WaveMaker

In recent releases WaveMaker has begun using the term “DevBuild”.  Some of our community members have asked “what does that mean?” and “when should I use a DevBuild?”

A DevBuild delivers completed development work but does not represent a final release.  We will create DevBuilds as we achieve Development milestones along the path to the final release.  The individual features in a DevBuild will be tested but a DevBuild will not include a full quality assurance cycle.

Following one or more DevBuilds, we will usually deliver a Beta. A Beta release includes all the features intended in the final release.  We refer to a Beta as “feature complete.”  Additional testing and bug fixes are required before we will ship the final, GA release.

A GA (General Availability) release has passed the quality assurance cycle.  Blocker and Critical bugs identified during the Beta have been resolved.

The first DevBuild for WaveMaker 6.1 is now available.  The major initiative in WaveMaker 6.1 is performance and DevBuild1 delivers some significant performance improvements.  Widgets are now loaded dynamically. Prior to 6.1, widgets  were loaded all at once during application initalization.  Now, a base library is loaded and additional widgets are loaded when required by the application.

We’ve also gzipped the JavaScript files so they much smaller.  By gzipping and moving code to other libraries (through dynamic loading) we’ve reduce the size of lib_build.js from 721KB to 64KB.  As you can imagine, load times are much faster as a result.  In our testing we have seen up to 5 times faster load time for an application.  Of course, the results that matter are yours.  I’d appreciate it you’d try 6.1.0 DevBuild 1 and let us know what changes in load time you see.

In addition to load time, we’ve also made a number of smaller optimizations.  Depending on the application, we see between 3% and 7% performance improvement.  These improvements have come from profiling specific applications and identifying inefficiencies within WaveMaker code.

Finally, DevBuild 1  provides some requested improvements.  The data model editor has been improved. Some schema changes to existing databases can be made without dropping the table and thus deleting your data.  A data model re-import no longer removes existing database service directories. This allows integrations with source code control systems such as SVN to behave properly.

DevBuilds are another way to get involved with the development of WaveMaker.  If a new feature sounds interesting or an annoying issue was closed, try it out and let us know how it works for you.  I hope you like it.  In particular, I hope you experience much better performance.  Please let us know what you experience.  We’re actively developing 6.1 so we’ll work diligently to resolve issues you encounter.

For more information on 6.1.0 DevBuild 1, seehttp://dev.wavemaker.com/wiki/bin/wmdoc/610DB1RelNotes.

To download 6.1.0 DevBuild 1, visit the download page at http://dev.wavemaker.com/wiki/bin/view/Dev/DevBuilds