Woda Release Notes
- Release Notes for 4.x version
- Release Notes for 3.x version
- Release Notes for 2.x version
- Woda has been under development since 1995. Records of previous releases are lost.
4.611 (august 2011) Bug fix release for 4.610 branch
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Security fix
This version fix a very dangerous security bug in search strings (many thanks to Claudio Rivetti).
The security bug affect all previous Woda version, if you can't upgrade, request the fix by email.
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Some known issues from 4.610 fixed
- Default charset is back to iso-8859-1 - we don't recommend the use of utf8.
- Checkbox fields can be made empty (Claudio Rivetti)
- The 9 sort format are now properly handled
- Report correct Perl version number (Richard Wolfschlegel).
- Help url updated.
- Various small fixes
- More in the complete Changelog4611.
- Woda 4.611 is available on http://launchpad.net/woda
4.610 (october 2009) Free software again, lots of bugs fixes
Perl 5.10 compatibility, Html 4/Xhtml compliance and many bug fixes. This is mainly a bug fix release. Changes can be considered as fixes.-
Woda is free software again!
Thanks to Ziga Turk! He has gently given the whole Woda's code to the users community (next release will contain missing parts).- New license is GNU Affero GPL 3.
Basicaly : as Woda is a web app, the AGPL force devs to share their code if the db is on the web. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#AGPLv3.0 for more explanations
- WODA home changed to http://woda.sourceforge.net
- Public development and bug tracking using launchpad service. Check the bazaar source tree at http://launchpad.net/woda and start hacking.
- New license is GNU Affero GPL 3.
Basicaly : as Woda is a web app, the AGPL force devs to share their code if the db is on the web. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#AGPLv3.0 for more explanations
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Perl 5.10 compatibility
- Moving toward Perl 5.10 compatibility, incomplete. See bug #342308 for explanations.
- removed $* used to multiline/single line matching in regexp, not everywhere yet (list on #342308)
- removed all "do" statements
- enforce quoting for WBB and WBF, ENV, CGI and rec{} variables
- code formated with http://perltidy.sourceforge.net (default options, but --maximum-line-length=150)
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Html 4/Xhtml compliance
- Moving toward HTML4/XHTML compliance. Incomplete. The main tasks are matching tag pairs, quoted tag attribute values and lowercase tags
- default doctype setting is a comment, not to break any old page designs,
- documentation updated (no default doctype).
- fixes and typos
- html code lisibility
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More friendly user experience
- many cosmetic html change
- fix a lot of typos
- fixes and changes in documentation
- rewriting of sent emails
- enhanced login, password change, password recovery, user information
- a lot of missing #UK for translation, in particular in Basket, Browse, HTMLAREA
- AGPL license help web user to access the source code
- fix and improved OPTION fields key/value and HEADING (sub-titles in OPTION fields)
- add HEADING and key/value in BrowseTree, BrowseKeywords & BrowseContents & BrowseMatrix
- easy search in PDF docs
- anonymous users doesn't have a search history
- one doesn't need to re-enter password on verifyEdit form
- revised browsing/editing in frames
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Useful changes for admin / developer
- comments all sub
- code formated with perltidy
- cgiAdmMenu shows normal menu as well
- better log for robots action, show?id and sendmail actions
- fix multiple files upload (fix parsing of multipart/form-data)
- multiple fixes, typos and changes in AdmModifySetting and in Admin's documentation
- protect lastID file
- QRY takes care of searchCache
- while importing CSV, import only non-empty fields i.e. blank fields doesn't erase data
- minor security fixes
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Internationalization
- woda* file encoding is utf8
- TODO still bad handling of intl characters
- a lot of missing #UK for translation
- fix i18n for HTML toolbar in HTMLAREA fields
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Changes regarding database's configuration file
- HEADING (sub-titles in OPTION fields) can be 1 to 5 characters
- no default DOCTYPE, it must be set
- Basket expiry time can be change with basketExpire setting (was pending for years)
- the use of pageHeadIcon is documented now
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And many many more changes (see the huge Changelog4610)
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Known issues
- some bugs reported on the list but not fixed yet
- do not use utf8 encoding for your database or else:
- fields with values containing intl characters will be sometimes "bizarre"
- BrowseAZ will display some index twice
4.603 (September 2005) validated HTML code, DOCTYPE, small fixes
- generates DOCTYPE tag that can be overriden with new setting doctype
- WARNING: this may change how your format is interpreted, pages may look different; if in trouble, set to <!-- DOCTYPE -->
- HTML 4.01 compatibility ... checked for most frequent pages ... could be issues left over on other pages
- WARNING - potential errors introduced because of rewriting of search=italy&format=DEFAULT to search=italy&format=DEFAULT as well as a zillion HREF=x to HREF="x", ACTION=x TO ACTION="x"
- added link to login record from LoginForm and AboutUser pages
- handling of robots ... only TOC is at /robots/ ... the rest is dynamic
- fixed a bug in recAll ... now returns undeleted records only
- form display - mandatory and optional fields sharding bug corrected
- fixed handling _id during password recovery (_ids that are usenames must be fixID-ed as well
- fixed and improved RSS gandling
- bug ... if database has a title field the printHead takes it as title
- the /Html security problem fixed.
