Administrator's guide to upgrading to Release 5

Here's what's new in this release.

• New drivers for Oracle 9 and 10 are now included. Existing drivers continue to work, but these new drivers are recommended for future compatibility and performance.
• The DB2 drivers have been revised slighlty.
• A new family of styles, called Standard_, are now the default. These are new, accessible styles which also work in portals. Complete details on what to do are in the Upgrading Styles section.
• Installation, using a database, and clustering documentation have been revised and simplified.
• In Weblogic Server, it is now possible to deploy the ViewsFlash.war file without exploding it if ViewsFlash is running off a database. This is specially useful in cluster deployments. CAUTION: if ViewsFlash is not running off a database, you MUST deploy from an exploded war file; if you upgrade from the war file, when ViewsFlash is not running off a database, Weblogic Server will delete all the files written by ViewsFlash to the file system, requiring that every questionnaire in use be Published again.
• Application initialization now takes place during application server startup, rather than later, making it easier to diagnose installation errors.
• Data is now saved in questionnaire tables before the survey response page is shown to the user. While this introduces a small delay, it lets the user know immediately when a database error occurs. In such as case, live tallies are not updated with the record that could not be captured.
• Log files now highlight all errors in red for easier viewing.
• The servlet parameter appcharset now defaults to UTF-8, allowing the application to be used in any language by default.
• A new servlet parameter usedefaultcharacterencoding=true should be used when application servers, such as Dynamo 7, decode request parameters and form submissions.
• Secure and anonymous questionnaires can now be done by simply selecting Basic authentication or Cookie authentication in the Security settings.

Upgrading to ViewsFlash 5 styles

If you are not upgrading from a previous version of ViewsFlash, ignore this section.

Styles are not upgraded automatically when a new version of ViewsFlash is installed. Perform the ?Diagnose=1 command, which will display a link that you can click on to upgrade the styles listed. If you have revised any of the Cogix provided styles, the upgrade will erase the revised styles. The link that Diagnose=1 link, that you can just click on, looks like this:

Use ?cmd=upgradestyles to update these styles, which need to be updated:
 Standard_.html NEEDS UPDATING
 Index.html NEEDS UPDATING

As of release 5, a new form style template, Standard_, is the new default style for constructing questionnaire forms. This style is complemented by the question styles named Standard_Matrix, Standard_Email, Standard_Number, Standard_Date, etc. New features such as question help, section 508, XHTML and are supported only in these new styles. However, existing styles such as Questionnaire, Email, Number and Date, and Portlet_Polls continue to be supported. Existing Places and Styles continue to work in ViewsFlash 5 unchanged, and new questionnaires can continue to be created in the existing places with the existing styles.

Using the new capabilities requires creating a new Place and using the new Styles, Standard_ and Results. These new styles work both in portals and non-portals. This change consolidates the standard, accessible, and portal styles into a single style and allows for simpler style management.

When a questionnaire is designed using a particular form style, only those question styles that are compatible with it are shown in the create question page. If a questionnaire is copied from a place that uses an incompatible style, the question styles used are changed automatically.

This change also affects the Question Library. The ViewsFlash 4 question library, named Question_Library, uses the Questionnaire style, and items in the library use question styles that are compatible with Questionnaire, such as Ranking. In ViewsFlash 5, a new library, called Q_Lib, that uses the new Standard_ styles, is installed automatically. Multiple question libraries are now supported; the question library menus display items from those question libraries that use styles that are compatible with the styles used in the questionnaire's place.

Next: Introduction