Compact History for AbaPerls

This page gives a compact history that summarises each external release and gives installation instructions. For a detailed history, see this page.

L1.0.0402 – 2022-04-23

General note

It is not unlikely that this is the last public release of AbaPerls. AbaPerls was a great thing once upon a time, but it has not kept up with the changes. While this release adds support for sequences and temporal tables, there are many features in SQL Server that AbaPerls does not support or understand: schemas, In-Memory OLTP, Dynamic Data Masking, Always Encrypted only to name a few. I have not had the time to keep up with all new features that Microsoft adds to SQL Server. And that is only one side of it. When it comes to version-control, Git is becoming increasingly more popular, and the mindset of AbaPerls does not really fit with the mindset of Git.

For this reason, I cannot encourage you use AbaPerls for real, but I only share it as an example of you what you can do to improve work with SQL Server.

Changes in prerequisites, installation stc

Deprecations

Functional Changes

L1.0.0360 – 2017-06-24

Changes with prerequisists, installation etc.

Deprecations

Next public release of AbaPerls may not support SQL 2005.

Functional Changes and Major Bugfixes in Summary

Documentation Changes

Updated the instructions for VisualStudio and TextPad. Specifically, you should use $(ItemFilenName)$(ItemExt) for Visual Studio and $FileName for TextPad so that ABASQL only sees the file name and not the full path, as this works better with TFS.

L1.0.0294 – 2013-06-14

Changes with Prerequisites etc

Compatibility Issues

Deprecations

Documentation Changes

Functional Changes and Bugfixes

Bugfixes

Yes, there have been bugfixes. Please review the full Revision History for details.

L1.0.0262 – 2012-02-12

This is a release of AbaPerls that includes quite a few changes, both in AbaPerls itself and how it is delivered. The big news from a functional point of view is that AbaPerls now supports Team Foundation Server.

Changes with Regards to Download, Installation and Prerequisites

Because of the changes in prerequisites and how AbaPerls is installed and downloaded, I recommend that you read the topic Downloading and Installing AbaPerls in full. Note that the page Running AbaPerls on Your Machine has been removed and the contents is included in the page Downloading and Installing... Here is a summary of the changes:

Compatibility Issues

There are a couple of changes that may cause compatibility issues with older versions of AbaPerls:

Deprecations

This is a list of features that now are deprecated.

Documentation Changes

Functional Changes

Beyond the support for TFS, there are quite a few things:

L1.0.0190 – 2010-10-24

To install Perl code and documentation, apply standard procedures. There are two update scripts you need to run: ap_up_1-0-0080-0140.pl and ap_up_1-0-0140-0170.pl.

Changes in summary:

Bugfixes:

L1.0.0091 – 2009-01-02

AbaPerls is again publicly available, now under the Perl Artistic License.

To install Perl code and documentation, apply standard procedures. To get the database up to date, there are two update scripts you need to run: ap_up_1-0-0052-0080.pl and ap_up_1-0-0080-0081.pl. Very important! The first script does not run on SQL 2005 RTM and SP1! (Because of an issue with sp_rename). It does run on SQL 2000, SQL 2005 SP2 and SQL 2008.

Changes in summary:

Bugfixes:

L1.0.0060 – 2008-01-12

A lot has happened since the last external release. To begin with, there are no more public release, only external releases, available only by request and only if you sign a license.

Next important thing: you need to ensure that you have Perl 5.8. Download the latest 58x build of Perl from http://www.activestate.com. AbaPerls now uses my new client API for SQL Server access: Win32::SqlServer. Get it from my web site and follow the instructions.

To install Perl code and documentation, apply standard procedures. To get the database up to date, there are three update scripts you need to run: ap_update_1-0.0042.pl, ap_up-1-0-0042-0052.pl and ap_up_1-0-0052-0053.pl. Be sure to back up your database before you go ahead.

Support for SQL 6.5 and SQL 7 has withered over the years, and after this release I do not plan to support these versions at all.

Important changes in summary. For details, see the detailed history.

L1.0.0040 – 2004-10-31

The fourth public release. To install Perl code and documentation, apply standard procedures. There is an update script, ap_update_1.0.0031.pl, which starts at L1.0.020, so if you come from the second public release, you can skip the script for the third release. The only database change since the third release is in minor bugfix in ap_sob_report_suspects_sp.

I now have a new mail address: esquel@sommarskog.se.

Important changes in summary, for details, see the detailed history.

L1.0.0030 – 2004-05-03

The third public release. To install Perl code and documentation, apply standard procedures. To upgrade the databases, run the script ap_update_1.0.0025.pl. (There are no changes between L1.0.0025 and L1.0.0030; the latter is only a release label.) If you have not applied the update script for the second public release, L1.0.0021, you first need to run ap_update_1.0.0020.pl. You can run the AbaPerls tools against databases of lower labels. There are no table changes in this release.

Important changes in summary, for details, see the detailed history.

L1.0.0021 – 2003-04-21

This was the second public release of AbaPerls. This release had significant database changes. This release also added support for controlling various SET options for ANSI compatibility. To get full support for these features, you need to update your databases to L1.0.0020; however AbaPerls will still work against databases with version L1.0.0009.

L1.0.009 – 2002-11-03

This was the first public release of AbaPerls.