4.522 (November 2004) RSS feeds, users who showed this record also ...
- Fix: the /Html security problem.
- The submit section in data entry form has A NAME=SUBMIT
- Fields that will be validated are marked so in forms
- _from data (who last modified a record) is hidden by default.
- in advanced search forms ... the default format is DEFAULT
- dot changed to _ in ids ... may cause huge problems if ids are like ziga.turk@command.com
- interface to full text searching with swish
- WBB{similar} setting to display info like "users who put this into basket also put into basket" ... "users who showed this record also showed" ...
- RSS feeds using search?format=RSS
4.500 (December 2003) New Code Layout, Rich Text Editing, Office 2003 Support
- UPDATED: AdministratorManual
- FIXED: Removed -U option with sendmail; improved diagnostics
- CHANGED: support file layout ... icons at URL /woda/icons/default, javascript at /woda
- CHANGED: program file layout
- NEW: WBB{ownerGroup} defines a group with same right in a record as admin
- NEW: WBB{userMenuOther} replaces $SCRIPT with correct value
- NEW: woda can act as a server for the Office 2003 Research Task Pane function. See /Office function.
- NEW: woda is described in WSDL; a host of XML functions available. See below.
- WBB{provider}, WBB{license} and WBB{category} parameters for the above
- NEW: WBB{formatHttpHead1} defines that the user defined format #1 is ouput with a special HTTP header; typically content-type. Terminated by single newline!
- NEW: noform=1 CGI parameter for /Search pages ... prevents that the search form is displayed
- NEW: WBB{'title;Home'} defines a new text for the title of the page /Home ... same goes for any other /Page
- NEW: /Anyfunction?title=New+title will override the title for that page from calling URL
- NEW: &URL function returns URL of related table
- NEW: rich text editing for HTMLAREAs (IE 5.5, Mozilla 1.4) ... if their type par is 'RICH'
- FIX: Handling of " in values of option fields
- HTTP Error Handling ... must write docs about it
- WARNING: changed interpretation of WBB{tables} slightly
- should be backward compatibe
- NEW: built in group 'client' who has access to cgiX functions
- NEW: cgi functions Xget, Xput, XputMany, Xsearch ... allowed from local host only
- relational features are now expanded across several servers
- and may use http as a last resort
- NEW: API function GET to get %rec from a related table (uses http)
- new API function PUT to put a %rec into a (related) table (uses http)
- NEW: ROWS can use http to get related data
- NEW: QRY uses http, not command line, always
- NEW: FLD can use http
- NEW: IDS can use http
- NEW: KEY can use http
- FIX: use of login vouchers was broken
- fetchPage renamed to httpGet
4.310 (August 2003) Multiuser editing, robot unfriendy email addresses, several small goodies
- CHANGE: /Debug is now /AdmDebug
- NEW: the printout of any email addresses is robot-unfriendy
- FIX: WBB{userMenu...} was broken; it is not any more.
- NEW setting WBB{apTitle} ... prints before dbTitle in generated page heads
- better generation of Home page ... if no DATA is to be printed, menu is not on the left but below!
- NEW: WBB{afterRecordModify} setting ... called after a record has been modified and written to disk
- FIX: the user sort bug in advanced form screen
- FIX: if the same record is edited at the same time, only the first edits can be written, the second ones, based on outdated data, are rejected.
- NEW: AdmUploadUserfiles ... allows mass, simple upload of userfiles in tar.gz archives.
