We are celebrating the 500th code revision (the first was in 2010), which is now available in the test version of the modeler. With this we are also doing a feature freeze for version 0.97, only fixing potential bugs, with the intent to move it to stable soon. After all, there are already a number of databases and data warehouses using that codebase in production.
Noteworthy features in 0.97 that have been added since our last post (rev 480) along with numerous small fixes and improvements:
Concurrent-reliance-temporal modeling
The CRT generation is feature complete and has been tested, but could use more testing before we can say that it is “bug free”. If you have the possibility, please help us out with this. CRT will make it possible to time travel over your information in three dimensions: over changing time (versions), over positing time (corrections), and over positors (origins). This will definitely be the next big thing in modeling, as everywhere we have shown it, people have realised how it solves problems they either had discarded as too difficult to solve or had poor workarounds for.
Business views
The views provide a simplified naming and shows only values and keys for the different perspectives latest, current, point, and difference. It should make it easier for those who want to expose the Anchor model directly to end users like analysts or report builders. With business views the need for marts is even less than before, and we expect that many will be able to get rid of the additional maintenance layer that marts constitute.
Checksums
Some of the larger data types in SQL Server come with limitations, such as being able to take part in an index or be compared to each other using the equals operator. In order to use such types, for example varchar(max), text, or geography, you can now tick a checkbox and an MD5 checksum will be generated and used instead in indexes, triggers, and comparisons.
