This document covers the following topics:
Beside this product documentation, additional product information is available at the following places:
The Knowledge Center at https://empower.softwareag.com/ (for registered users only).
The Natural for Ajax discussion forum at http://tech.forums.softwareag.com/techjforum/forums/list.page.
For detailed information on the supported operating systems, application servers, web containers, web browsers, and other prerequisites, see System Requirements.
This section describes new features and enhancements in Natural for Ajax which have been added after the release of Natural or Ajax Version 8.2.7.
The NATPAGE control now
supports the new property natkcheck. This property
helps to avoid ambiguous variable names when a check for keywords is performed
with the Natural profile parameter KCHECK.
It is now possible to start applications with the HTTP method
POST. With previous versions, it was only possible to use the HTTP
method GET. See Starting a Natural Application with a
URL in Client Configuration.
With Natural for Ajax, it is now possible to authenticate against a Software AG IAF server. See Using Integrated Authentication Framework (IAF) in Client Configuration.
A default error handling servlet is now available. See Customizing Error Pages in Client Configuration.
If your Natural program only allows Latin upper-case characters (for
example, if you are using the Hebrew codepage CP803), you can now set the
parameter natuppercase="true" in the
cisconfig.xml file. In this case, the built-in events are
generated in upper case, and URLs to Natural for Ajax pages are handled
correctly even if they are specified completely in upper case. See also
Code Pages.
The new built-in event nat:popup.end can now be raised when
the user closes a pop-up window with the Close button in the upper right corner
of the pop-up window. To activate this new built-in event, the new property
popupendmethod of the
NATPAGE control has to be set to
"true". For more information, see
Built-in
Events and User-defined Events.
The TEXT control now supports
the new properties bgcolorprop and
fgcolorprop which can be used to set the control's
background color and foreground color.
The XCIPOPUPMENU
control now supports the new property
withinactivenodes which can be used to disable
single context menu items. The default value is
"false". If set to
"true", the adapter is generated with an additional
INACTIVE field. By default, the value of the INACTIVE
field is "false". If you set it to
"true", the corresponding menu item is shown as
inactive, that is, it is greyed out and cannot be selected.
The GOOGLEMAP control now supports the Google Maps JavaScript API v3. An API key is not needed any more, but when used in production, an API key should be used.
You can now generate HTML pages using the command line (either single pages or entire projects). An Ant file named generate.xml is available for this purpose. You can find it in the support/ant directory of the product CD. For more information, see Generating HTML Pages Using the Command Line.
Due to changes and corrections in the right-to-left (RTL) handling of
character-based I/O (Natural statements INPUT, WRITE,
DISPLAY etc.), the following prerequisites must be met to run RTL
applications correctly that use these statements: Natural for Ajax Version
8.3.3 requires Natural Version 8.3.2 or above on Linux, UNIX or Windows or
Natural Version 8.2.4 or above on mainframes, and vice versa.
Natural for Ajax now supports Internet Explorer 11. However, with the current version of Natural for Ajax, applications running in RTL (right-to-left) mode cannot be executed under Internet Explorer 11.
The ROWTABLEAREA3 control is used to bind a two-dimensional Natural array to a grid. This grid separates the data structure for the business data from the data structure for the rendering data.
With the NJX:REQUESTCONTEXT control, the Natural application can access context information regarding the request.
The TEXT control now supports
the new properties maxrows,
maxrowsprop,
maxrowlength and
maxrowlengthprop which can be used to limit the
number of rows and the length of the rows.
This type of support was already available with Natural for Ajax Version 8.3.2. Due to an early documentation deadline, this fact could not be announced in the Release Notes for version 8.3.2.
The elements LEFT and TOP of the
NJX:XCIOPENPOPUP control
are now also supported for page pop-ups. These elements were previously only
supported for browser pop-ups.
It was not possible to introduce this feature without producing the
following incompatibility as compared with previous handling of page pop-ups:
In order to open a centered page pop-up, the elements LEFT and
TOP need to be set to -1. If LEFT and
TOP are set to 0, the page pop-up is opened in the upper left
corner of the browser output area.
Previous versions contained an inconsistency in the focus handling during flush events. When a flush event was specified for a FIELD and the user moved the focus away from that FIELD, the following happened while the flush method was executed:
If alwaysflush="false" (default) was defined for the
FIELD, the Natural system variable *CURS-FIELD
contained the value of the Natural system function POS for the
FIELD that lost the focus.