- NEW options in basket management
- NEW: title=foo+bar on URL overrides the title of the page with URL suppled title
- NEW new function cgiAppend allows you to Append data to existing record and supply values on URL.
4.300 (February 2003) CSS based formatting, several features for the admin
- For the default formatting or pages, cascading style sheets are used almost exclusively. The default syles may be replaced with WBB{style} (as before) or augmented with WBB{styleModify}. Warning, this may break some designs!
- Locking with flock for all critical write operation
- AZindexMethod allows TITLE case in primitive STEMing
- Primitive file management built in for the administrator.
- Raw data formats (CSV,XML,TAB) are prohibited by default.
- userMenu* settings more intelligent
- Data may be exported as text files for indexing and searching by third party applications (e.g. SWISH, htDIG).
- ? wildcard character in searches to stand for any one character.
- with images ALT= replaced by TITLE= throughout for better browser compatibility.
- new admin's functionality for the basket
- new options on the admin's menu to syncronise userfiles.
- cleaner handling of pageHead and pageFoot (particularly in MINIHEAD situations)
- better functionality for log file processing (includes counting)
- $LOGIN variable availabe from homePageFormat - shows a login dialog.
- fields may have $WBF{change} setting that changes the value of the field after edits and before validation.
- fields may have $WBF{meta} setting. On Show pages, the content of this field will appear as a META tag in the HEAD section of the HTML
- serial emails: CC is optional
- Fixes:
- Extention-less uploaded files are supported
- GeneratedHomePage is created regardless of the robots setting
- Static pages for robots are created only if WBB{robots}
- Anasty bug that resulted in miss-sorted results on a search that needed to reindex.
- Many others.
4.260 (June 2002) Saving, restoring forms, sendmail replaced by socket connection to smtp server
- All big forms, such as AdvancedSearch, EditMany etc. forms can be saved and retrieved.
- Agent processing rewritten.
- A couple of new icons.
- RegisterForm is not allowed or denied by default. By doing deny . ^Register registrations will be denied and not shown in Login windows.
- Cosmetic fixes to the login screens.
- Sendmail program not needed; mail is sent using sockets ... you need to configure $SMTPHOST. Faster.
- Minor bugs related to deleting records and afterTableModify fixed
- Browse matrix counts too; cosmetic changes.
- Some improvements on showing who is online and logfile printing
4.250 (May 2002) maybe Perl maybe text, better data management, several new settings
- For the administrator:
- Many setting, including head;Page and foot;Page settings may include Perl code or may be constant strings.
- NEW: admin sees the record history button - possible to see how a record did change and roll back to old version.
- more powerful CSV import and merge (new)
- filters can be named through WBB{filterText}
- _from and _at are handled as any other field ... with regards to formats, sees etc. future: have users explicitly define _from field if they need it.
- AdmManyEditForm ... no need to check editable fields printable
- Set one field to some value for many records
- Improved serial email.
- Changes related to handling of binary attachments:
- If ID of a record changes all attached files are properly renamed
- The directory for binary attachments gets file index.htm created so that browsing is not possible.
- A random number is added to the file name of IMAGE and USERFILE fields which makes those files more difficult to get to if they are not supposed to be 'seen'.
- Entry forms:
- BREAK=x typepar allows to say that OPTION items with a value of x are headers with cannot be selected
- COLS=n typePar works for checkboxed fields
- NOID typepar hides IDs off fields where code is different to displayed text
- $ThisRecordNo available for search result formatting
- forms with just a few fields possible like /cgi/app/EditForm?fields=firstName,lastName possible
- warning screen when deleting records always has one warning/confirmation screen
- Searching:
- new search results format PARAGRAPH
- sorting now possible on arbitrary fields (A-Z only), not Z-A, not 1-9, not 9-1.
- some fixes to the handling of basket
- NEW: AZindexMethod setting
- searches from AZindexs paint results
- serial emails are logged
- cosmetic fixes to admin icons in searches
- Fixes:
- making serial number record ids with &NEXT() in WBB{key} is much less likely to skip numbers.
