Refresh build 14373 — lost SQL connections re-establish themselves, SQL browses fetch faster, and the help gains a “How do I” chapter
A SQL drop. Lost server connections now automatically re-establish the connection to the server and the application continues gracefully: a VPN reconnect, a firewall that closed the session, a laptop that woke up — the files and views stay open, the next operation reconnects, a browse that was paging simply keeps paging. Two new browse prompts fetch a SQL page in one round trip instead of one row per trip, with a BLOB in the page up to 10x faster on SQL Server. A SQL connection configures itself from the OWNER string alone, no DSN on the user’s machine. The IDE’s “select a folder” is the modern Windows folder dialog everywhere. And the F1 help has a “How do I …” chapter with a task topic for every section of the tester guide, every topic in the Index. Plus the fixes and additions from beta testers’ reports in the forums: Known Folders, the wide CLIB twins, a two-picture DateTime format, a friendlier previewer. Already testing? Everything below is new since build 14313.
Highlights of this drop — then the full tester guide, whose “What’s new” section lists everything that changed since you last read it.
Lost server connections re-establish themselves, the application continues
ODBC, MSSQL, Pervasive SQL and SQL Anywhere drivers. When the link to the server drops under a running program, every file and view of that connection stays open, the failed operation reports error 90 with the driver’s own message (FILEERRORCODE() = 08S01), and the next operation reconnects by itself — including a table the program opens for the first time after the drop, so the first save after an outage goes through. In a generated application (ABC and Clarion chains) the user sees one error box and the usual retry prompt, and Yes saves the record. A browse that was paging when the link went keeps paging: the generated browse re-runs its page fill once, on a fresh connection, and the user sees nothing at all. Hand code simply retries the failed statement; a VIEW continues after a RESET to its last position.
SQL browses fetch a page per round trip — two new prompts
BrowseBox › Actions › Default Behavior, both chains. ‘Page fetch size (SQL)’: a value n fetches n rows per server round trip (ABC sets BRWn.PageSize, the Clarion chain emits BUFFER(view, n, 2, 0, 60)); a Clarion-chain SQL browse moves from one row per trip to n. ‘BLOB fetch (SQL)’ with the new PROP:BlobFetch: a browse that shows a BLOB keeps its page fetch — the driver positions on your row and reads the page in one trip, a 20-row page fill on SQL Server measured 110 us/row down to 11.5. Blank prompts generate exactly what they did, so an existing app changes nothing until you set them. A BLOB projected into a VIEW is the current row’s from the very first read, so a TEXT or IMAGE bound to a browse hot-field BLOB follows the highlight bar.
AppGen: a BLOB can be a browse hot field
Pick a BLOB as a hot field on a BrowseBox and a TEXT or IMAGE bound to it follows the highlight bar: the picture, the note, the document of the selected row. The templates put the BLOB into the browse’s VIEW as a PROJECT and never into the queue (a queue cannot LIKE() a BLOB), and the highlighted row is re-fetched on every selection change, so the control always shows the current row’s blob. Both template chains, no hand code.
A SQL connection configured from the OWNER string alone
The UNICODECONNECT form works without a DSN on the PostgreSQL Unicode driver and on SQL Server: name the driver DLL and its settings as keywords in the OWNER and nothing is configured on the user’s machine. The new help topic “Customizing a SQL Connection” lays out the three layers — the OWNER string, the driver string switches, the ODBC driver’s own settings — with a copy-ready example for each. Over a slow link to SQL Server, /MULTIPLEACTIVERESULTSETS=TRUE streams the rows instead of a server cursor round trip per fetch block; the guide’s SQL section says when to use it.
The IDE picks folders with the modern dialog
Every “…” in the IDE that asks for a folder — New Project’s Location, the default project location in Options, Find in Files’ Look in, the project option folders — opens the Windows common item dialog in folder mode: the navigation bar, search, the places on the left, a “New folder” button, resizable. The small “Browse For Folder” tree is gone from the IDE. The most reported request of the beta, inside and outside.