On the other hand, if alwaysflush="true" was defined for
the FIELD, the Natural system variable *CURS-FIELD
contained the value of the Natural system function POS for the
FIELD that received the focus.
This inconsistency has been removed. Now when the user moves the focus
away from one input control to another,
*CURS-FIELD contains during the flush event the
POS value of the input control that received the focus.
This allows an application to identify both the input control that lost the
focus (by means of the flush event) and the input control that received the
focus (by means of *CURS-FIELD).
Note:
If an application relies on *CURS-FIELD
containing the POS value of the input control that lost
the focus, it can achieve this behavior by setting the parameter
flushreceivespreviousfocused="true" in the configuration file
cisconfig.xml.
With the configuration tool, it is now possible to define the filler character that is to be removed from the input fields of an application. Trailing filler characters will be removed from the input fields, and leading filler characters will be replaced with blanks. See Editing a Session in the Client Configuration documentation.
JBoss Application Server 5.1 and Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 are no longer supported. Support of subsequent versions of Oracle GlassFish is not planned.
See also Supported Application Servers.
The ROWTABAREA and
COLTABAREA controls now support the new properties
disabledprop1 through
disabledprop16 which can be used to dynamically
disable and enable tabs from within a Natural application at runtime.
In addition, the ROWTABAREA and COLTABAREA controls now support the following new properties which can be used to dynamically set the style per tab at runtime:
tabselectedstyleprop1 through
tabselectedstyleprop16
tabunselectedstyleprop1 through
tabunselectedstyleprop16
tabdisabledstyleprop1 through
tabdisabledstyleprop16
For TEXTOUT controls, the count of rendered decimal digits now matches the decimal digits specified in the bound Natural data type.
Natural for Ajax now uses the Software AG Installer to copy the distributables for the supported application servers and web containers to your machine. You can then install them on your application server or web container as usual. For more information, see Installation.
The following application servers are now supported:
WildFly 8 (this is the new name for JBoss Application
Server)
Apache Tomcat 8
See also Supported Application Servers.
The following applications servers will no longer be supported in future versions:
JBoss Application Server 6
IBM WebSphere Application Server 7 and 8.0
Apache Tomcat 6
While typing, it is now possible to select a value from a pre-populated list of values. With the new AUTOCOMPLETE control, you can add this functionality to a FIELD control.
For FIELD controls, it is now possible to customize the keys which open
the pop-up and/or combo box for the value help. The new parameter
valuehelpkeys is supported in the
cisconfig.xml configuration file. You specify the keys in
the same way as hot keys. Example:
valuehelpkeys = "ctrl-65;ctrl-alt-66"
See also Configuration in the Application Designer documentation.
A new style sheet, natural_mapeditor.css, is available. If you would like to see the same colors in the output window as in the map editor, you can use this new style sheet instead of the default style sheet natural.css. See also Name and Location of the Style Sheets in the Client Configuration documentation.
With Internet Explorer 11, Firefox and Chrome, Natural for Ajax applications now run in standards mode in the browsers. This mode supports HTML5 and CSS3. For information on how to upgrade your applications and environments, see Browser Standards Mode and HTML5.
With Internet Explorer 10, Natural for Ajax applications now run in the Internet Explorer 10 quirks mode, which already supports many HTML5 and CSS3 features.
A new chapter Test Automation of Natural for Ajax Applications is now available. It explains how to use stable identifiers for automated tests.
A new chapter Styling Grids is now available. It provides hints on the most frequent customizations of grids.
The SSL connection between the Natural Web I/O server and Natural for Ajax client is now Poodle-safe. The Poodle ("Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption") vulnerability can be exploited by possible attackers to break the cryptographic security of SSL Version 3.
To counter this, the clients and server no longer allow to be forced back to SSL Version 3. Only TLS Version 1.0 and upwards is possible.
Further information can be found in the Software AG Security Advisory on Poodle in Empower.
In the date and calendar pop-ups, the year range can now be edited. This allows for fast switching back and forth for instance hundreds of years in one go. See DATEINPUT and FIELD for further details.
Documentation and Examples for styling of complex controls like
Grids
added. New style class TRHeadline.
Using the design time property resizable
you can set for each GRIDCOLHEADER if you want the corresponding
column to be resizable.
The new property asheadline supports the
usage of the new style class TRHeadline to style grid header
rows.
