SQL-Hero Release Notes

Version 2.0.0.78 - Aug 6, 2015

• Addition of xSkrape for Excel Add-in, xSkrape for SQL Server and adjustments to xSkrape for SSIS
• Changes in licensing model (1 free major version upgrade allowed)
• A number of other comparatively minor fixes and enhancements

Version 1.2.0.9 - Oct 12, 2014

• Feature: New option on Recorded History panel to filter out unmatched text (749)
• Feature: New data visualization templates (POV-Ray) (750)
• Enhancement: In background service, additional health checks for when resources run low (throttle service) (740)
• Enhancement: New service settings to support creating digest format for error emails from the service at user-defined times (739)
• Enhancement: Atl-. join completion feature enhanced to rely on FK's more (supporting role names), work in more situations (710)
• Enhancement: Numerous improvements related to auto-completion (synonym support, navigate button, aliases via UDPs, better handling of delimiters, etc.) (699)
• Change: One-time only scheduled unit testing no longer blocked by blackout periods (747)
• Change: No longer write to Connections.lastgood.dbconn on close (707)
• Change: Framework - support form-level security settings (i.e. apply to all controls) (694)
• Fix: Framework level, form-based security for read-only fields, null reference exception fixed (737)
• Fix: Performance improvements in API layer related to AddObjectLog method (736)
• Fix: Messaging from DMV aggregator could indicate "object name column name does not exist in the source monitoring data" when really this can be acceptable (729)
• Fix: Audit history could record DROP COLUMN's as if the associated table had been dropped (and then subsequently "appeared" with current schema) - addressed to correctly show table as updated only (728)
• Fix: Certain specific types of database switches could result in the tree view disappearing in the editor (678)
• Fix: Some reliability fixes in SQLHeroServer service (586)
• Fix: Addressing some exceptions reported from SQLHeroServer service (569)

Version 1.2.0.1 - Aug 21, 2014

• Feature: New service config setting (RescheduleIfMissByMinutes) which if certain tasks are "missed" by at least that number of minutes, they will be rescheduled instead of run as soon as possible; this helps ensure certain "heavy" operations are done at fixed scheduled times at the expense of immediacy; default is 0 which implies should always run as soon as possible (702)
• Feature: New service config setting (GeneralBlackoutHours) which lets you define days/times when the service should either throttle back or simply not perform certain tasks, regardless of schedule; this can be useful if these tasks impose comparatively heavy load despite other throttling settings; tasks include scheduled unit testing, snapshot scanning (slowed not stopped), and compliance checking (692)
• Enhancement: Notification delivery for most types now includes SQLFilter and SQLFilterDatabase settings which allow for further filtering of notification data prior to delivery; example use case: only alert if the object exists in some other database compared to the database it was changed in (704)
• Enhancement: Gap time analysis for tracing tool re-written, including support for "within transactions" (682)
• Enhancement: Performance improvement for notificaton tool window (645)
• Enhancement: In installer, will provide a warning if the client is being updated but API services are not (when they should) (629)
• Enhancement: Added conditional drop script for unique constraints when opened in editor (556)
• Change: WPF trace reports would only work if trace session was marked "reportable" - can work regardless now since by explicit session (669)
• Change: Error code for extended event capture treats "error" and "abort" the same, looking at severity if available to determine "1" or "2" to be more consistent (652)
• Change: Some minor formatting improvements for canned trace reports (647)
• Change: Grid cells that are for strings will now all support multi-line (505)
• Fix: Under rare circumstances, it would be possible to have "full object text" recorded as prior version text due to caching (actual executed text was always correct) (716)
• Fix: Performance test failures were not always appearing (689)
• Fix: Log file aggregator plug-in bug fix related to "unrecognized escape sequence" error (672)
• Fix: Could incorrectly identify object type in very specific situations (related to dropping of some UDF's) (658)
• Fix: Profiler collected traces stored under SQL 2014 could result in an error when loading from table (657)
• Fix: Stop "BeginInvoke or Invoke cannot be called" message as randomly seen from the text aggregator plug-in when trying to preview a file (fix is framework level for async form loading) (653)
• Fix: Installer could hang while installing new database under specific circumstances (enumerating local groups) (651)
• Fix: Time adjustment in log file / event log aggregators didn't handle DST correctly in all cases (649)
• Fix: Changes to settings management to resolve some inconsistent save behaviors (628)
• Fix: Memory leaks in desktop app have been addressed (622)
• Fix: Installation process could fail if some prerequisites not previously installed (fixed in 1.1.0.5) (620)

