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$Header: /cvsroot/arsperl/ARSperl/RELNOTES,v 1.13 2003/04/24 18:39:18 jcmurphy Exp $

Release Notes for ARSperl

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    ARSperl - An ARS v2 - v5 / Perl5 Integration Kit

    Copyright (C) 1995-2003
	Joel Murphy, jmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu
        Jeff Murphy, jcmurphy@acsu.buffalo.edu

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms as Perl itself. 
    
    Refer to the file called "Artistic" that accompanies the source 
    distribution of ARSperl (or the one that accompanies the source 
    distribution of Perl itself) for a full description.
 
    Comments to:  arsperl@arsperl.org
                  (this is a *mailing list* and you must be
                   a subscriber before posting)

    Home Page: http://www.arsperl.org

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1.80 Notes
----------

The 1.80 release includes ARS 5.x integration. When compiling against
ARS 5.x APIs, the ars_NT* functions (notifier library) will no longer
work. The notifier system has completely changed in release 5.0 of
ARsystem.

Regardless of what version of API you compile against, the following 
functions have had their parameters altered which means that scripts 
will need to be editted (unless you are using the OO layer).

	Function			What's Changed
	--------------------------------------------------------------
	ars_GetListEntry		additional required  parameter
	ars_GetListEntryWithFields	additional required  parameter

The following functions have altered return values.

	Function			What's Changed
	--------------------------------------------------------------
	ars_GetCharMenu			for query menus, the 
					labelField is no longer
					a scalar. it's now an
					array ref.

	
1.68 Notes
----------

The 1.68 release includes ARS 4.5 integration. When compiling against ARS
4.5 APIs, the following data structures will change which _might_ break
existing scripts. You might need to update those scripts when recompiling
ARSperl against the 4.5 (or later) libraries.

	Data Structure			Used/Returned By
	--------------------------------------------------------------
	Active Link Hash		ars_GetActiveLink()
	Active Link Hash		ars_CreateActiveLink()
	Filter Hash			ars_GetFilter()
	Escalation Hash			ars_GetEscalation()

The majority of users should be unaffected by this since most probably
don't retrieve the actual definitions of these objects in their
scripts. 

In addition, ars_Import() has changed. It now has a different 
parameter list. This means that existing scripts will need to 
be updated. See the documentation on this function for details.


When compiling against an API revision prior to ARS4.5, the hashes returned 
by the above functions include a "schema" key which denotes which schema
the object is "attached" to. As of 4.5, it is possible to attach an object
to multiple schemas. The hash key has changed from a scalar (string) to an

RELNOTES  view on Meta::CPAN

1.4 Notes 
---------

The notifier functions have been added to the main package. This allows
a script to connect and register itself as a user and then receive 
notifications (examples are included).  You can also send notifications from 
a script.

Joel made all the changes to get it to compile and work against ARS3.0
So the current distribution will compile against 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 libraries.
Everything basically remains the same so you don't need to modify your
scripts. The only things that change are the NT (notification) routines 
to a certain extent. However, since NT (notification) support is new to
this release, this shouldn't be a problem.

The doc has been reorganized as well.

1.3 Notes
---------

We've added some features for performance analysis. In particular, 
we've added the "profiling" feature to ARSperl. Now, when you call
ars_Login() it initializes a profiling variable that will track
the number of queries your script makes against the server. You
can then access this information using the ars_GetProfileInfo() call.

We send this information to syslog() automatically at the end of
each script and then process the syslog file later on to keep stats
on our API scripts. In this fashion, we can quickly determine which
scripts are triggered the most, and which make the most queries. We
can then concentrate out optimization efforts on those particular
API scripts.

In addition, a few new functions were added (GetFilter, GetCharMenu and
GetServerStatistics, ars_Export). The first two are used by the WhoUsesIt.pl 
utility. This utility (found in the "examples" directory) is handy for
locating which filter or menu is referencing a particular file, or 
seeing exactly what filters a particular schema uses.. etc. This 
cuts down the amount of time it takes to figure out a poorly documented
system (what? poor documentation? not us!! :)

The GetServerStatistics function was added to provide a simpler method
for checking server health. I might provide a server analysis tool 
built around this function in a future release. 

Joel added a cache to the internal GetField routine. This should cut
down on the number of queries made by some of the functions like
GetFieldTable and such.

In addition, doing ars_SetEntry($ctrl, ..., $fieldId, undef) will now
correctly set a field to $NULL$

1.0 Beta User Notes
-------------------

   o The library and extension seem fairly stable. However, bugs and
     memory leaks might still occur. We've only been able to build it
     under Solaris 2.x (4 and 5 to be specific) because that is what we
     run ARS under. Users who attempt builds on other systems and are
     successful should submit diffs back to us so that they can be 
     incorporated into the distribution.

   o The WEB client example works (more or less) but there is much 
     room for improvement. 

   o There is a mailing list available for people to share their 
     thoughts concerning ARSperl. 

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