As we look back on another successful year here at mrc, I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to highlight some of the most noteworthy features that we have deployed this year as well as highlight new features being introduced in our Q4 2022 release. From everyone here at mrc, we wish you and your team happy holidays and a prosperous new year.

Webinar Replay

If you’d like to see these new features in action, we held a webinar on December 15th. In this webinar, we went through the new features included in this release candidate and even touched on some of the important updates from the last year. You can view the webinar replay below:

Features in this Release Candidate

Here’s a list of features you’ll find in the December 2022 Release Candidate:

Provide your Own SQL

Requested by many customers, this feature lets a developer forgo the traditional m-Power build process and instead write their own SQL statement. Supported in certain retrieval and report templates, m-Power will interrogate your provided SQL statement and create the application accordingly. Developers are able to perform many of the common m-Power functions they are accustomed to, such as adding filters and utilizing m-Painter.

This feature has several use cases, including:

• You have an existing complicated SQL statement that you wish to bring into m-Power but don’t want to have to “recreate the wheel” by reconstructing it with traditional m-Power.
• You wish to utilize advanced SQL components currently not available in m-Power, such as unions, cross joins, or mixed join types.
• You are the type of developer that prefers to write their own SQL code

Written documentation for this feature can be found here. Video documentation is available here: m-Power SQL Composer.

JDK 11 Support

Beginning with this update, m-Power now supports servers running JDK11. For the record, JDK1.8 continues to be supported and will be until it’s EOL date (Corretto 8’s EOL date is May 2026). That being said, customers who wish to upgrade to JDK11 are welcome to do so as m-Power is now compatible with this version of the JDK. Instructions to upgrade can be found here: Upgrading to JDK 11

3rd Party Libraries Upgraded

As you may be aware, m-Power utilizes numerous 3rd party libraries to extend functionality. For example, the spring framework is utilized to handle database connectivity and Apache POI is used to create excel export files. While our development team ensures that any known vulnerabilities with 3rd party library files are addressed in a timely manner, we have introduced a manifest file beginning with this update to more seamlessly manage future library upgrades. As a developer, this is something that the update process will take care of for your automatically. I am sharing this with you so you are aware that a new formal process is in place to ensure that the platform is as up-to-date as possible.

Highlights of 2022

Over the course of this last year, we have put out several significant features that you and your team may not know about or may be underutilizing. Seeing as is the last newsletter of the year, I thought it would be beneficial to briefly revisit them here:

Report Designer

What is it: Ability to build reports without having to work in m-Painter. Easily modify the end-user report UI.
Limitations: You are confined to common customizations, falling within the 80/20 rule. Only available for Bootstrap dictionaries.
Why would I use this: Most of the applications/reports you build use the same type of customizations. Easier to use this feature. Never have to worry about overwriting HTML. Great for new developers

Where can I learn more: This document

SSO

What is it: The ability to automatically sign in to m-Power applications based on you having already signed in elsewhere. We support both SAML and OAuth2.
Limitations: You have to have an Identity Provider. Common ones are MS Azure AD, Okta, SecureAuth, etc…
Why would I use this: Simplify life for your end-users as they have one less password to remember. More seamless integration into other systems as they don’t have to be prompted to sign in.

Where can I learn more: This document

Secure File Upload

What is it: m-Power has always allowed developers give users the ability to upload documents to a shared folder. However, this feature allows these files to be protected so only approved users can access them.
Limitations: None
Why would I use this: If you wanted to ensure that a file uploaded via one user would not be accessible to a different user, you would certainly want to use this feature.

Where can I learn more: This document

Promote to Production

What is it: m-Power has had the ability to let you promote files from development to production for years. However, this feature has overhauled the user experience to make promoting files, and managing associated files, much easier and greatly streamlined.
Limitations: None
Why would I use this: Once an application has been finalized, you would want to use this feature to promote the changes to your live/production environment.

Where can I learn more: This document