Version 1.1.0.1 - Jun 17, 2014

• Feature: Add SQL 2014 support (basic function, with new database provider) (529)
• Feature: New "Session Execution Results" option (under editor Manage menu) which shows graph for client-side stats (durations, optionally logical reads, etc.) for prior executions within the editor (590)
• Feature: Added "Compare Plan" feature to Data Compare tool that allows one to use different table names/schemas in source and target, and/or use alternate keys as basis of comparison/scripting (42)
• Feature: Added RollingLogFileCount service config setting which enables rolling log files (562)
• Feature: "Instant compare" window can advise about possible version conflicts, can suppress using editor settings (559)
• Feature: Added support for SQL 2014 client tool installation (535)
• Feature: Added "only use row counts" checkbox and parallel bulk copy scripting options on the Data Compare tool (534)
• Feature: Editor - automatically add summaries to IO stats grid so can see sum, etc. without having to manually add summaries (547)
• Feature: Tracing tool context menu option to locate monitoring records that fall within a range around the selected trace event (580)
• Feature: Event log and log file aggregators - added ConnectFailureIsWarning (when true as might apply for workstations, connect failures are considered warnings) (512)
• Enhancement: Improve background service internal health checking (improved stability) (593)
• Enhancement: Improvements in template parsing speed, including introduction of SQLEVAL_CACHED tag, also leading to improved data warehouse load speed (585)
• Enhancement: Recorded SQL window now includes info about results of executed SQL including duration, reads, row counts, etc., along with "color by" context option on grid (577)
• Enhancement: Improved messaging around DMV aggregator (568)
• Enhancement: Coloring options for execution plan view, performance penalty for UDF's and other minor improvements (550)
• Enhancement: Event log aggregator plugin - added call to start RemoteRegistry service on target computer using WMI (509)
• Change: System-wide dates for the data warehouse now include 4 values: "Before", "After", "Before Range" and "After Range", acting comparably to how tuning dates operate in the DW (576)
• Change: Schema compare option for less restrictive matching when false will find differences in delimiters, did not before (560)
• Change: enable read committed snapshot isolation in SQLHeroMgmt (551)
• Change: Object filtering on tables names now includes FK's depending on "never hide" options available on filter screen (558)
• Fix: Installation gave critical error when only SQL2014 components installed (could continue, but would not allow Express install to "see" SSAS) (603)
• Fix: Addressed several reported exceptions (eg. 2264, 2259, etc.) (601)
• Fix: Compare engine fix related to indexes with same name on different tables (572)
• Fix: Loading result set from Excel file infers numeric columns more correctly (566)
• Fix: Call ValidateChildren in InfraSpecific base search form (framework) (563)
• Fix: Scripting related to indexes could give incorrect schema name in certain cases (546)
• Fix: Data warehouse extended columns were sometimes not generating when underlying attribute data was very large (539)
• Fix: Automatic object categorization - could fail with sufficiently large object base, addressed and tested with 700k+ objects, 38M+ trace records (537)
• Fix: Data warehouse XMLA template fixes - had new failure cases showing up that have been addressed (536)
• Fix: Race condition in SQLHeroService.exe could result in schedules not being updated sometimes (533)
• Fix: Manage Data Warehouse screen fixes (523)
• Fix: Remove hard references to AMO 11.0, use reflection instead to support either/both 2014/2012 installations (604)

Version 1.0.3.59 - Mar 14, 2014

• Feature: Added a "time critical" checkbox to monitor schedule grid to enforce timing over service performance where desired (388)
• Feature: Added HourOfDayOfStartRange calculated column along with day and month to time window tables (437)
• Feature: For background extended event collection, can optionally persist to a database table (in addition to repository) (467)
• Feature: Added StartDate and EndDate calculated columns to data warehouse, derived from StartTime, EndTime (468)
• Feature: Add blocker_max_tran_id to Current and Potential Blocking monitoring query (479)
• Feature: Added <!SQL_INSTALLDIR_NO_DRIVE/> and <!SQL_INSTALLDIR_CONVERT_TO_SHARENAME/> sub-tags on extended event connection settings (494)
• Feature: support decimal for # of hours between tran log backups in self-maintenance mode (495)
• Feature: Various minor improvements related to extended event trace collection (496)
• Enhancement: Supressable warning message when using a filter regular expression related to hiding of parent/child objects (461)
• Enhancement: In background service, if ping of API fails repeatedly, try an IISRESET at intervals (if API hosted on same box) (493)
• Change: Move to Infragistics 13.2 from 10.1 throughout (432)
• Change: In Chimborazo relational parser, make AUTOLOGIN default (uses default credentials instead of no credentials) (438)
• Change: Increase timeout allowed for manage monitor results search (481)
• Fix: Improved general performance and reliability of trace uploads to the repository (318)
• Fix: Work item association event could repeat for the same work item number when should only do it once (381)
• Fix: Addressed a race condition in sqlheroserver.exe which could result in occasional "stalling" of schedules (416)
• Fix: Allow deletion of trace grid rows and then change in-grid analysis type (423)
• Fix: Minor fixes in existing aggregators (427)
• Fix: Adjusted certain trace upload timeouts to improve reliability (430)
• Fix: Corrected minor bugs in relational parser engine (444)
• Fix: Cleanup of certain aspects of deployment including ensuring visualizer dlls are properly placed (446)
• Fix: Template engine literal markup was not working correctly (448)
• Fix: Various reported exceptions (449)
• Fix: Minor SQLHeroMgmt fixes to give stricter validation / semantics (453)
• Fix: Fixed some common name parsing rules (458)
• Fix: Improved loading speed for data warehouse (generate XMLA step) (487)
• Fix: Addressed some memory leaks related to grids (497)

