Impact automatically determining provider and connection from ODBCDIRECT driver
For communication to occur between Enterprise site services and the database Impact is connected to, details of the provider and connection must be known. [product names] workstations utilising ADO drivers can automatically determine these details, avoiding the need to configure this information within the Database Installation Site Service settings. As of Impact 2022, workstations utilising an ODBCDIRECT driver are also able to determine these details. ODBCDIRECT is commonly used with nServer database connections due to improved performance at scale, and the ability to handle larger file sizes.
Support for the display of extra columns when viewing folders in the Browser
When browsing the central Enterprise database, including project and customer folders, Impact has previously been unable to show the values of custom database fields, including a mix of simple and lookup-based values.
In combination with an upgrade of Enterprise RESTful services, it is now possible to define which columns to include in any RESTful response. All fields needing to be displayed should be defined, even if not all fields will be displayed by all users in all views. Impact then decides which data fields to show based on the user’s configured display fields.
The data to be returned now includes support for Advanced queries, i.e., showing alternate display column data from a linked table, typically configured in combination with a DB table relationship.
Here’s an example of the Enterprise RESTful web.config content to support this feature in Impact 2022:
<includedcolumns> <projectcolumns> <add column="D_MARKET" displaycolumn="MS_NAME"> <add column="D_STRING"> <add column="D_INT"> </projectcolumns></includedcolumns>
In a future update, we hope to avoid the need for any Enterprise-side configuration, instead allowing Impact to dynamically request the extra data it needs to display based on the user’s displayed fields configuration.
Improved Linked Revisions and Master Projects handling
It was previously difficult to see the Linked Revisions or linked Master Projects when viewing a project in the Impact Browser; even impossible if trying this from a Site. When viewing layers in the Impact Browser you can now directly see if they are linked to a Master Project or similarly for a linked Revision, you can now see the linked project.
This UI improvement is also true for non-Enterprise setups (without the download options).
One significant improvement here is that as long as you are viewing a child / linked project via the Enterprise central database connection, you do not need to have all related projects downloaded or updated at your local site to visualise the relationships between any linked projects and layers.
We also now provide convenient context menu actions within the browser to fill in any gaps in projects that may not be present at a site, e.g. downloading and updating specific project links, or downloading all missing and outdated items from Enterprise central.
As a performance improvement, the download option will now, by default, only download projects (and related documents) to the Site if the modify dates are newer, reducing the number of downloads needed. The user can force a full download by holding down the Ctrl key.
You can make Master Projects and Linked Revisions available to all sites by publishing them with the new Publish to Sites options available if connected to the primary Enterprise database (a.k.a. Central).
Following the Impact Browser updates, the Open project dialogs have also been updated with a new tab showing Related Projects, available when opening projects from Enterprise.
In here you can also view the status and options to download any missing or outdated linked projects. Downloads can optionally be done in the background so as not to interfere with the normal Opening of a project. In which case, you can use the Update Project Items in Impact to update links once all projects have downloaded.