The control IMAGEVIEWER
now has a new property withscrollbar. When this
property is set to true, vertical and horizontal scrollbars are displayed next
to the IMAGEVIEWER. With these scrollbars it is possible to move the visible
part of the image and the user sees which part of the image he is currently
viewing.
You can now use the design time property
name to define a file name when downloading the
report as a PDF file.
This property only has effects if the
withformtag property in the
PAGEBODY
is activated. In this case, you can switch on and off the browser's
autocomplete behavior for HTML form tags in single
FIELD
controls.
In ROWTABLEAREA and COLTABLEAREA tooltips can
now be set dynamically from within the Natural programs. This is supported via
the new property titleprop.
To provide more individual disconnect messages, the session definition in the configuration tool has been extended by a new field Application name. You can define a name for your application there, that is then used to replace the standard term "Application" in your session´s disconnect messages. Refer to Editing a Session under Using the Configuration Tool in the Client Configuration for further details.
In Natural Web I/O screens, it is now possible to jump from one input field to another using the cursor keys up, down, right and left.
MENU controls can now
have inactive items. In the same way as in context menus, you need to set the
property withinactiveitems. When set to true, a
field INACTIVE is generated into the Natural adapter. This allows you to set
the value dynamically at runtime from within the Natural program.
When setting the property onlyoneline to
true, the second line of a DLMENU is automatically rendered as
drop down menu. Drop down menus are opened when hovering over a top node.
Many new samples have been added to the NaturalAjaxDemos examples (see Welcome Page). The samples in the NaturalAjaxDemos project can now be either grouped by Natural for Ajax version or by control functionality.
When the browser back button is pressed, in some cases the page is not
synchronized with the server anymore and a default page is shown. You can use
the new parameter urlbackbuttonpressed in the
cisconfig.xml to define the URL of a custom page that is
to be shown instead of the default page.
The Ajax cisconfig.xml configuration files can now be adapted, automatically activated and used in the NaturalONE development environment when building and running Ajax applications.
Optionally, the STATUSBAR can now
reset texts before a server round trip is done. This can either be done via
STATUSBAR control using the new property
resetbefore or for the whole application with
the new cisconfig.xml parameter
resetstatusbarbefore.
With the new parameter xciParameters.natpassword it is now
possible to submit the Natural password as URL parameter. See
Starting a
Natural Application with a URL for further details.
In web I/O mode it is now possible to copy selected lines or the complete screen to the clipboard. The steps required are described in Natural Web I/O Screens,
Example rules for the conversion of CV variables have been added. See Sample Conversion Rules Files.
Enhancements for the mapping to Array Grids (= ROWTABLEAREA3) have been done. A new chapter with hints for the conversion of Array data has been added to the documentation. See Array Data.
Style sheets can now also be regenerated via command line. For more information see Generating HTML Pages Using the Command Line.
The default behavior of the DATEINPUT control is to
automatically complete partial input. The new
completedateinput
parameter now supports forcing the end-users to always enter the complete date.
For page pop-ups you can now configure whether or not disabled
rendering is shown for the parent page. For more information see
popupparentdisabled.
The chapter Styling Grids has been updated. It provides hints on the most frequent customizations of grids.
Microsoft´s Browser Edge is now supported.
Internet Explorer 10 is no longer supported.
A new calendar control DATEINPUT2 has been added.
This control does not require browser pop-ups. A corresponding example is
available in the NaturalAjaxDemos examples.
Many new samples have been added to the NaturalAjaxDemos examples (see Welcome Page). The samples in the NaturalAjaxDemos project can now be either grouped by Natural for Ajax version or by control functionality.
The new property stylevariant in the
FIELD controls allows you to define several different
style variants for the FIELD control and simply apply
the style by setting the variant name.
The new properties trstyleprop of the
TR control and
strstyleprop of the STR
control allow you to set the style for single rows dynamically at runtime.
When you move the mouse over a button in a Natural Web/IO page, the corresponding PF key number is now displayed as tooltip.
The workplace framework now supports the definition of hot keys to switch forwards and backwards between activities in a workplace.
This version contains a set of mobile controls as preview. A corresponding running example is included in the Natural Ajax Demos.
The name in a LABEL and in a
GRIDCOLHEADER control can now be dynamically set from
within Natural programs via the new property
nameprop.
The new property withinvisibleprop enables
you to dynamically make single icons invisible from within Natural
programs.