- the TMPDIR cleans itself automatically - anything older than a week is erased
- better poweredby icon is distributed
- FIX: MyAction in separate files bug corrected (thanks Jean-Paul.Louis@alcatel.com)
- FIX: a bug related to saved searches
- FIX: a bug in WbReadRecords fixed
- FIX: a bug in rebuildFat fixed (thanks Jean-Paul.Louis@alcatel.com)
- search to frame does it with a simple format
- forced using DES encryption on passwords
4.200 (January 2002) Faster and better support for relational applications, XML, login and may other new features
- Administrator's enhancements:
- generally much better support for logged in users through usertable
- more support for the coding of values in OPTION fields (1=red, 2=blue ...) see &DECODE function.
- {sees} parameter is now obeyed in all search formats
- new setting WBF{field,adds} allows a field to be entered, but if then WBF{field,modifies} is prohibited, a field may only be created (used to select a username once and or all)
- LINKOPTION field is now obsolete ... 'options' field of an OPTION field may include an expression to generate the possible options
- improved login screens through the use of {usertable}
- with &PIC('lastName') is possible to create a nice picture just for this field.
- {key} may be &NEXT(100,4) ... ids will start at 100 with a step of 4.
- data may be exported in XML ... even the XML API may be requested - not in SOAP or WSLD though.
- smarter handling of robots
- &ROWS is now much faster - does not spawn a new process any more.
- new functions &LINK and &RELATED to make links between tables easily.
- no need to define related tables in {tables} if the are laid out on this in the same way as this table.
- home page data is considered outdated if older than $SCRIPTFILE
- if file $DATADIR/../_common.pl exists it is required. This is an easy way to specifiy common feature to several tables.
- admin functions to restore and backup data and others
- on disk full conditions, FAT entries may point to non existing records. They would be deleted automatically with a code of -2
- if reindexing is taking more than 1 hour it is retried, if it takes between 5 mins and 1 hour, the old index is used with a warning.
- Userland changes:
- login across sessions.
- flipping through records with Go should be faster and use smaller cache.
- search for "ziga turk (missing closing quote) results in an error.
- registration becomes only visible if term 'friend' appears in the {rights}setting.
- password recovery for records that include an email address.
- automatic show of a login box with userTable applications.
- many friendlier messages
- Bug fixes:
- {filter} should be much more watertight but slower ... the filter and the search are handled totally separately, error in one will not cause a problem in the other. Note the filter set to ziga has the effect of +ziga
- {filterText} is a new setting.
- backslash is properly escaped in keys
- early validation of search expressions
- ' nuisance
- Potential compatibility problems:
- ROWS does not take into account any kind of filtering, rights etc. Use QRY if you need that, but QRY is slower.
- ROWS does return rows. To date it did not return newline on the last row.
4.151 Some old and new bugs are fixed; thanks to Xavier and others.
- FIX: BrowseAZ?name= does not create AZ index of everything any more
- FIX: reports error if one searches like +authors:smith and 'authors' is not a valid field name but (this is new) does not report this error if search is for authors:smith
- FIX: BrowseAZ cleans the index of funny character better
- FIX: AZnot now handled properly
- FIX: Perl 5.6/Unicode annoyance avoided.
- FIX: ModifyStructure - does not display some WBFs twice any longer.
4.150 Painted search results, record locking, URL rights, templates and much more
This is a rather major new release with several new features. The only reason it is not called 4.200 is that there a few more goodies planned.- Search GUI: painted search results; you search for 'ziga', ziga is yellow!;
- Search GUI: cosmetic changes of the small search form, link to advanced search
- Security: {rights} setting now handles URL parameters. See documentation of the {rights} setting. For example, you may deny people to search for sex.
- Security: AboutUser is always allowed, About is subject to {rights}.
- Add: when editing records, the step with the verification is skipped by default. See {verifyEdits} setting.
- Add: several methods to lock a record. See setting {recordLock} which is separated words password,user,host,none...
- Add: if a large table is used and frequent reindexing is disabled using cacheExpire then after a user enters some data, she is warned about that and offered an option to reindex the table manually.
- Add (bulk): when importing data, there is an option to encrypt the _passwords in the table
- Login: login/register screens are separated and polished up.
- Link to home in toolbar is displayed only if allowed.
- Power users: {head} setting inserts text into <head> section of page
- GUI: small change to the default stylesheet
- GUI: {pageTemplate} setting simplifies the use of page designs made with FrontPage, Dreamweaver & co. You just draw an page and Woda makes the corresponding code!
