. Fixed.

You can find the complete list of changes in the change log

As usual, if you are in your free upgrade timeframe, you can request your free copy from the upgrade page. If you have a DaDaBIK ENTERPRISE/PLATINUM license and you are out of your free upgrade timeframe, you can also get DaDaBIK 9.2.2 by purchasing a maintenance license (€65 / €85).

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder