SlashDB ver. 1.2 Adds Data Transpose, Amazon Aurora & More

Highlights

Happy Holidays and welcome to SlashDB ver. 1.2, our final release for the year. Here’s what’s new:

• Transpose output into series
• Amazon Aurora – official support
• GUI session invalidation
• Checkbox for “distinct” records
• 5,700 test cases
• 25 other fixes and improvements

May/2020 Update

We are issuing an interim update in version 1.2.2 with a couple of bug fixes. Stay tuned for feature release soon.

1. Fixes user-to-database mapping, which would not be persisted when using default setting in the new connection wizard.
2. Fixes missing warnings when database fails to connect.

New Features

Output Transpose

Adding ?transpose to URL will reshape the result from a list of dictionaries into a dictionary of lists. Think of it as a columnar or series representation of table records. Data in series can be more natural to reason about for data analysis in Python and R dataframes, or to plot using Highcharts or similar packages.

For example, a request for two columns out of the Invoice table renders as follows:

https://demo.slashdb.com/db/Chinook/Invoice/InvoiceDate,Total.json?limit=3

[code gutter=”false”]
[
{
"InvoiceDate": "2009-01-01T00:00:00",
"Total": 1.98
},
{
"InvoiceDate": "2009-01-02T00:00:00",
"Total": 3.96
},
{
"InvoiceDate": "2009-01-03T00:00:00",
"Total": 5.94
}
]
[/code]

With transpose the result will be reshaped as follows:

https://demo.slashdb.com/db/Chinook/Invoice/InvoiceDate,Total.json?limit=3&transpose

[code gutter=”false”]
{
"InvoiceDate": ["2009-01-01T00:00:00", "2009-01-02T00:00:00", "2009-01-03T00:00:00"],
"Total": [1.98, 3.96, 5.94]
}
[/code]

Amazon Aurora

As of this release we officially support Amazon Aurora in both its interfaces: MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.

GUI Session Invalidation

Although SlashDB is predominantly used from other programs via REST API, product’s web interface allows for a user-friendly browsing through data, query definition in Query Studio and administration. While the former is entirely stateless, the latter sets a session cookie. This release hardens security by invalidating user’s session on the server side upon log out. This is in addition to invalidating the cookie, which has already been in place.

Checkbox for DISTINCT in SQL Pass-thru

Result from executing defined SQL Pass-thru queries can now be modified at run time with a DISTINCT keyword without the need for editing the query.

5,700 Test Cases

At SlashDB, we are fanatical about testing our product not only ahead of each release, but also during daily development work. Since the last release, we have invested great deal in our end-to-end functional test suite, which ensures uniform behavior of SlashDB across all supported databases. In total, our automated test count grew from 2,506 to 5,700.

Additional improvements and fixes

Core

• Fixed error when filtering and relationship traversal are combined
• Fixed distinct on MS SQL when limit/offset are also used
• User admin assigned as creator when not given in query definition
• Fixed incorrect 201 response for POST of empty object
• Fixed needlessly saving configuration files when there is no change
• Fixed trailing space issue
• Fixed database mappings for the admin user
• Fixed ignoring of the query parameters submitted in request body for PUT requests /w Oracle
• Fixed error 500 with DELETE
• Avoid needless use of DISTINCT to improve performance and simplify generated queries
• Improved memory efficiency in streaming of large number for rows in JSON format

GUI

• Fixed disappearing Next/Back arrow buttons in Query Studio
• Fixed momentary flicker of JavaScript tags in single record view
• Fixed JSON button going blank in some browsers
• Fixed status multiple modal windows Database Definition
• Removed “Next” button when results empty
• Hide pagination button in QueryStudio when no data
• Order alphabetically items in Query Studio databases dropdown and table list
• Fixed hiding of Connection wizard when accidentally clicked outside the modal
• Removed misleading field for schema in MySQL type in the connection wizard
• Help menu changes
• Preserve limit/offset settings in breadcrumb links
• Fixed missing trailing zeros when float_decimal_digits is unset
• Display host name on the License config page

Dev/Ops, Docs, Research, Testing

• Performed rigorous load testing required from a new client, a multinational financial services company
• Normalized and expanded functional test suite to cover all supported databases
• Expanded documentation on slashdb.ini settings
• Expanded documentation on security
• Expanded documentation on adding and modifying data with SlashDB API
• Improved and further automate VM distros
• Added docs for excluded columns option
• Graceful exit in Docker container
• Corrected motd to not says that it is licensed only for development only
• Fixed nightly build of beta server and the docs
• Tested with latest drivers for Oracle 19c