- GUI: new variable $dbTitleLink in {pageTitle}, $toolbar, $toolbarText and $woda in {pageEnd}
- GUI: if a BREAK field starts with " it is removed
- Admin: new submenu to Mange users ...
- Admin: list of registered users is available on admin menu, you can send them email.
- Admin: log files more sophisticated; including showing recent visitors with auto refresh.
- General: more messages and warnings when deleting records
- "contains" in advanced search is case insensitive
- Reply-to header in all emails send by woda
- Reports error if one searches like '+authors:smith' and 'authors' is not a valid field name
- BUG fix: toobar related anoyance in admStatic corrected.
- BUG when last row in rights was ignored if it did not contain newline fixed.
- Install procedure verified.
4.107 Fixes, searching new records, cleaning of _qry, next, previous record (March 2001)
- fix: usage of Woda through command line
- fix: an important security fix
- fix: rebuild from TAB
- fix: export as CSV
- QRYs are not cached if search is for all items
- _qry directory is cleand according to $WBB{searchCacheAge}
- search cache is only used if less than 1000 records are found
- age of records in days appears as criteria in the advanced search form
- semantics of search slightly changed. Before: days=100&search=turk found records younger than 100 days OR with text turk. Now: 100 days AND text turk
- next, previous record icons are disabled if there are more than 200 records found because it is very slow.
4.105 Modified handling of logins, format of dates, Angie
- how WBB{groups} is processed has changed. The implied relation between password and IP number is now AND. If you used '#' do denote impossible IP, well, these # will be automatically translated to dots, so there should be no compatibility problems this allows for logins without passwords, password and IP or domain, etc. See the new docs of 'groups' setting.
- use of Angie has been cheched and Admin's interface to much improved.
- dates can be formated as you like with $WBB{dateFormat} and $WBB{timeFormat}
- sending of serial email has been fixed
- default stylesheet is much smaller now, does not define font sizes. If you don't like how big is the default Arial in Netscape, use Ctrl-[ in your browser.
- how to validate uploaded files is documented.
4.104 Fixes (January 2001).
A number of fixes including:- documentation does not print too wide
- FETCH passes Host: as well
- Admin Menu - Modify Structure fixed
- PageCount variable officially available in footer
- workaround: for relational features to work there should be slashes in the {tables} definitions
4.100 Version 4 finally released (January 2001).
Version 4 includes major changes to the WODA engine and the way it lays out the data on the hard disk.Some 30% of version 3 code was rewritten and just as much added. Most of the changes are not visible on the surface, however, they enable future growth of Woda and use in services such as www.rent-a-db.com. Code needed for that is not freely available and neither does the license allow you to use Woda for services like that.Migration towards version 4 should occur automatically, however, database administrators are urged to verify if all went OK.
- Not GPL and Artistic licensed any more but still free!
- Core data handling functions rewritten in such a way that drivers for other databases (SQL etc.) are possible.
- Core search functions rewritten.
- Much faster re-indexing of the table.
- Different storage of data - no more .rec files!
- Unlimted rollback, history, undo possible (not implemented in a friendly way though).
- spiderDir and spiderURL settings are replaced by WBB{robots} setting.
- docsDir and docsURL are not available any more.
- Creation of log files WBB{log...}
- User registration; predefined Groups are guest,friend,admin
- Search history, saved searches, angie and basket rewritten so that they are not IP based any more.
- New layout of data for a table. All information related to a table is now organised into several directories. System directories have names starting with _underscore. Read manual about what is in each directory.
- Code optimised for wodad - an http deamon optimised to run Woda applications fast!
- MOD_PERL support discontinued, however, it should still work with uncommenting a few lines.
- New settings {quotaLoad} and {quotaText} and {quotaBin} that can be used to limit the size of tables and usage under heavy server load.
- Rewriten handling of robots; rewritten output of .html files for search engines to find.
- All eval-s are checked for safety.
- typePar CONTINUE does not work any more.
- /Show automatically hyperlinks some fields
- .htaccess file is written to the database's directories automatically to prevent unauthorised access. Host $MYHOST is priviliged.
- Due to public request, the detailed page does page headers again
- Execution of the script is timed, some logfile diagnostics is included in HTML output.
- cgiHtml bug corrected
- joined env and counter into one file
- newlines of all files are written to the UNIX standard
- several small and big bugs corrected and introduced
4.000 not publicly released (spring 2000)
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