Metastorage

This maintenance release included a fix for a bug that would make the code generator fail in error in certain cases. The bug was harmful because it would only make the compiler stop sometimes without generating any code. When it would not fail, the generated code was correct.

Support for large data variables (BLOBs) was
implemented. Applications can now store and
retrieve data strings or files in a large data
variable with a single function call. The generate
code that stores objects uses cached prepared
queries. Database schemas that require table or
field renaming can now be easily performed without
destroying previously stored objects when classes,
variables, or collections are renamed.

This release adds support for generating functions
to manage transactions. Metastorage now lets the
developer integrate handwritten code
customizations in PHP with the code of the classes
generated by Metastorage. The integration is done
without losing the customizations when the classes
are regenerated. It is also possible to retrieve
object identifiers of reference variables
(one-to-many relationships) of classes of external
components. Several bugs were fixed to handle
uncommon situations.

This release takes advantage of the recently introduced features of Metabase and uses auto-increment fields and primary keys to generate new object identifiers instead of emulated sequences and unique indexes. The generated code now also contains comments to let users better understand what the code does. The Metastorage installation archives now also bundle the MetaL compiler engine to make all that is necessary available with a single download.

This release introduced support for generating report data extraction classes that generate presentation reports or perform any other kind of bulk processing of data of objects of one or more classes. Metastorage now also supports establishing relationships between classes defined in different component files. A bug in the compiler command line processing class that made Metastorage halt under PHP 5 was fixed. Updating the values of automatic class variables was implemented. UML class diagram generation now features automatic long line word wrap support.