$Header: /u1/project/ARSperl/ARSperl/RCS/RELNOTES,v 1.5 1998/03/31 23:44:16 jcmurphy Exp $

Release Notes for ARSperl

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    ARSperl -- A Perl5 / ARS2.x-3.x integration kit.
    Copyright (C) 1996,1997
                       Joel Murphy, jmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu
                       Jeff Murphy, jcmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
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1.6 Notes
---------

The 1.6 release marks the first real NT port. v1.5x attempted a port
to Active State's Perl for Windows, but wasn't successful. Bill Middleton
re-worked the source code and merged it into Gurusamy Sarathy's 
version of perl for windows. 

1.5 Notes
---------

This release contains serveral bug fixes and minor feature additions.
An effort was made to implement the remaining ARS functions, however,
it proved to be very time consuming to implement and test them. Therefore,
in this release most of the remaining functions have been implemented. 
The rest will likely be implemented in a future release. See TODO for
a list of remaining functions.

1.4 Notes 
---------

The notifier functions have been added to the main package. This allows
a script to connect and register itself as a user and then receive 
notifications (examples are included).  You can also send notifications from 
a script.

Joel made all the changes to get it to compile and work against ARS3.0
So the current distribution will compile against 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 libraries.
Everything basically remains the same so you don't need to modify your
scripts. The only things that change are the NT (notification) routines 
to a certain extent. However, since NT (notification) support is new to
this release, this shouldn't be a problem.

The doc has been reorganized as well.

1.3 Notes
---------

We've added some features for performance analysis. In particular, 
we've added the "profiling" feature to ARSperl. Now, when you call
ars_Login() it initializes a profiling variable that will track
the number of queries your script makes against the server. You
can then access this information using the ars_GetProfileInfo() call.

We send this information to syslog() automatically at the end of
each script and then process the syslog file later on to keep stats
on our API scripts. In this fashion, we can quickly determine which
scripts are triggered the most, and which make the most queries. We
can then concentrate out optimization efforts on those particular
API scripts.

In addition, a few new functions were added (GetFilter, GetCharMenu and
GetServerStatistics, ars_Export). The first two are used by the WhoUsesIt.pl 
utility. This utility (found in the "examples" directory) is handy for
locating which filter or menu is referencing a particular file, or 
seeing exactly what filters a particular schema uses.. etc. This 
cuts down the amount of time it takes to figure out a poorly documented
system (what? poor documentation? not us!! :)

The GetServerStatistics function was added to provide a simpler method
for checking server health. I might provide a server analysis tool 
built around this function in a future release. 

Joel added a cache to the internal GetField routine. This should cut
down on the number of queries made by some of the functions like
GetFieldTable and such.

In addition, doing ars_SetEntry($ctrl, ..., $fieldId, undef) will now
correctly set a field to $NULL$

jeff

1.0 Beta User Notes
-------------------

   o The library and extension seem fairly stable. However, bugs and
     memory leaks might still occur. We've only been able to build it
     under Solaris 2.x (4 and 5 to be specific) because that is what we
     run ARS under. Users who attempt builds on other systems and are
     successful should submit diffs back to us so that they can be 
     incorporated into the distribution.

   o The WEB client example works (more or less) but there is much 
     room for improvement. 

   o There is a mailing list available for people to share their 
     thoughts concerning ARSperl. To subscribe send email to 
     "majordomo@lurch.cit.buffalo.edu" with a body of "subscribe arsperl".
     The subject line is ignored.

joel

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arsperl@smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu
