What's New In SmartBatch V10?

Improved User Interface

Changes have been made to the SmartBatch user interface to allow for a more up-to-date look, better navigation, themes and other usability enhancements that overall provide a better user experience.  

Performance of the user interface is also improved where lists are display several times faster than previous versions. 

 

The following picture provides an example view of the new user interface:

 

Dashboard View

A new Dashboard View capability is available from the View menu.  This provides a convenient at-a-glance view of your configuration.

 

Product Name

SmartBatch has removed the year from the product name.  The year was confusing since it did not recognize the enhancements to the product that continued well after the initial release of SmartBatch 2009.  SmartBatch is now simply referred to as SmartBatch and the version will change as updates to the product are provided.

The Following Features Were Provided in SmartBatch 2009

Database Support

In previous version of SmartBatch you were required to use SQL Server to host the SmartBatch database/configuration. SmartBatch providers support for:

Access
SQL Server (any edition of 2005, 2008 and beyond)

By default the Microsoft Access database file (sb.mdb) is installed for convenience and easy of installation. It provides a convenient way to evaluate SmartBatch without having to do any additional installation steps. Most production environment will want to use one of the more robust database servers for better performance and maintainability over time.

Syntax Highlighting Editor

You can now maintain the source code for your Operations directly from the SmartBatch Administrator.  A rich featured syntax highlighting editor has been provided making it easier to maintain your program and script source code.  For C# and VB.NET you get intellisence and the ability to compile these languages.  There's no need to install or have to go to a different computer for compiling your code.  You can compile C# and VB.NET without Visual Studio.  The power of the entire .NET Framework library is now available.  You even has access to the SmartBatch API.  The following picture shows the Code Editor with some example C# code.

Auditing Changes

Changes to the configuration can be audited so that you know who made a change (the Windows Account), what change was made and when the change was made.  Audit entries can be viewed using the History List.

 

The Following Enhancements Were Provided in SmartBatch 2006

SmartBatch 2006 (Version 5.0) added many new significant features.   Version 4.0 (named SmartBatch 2004) provided major changes from the original SmartBatch product.  See What's New In Version 4.0 below for detailed information.  The following information describes the major changes provided in the SmartBatch 2006 release.

Diagram View of Operations, Step and Jobs (Enterprise Edition)

A graphical diagram view of objects.  Simply right-click on an Operation, Step or Job in the list view and select diagram view to display the relationship of your objects.  This helps visualize your configuration as shown in this example:

Diagram View of Dependencies (Enterprise Edition)

A graphical diagram view of dependency objects.  Simply right-click on a Dependency the list view and select diagram view to display the relationship of your dependencies.  This helps visualize your configuration as shown in this example:

History Chart

The ability to view a chart of the History is provided to further your ability to analyze processing in your environment.  A History Chart can help you visualize how long an object is running over time.  It can highlight problems if an object had ran too long or too short a period of time or perhaps the amount of processing time is increasing.  The following graphic shows the History Chart:

Schedule Resource View

See your scheduled objects in a resource view to help you analyze when objects run and how long they are running.  This view helps determine where you have processing availability or perhaps where processing is overloaded.  The following graphic shows an example of the Schedule Resource View:

Automation For All Your Databases

A new wizard has been provided to help automate activity for managing databases.  This provides a way to easily setup processing against any SQL Server.  You simply provide a connection string, any SQL statement and the Operation is created for you.  There is even help in creating the connection string and testing it so that you know you have the right settings.  If you need to export data from your dbms, the SmartDatabase Operation provides a way to export your data in XML, tab delimited or comma delimited formats.

The Following Enhancements Were Provided in SmartBatch 2004

The following information describes the major changes provided in the 4.0 release.

N-Tier Architecture and 100% .NET

SmartBatch provides an n-tier architecture built on the latest, best-of-breed technology. An n-tier architecture provide better scalability, flexibility and improved performance for your environment. All components have been rewritten using the .NET framework and C# language. The .NET platform offers a substantially improved environment. It provides OnLine ToolWorks Corporation with the ability to provide more features, better performance and integration with current and future .NET applications. More and more applications are developed using .NET everyday and these applications environments will want to use an automation product that works with .NET in a seamless way. .NET is the future for applications in the Windows environment. It provides the best environment for delivering to you a robust and compatible Windows automation solution.

Improved User Interface

The SmartBatch Administrator for .NET has been completely rewritten. The user interface has been given a face lift to match current Windows standards that you would expect. A left pane tree view, right pane list view, and lower pane Status and History are always visible so that monitor and control are easier to manage.

Computer Groups (Enterprise Edition)

Compute Groups provide the ability to define a set of computers where processing needs to occur.  A Computer Group can be used in several different ways.  A Computer Group can be defined so that Operations that use it run on:

Any computer in the group.
 All computers in the group.
 Load balanced to the most available computer.
 The next computer in a round-robin selection.
  

Load Balancing (Enterprise Edition)

Computer Groups provide the ability to perform load balancing based system usage or a straight forward round-robin selection.

Remote Agent Processing With Microsoft Message Queuing

In previous release of SmartBatch, the Executive Server communicated directly with computers running the SmartBatch Remote Agent using the WIN32 Windows Sockets capability.  Although this was sufficient for many environments, most environments needed a capability that would prove to be more robust.  The new implementation of the Executive Server and the Remote Agent use message queuing.  Message queuing provides the ability to store processing request to be processed by the Remote Agent and Executive Server.  This allows processing to continue even in the event of network failures.  This store and process when available architecture using message queuing helps assure configured processing will occur.

Security

Role-based security is now used in SmartBatch.  This is integrated into Windows security using Windows Groups as roles.  You add Windows users who need access to SmartBatch capabilities into one of the roles.

Dependencies

Prior versions of SmartBatch limited the use of dependencies to Steps and Jobs.  Dependencies can now be configured for Operations.  In addition, the file watch dependency provides more filtering options.  A File Watch dependency is used when you want an Operation, Step or Job to be processed based on a change to a file rather than on a scheduled basis.  This Operation, Step or Job is processed based on the file event

Reporting

A report view is available in the Administrator to run reports on the SmartBatch configuration.  A set of useful predefined reports are provided.  You can create additional reports or have OnLine ToolWorks create them for you.

Multiple Applications Support (Enterprise Edition)

Application Groups provide a convenient mechanism to logically group related activity.  This may be useful for managing multiple applications such as:  sales, finance and manufacturing.  Another use may be to group the processing by computer or geographic area such as:  Western, Midwest and Eastern Region.  The Application Group has a name and a description along with a complete configuration such as:  Operation, Steps and Jobs.   

The Standard Edition the "Default" Application Groups is provided and there is no ability to create additional groups.  The Enterprise Edition provides the ability to add any number of Application Groups.