Version 1.0.2.15 - Dec 15, 2013

• Feature: Added support for Visual Studio 2013 (integration) on par with what provide for VS 2012 (including visualizers) (349)
• Feature: New Windows Event Log aggregator plug-in available (399)
• Feature: New SQL Job aggregator plug-in available (408)
• Feature: Added EndOfEventDaysAgo and EndOfEventDaysAgoWithTime numeric computed columns which can be used to more easily build "trailing x day" reports, and use scatter plot chart type for proper scaling of time-based axes (389)
• Feature: Add Maximum and Minimum measures for certain cases that were previously missing (e.g. Maximum CallCount) (398)
• Feature: Added 'CHKPT', 'BROKER_EVENTHANDLER', 'KSOURCE_WAKEUP', 'MISCELLANEOUS' to the list of wait stats that are ignored for the purposes of the standard DMV queries SQL-Hero makes available (363)
• Change: Renamed some fields in the data warehouse to be more explicit (eg. Obj->Object, Desc->Description) (400)
• Change: Changed "Only show modified" to "Only show selected" on the extended event configuration screen (393)
• Change: Database maintenance error message "backup log cannot be performed because there is no full backup" is converted to an informational message (396)
• Fix: Improved messaging and performance around the loading of previous extended event sessions on the event config screen (359)
• Fix: Aggregator configuration changes (other than interval) do not require a service restart anymore (374)
• Fix: Monitoring schedule interval changes previously required a service restart, now do not (382)
• Fix: Reduce the likelihood of certain service timeouts (383)
• Fix: Connection count system query should exclude db_id <= 4 (384)
• Fix: DAX expression for benchmark period date was not correct (391)
• Fix: Multiple benchmark periods could give XMLA error (394)
• Fix: Monitoring queries filtered by database were not always persisted (workaround for earlier versions would be to select "all DB") (409)
• Fix: Improved concurrency for aggregator plugins - instead of sequential now allows parallel execution over config rows (413)
• Fix: Data compare was showing differences in text fields where only difference was CR/LF vs LF usage - treats CR/LF as LF now for compare purposes (417)

Version 1.0.1.7 - Nov 15, 2013

• Feature: Added a new meta table that can be used to define system-wide events (desciption and date) that turn into "before/after" dimensions in performance data warehouse (user suggested) (331)
• Feature: Added a new meta table that can be used to define system-wide benchmarking periods that can then be used in comparison to "before and after" periods (348)
• Feature: Added a release notes link to the app updater pop-up screen (332)
• Feature: Added "omit nullable" checkbox to "insert with values" template (insval snippet) (361)
• Feature: Added AllowNegativeOrZeroDelta to DMV aggregator plug-in configuration (default=false) (373)
• Feature: Create a script per database when using the "restore from history" feature on the History tool (user suggested) (330)
• Feature: New sqlheroserver.exe config option - shrink log file after full backup in self-maintenance mode (default=true) (371)
• Fix: Pruning of monitoring data not always being done correctly given purge schedule (322)
• Fix: Argument exception on History tool, compare current (316)
• Fix: DAX related to tuning date calculations in performance data warehouse was not correct (329)
• Fix: Tracing tool - don't disable database drop-down when "span all" selected (was confusing) (352)
• Fix: SHCommand gives message about Developer or Advanced license required when using Enterprise edition (355)
• Fix: Aggregator plugin initialization was starting aggregator executive in client tool instead of service alone (366)
• Fix: reported exception 1204 - deleting notifications should cascade to notification user messages (356)
• Fix: Reported exception 1205 - trace resource analysis report arithmetic error (367)
• Fix: Corrected some scripting issues related to the "restore from history" option available on the History tool, plus made some general scripting fixes related to unique constraints (354)
• Fix: Reported exception 1206 - failure starting SQL profiler trace should be handled more gracefully (376)

Version 1.0.0.6 - Oct 8, 2013

• Official 1.0 release!