Known Folders: Downloads, Documents, AppData and every other one, by name
SpecialFolder.GetKnownDir(KF:Downloads) returns the user’s Downloads folder, the one the CSIDL list never had. KNOWNFOLDER.EQU declares the common KNOWNFOLDERIDs as KF: equates — Downloads, Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Music, Videos, LocalAppData, RoamingAppData, ProgramData, Profile, Fonts, ProgramFiles, ProgramFilesX86, Startup, the Public ones — and any other folder from KnownFolders.h is one more equate written the same way. GetKnownDir(KF:Documents, 'MyApp') appends your sub-directory, the path comes back as a USTRING so a folder outside the ANSI code page is exact, and GetKnownError() holds the HRESULT of the last call. The CSIDL methods you already use are unchanged.
Wide CLIB twins, a two-picture DateTime, a friendlier Report previewer
CLIB.CLW declares the wide twins FnSplitW, FnMergeW, MkDirW, AccessW and the new RmDirW, so a program that includes CLIB.CLW calls them by name. DateTimeUtil.Pict(dt, '@D10-', 'T', '@T04') joins two pictures with a separator — an ISO stamp, a file-name stamp — in one call. The report previewer’s Jump to a Page shows “of N pages”, clamps a typed number, and has First / Last buttons; the thumbnail sidebar’s scroll buttons sit side by side at the top. And the driver trace now shows a USTRING value in full, in the record dump and on the SQL bind lines, so a trace tells the truth about Unicode data. A browse sorted by a USTRING key on SQL Server positions cleanly from every sort tab, and saving a BLOB with bind tracing on no longer ends in an access-violation box. A wide VALUE() on a CHECK or RADIO lands in the USE variable with its exact units, {PROP:Value} on any captioned control and a SPIN’s wide FROM() deliver exact units too, and CONTENTS(?Combo) answers for a COMBO without a USE variable. And the Window and Report Designers paint <13,10>, every decimal metachar and {n} repeats exactly like the compiled window.
F1 help: a “How do I …” chapter, every topic in the Index
Right after Welcome to Clarion in Contents: 22 task topics, one per section of the tester guide (Unicode strings, screens, reports, SQL, TopSpeedW, the lost connection, the faster SQL browse …), each linking to the reference topics it needs. The Index finds them by title and by the words you would type — “lost connection”, “reconnect”, “faster SQL browse”. Every topic in the help now carries its title and chapter as index keywords, the 2026 reference topics carry a “See also” line, and the new browse prompts are documented where F1 on the prompt lands.
From beta testers’ reports: dictionary, AppGen, DATETIME, previewer
varchar(max) imports as a BLOB, so the whole column travels (it joins text, ntext, nvarchar(max) and varbinary(max) under one rule). DateTimeUtil builds from LibSrc alone and gains Pict(dt, picture) — the date part through @D4, the time part through @T4, the whole value through @DT. The Window Previewer’s generated program reads better and compiles every time, with @DT controls primed with a real date-time sample.
USTRING link names of their own — rebuild multi-DLL solutions together
USTRING parameters now mangle as sz (every non-RAW form) and z (RAW), a link name no other type can produce, so a *USTRING and a *SHORT,ANY prototype never share one. What to do on this build: regenerate and rebuild every module of a multi-DLL solution together (template-generated .exp files regenerate on their own); a hand-written .exp with zu/su lines changes them to sz; Pro2Exp / Exp2Map users update the letter table.
Full tester guide — mental model, conversion rules, DCT import table, screen controls, reports, blobs, SQL / SQLite / text drivers / TopSpeedW / Memory / IP, recipes, the new-language-surface quick reference, and what to focus on when testing. The guide’s “What’s new” section lists everything in this drop, and every section has its task topic in the F1 help’s “How do I …” chapter.
Open the full Unicode Tester Guide
Report tool authors —
the wide generator surface (IReportGeneratorW), format detection, the
EMF record set, transition paths per integration style, and the
PageTextIndexClass text index the previewer searches with:
Standalone pages (best full-width). Everything described there is implemented unless marked as a known limitation — if you see something different, the beta forum is the place.