The Studiometry Blog

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Studiometry 6 Announced: Will be released later this summer

The new version of Studiometry will contain many great enhancements and feature additions. We've spent a lot of time focusing on improving saving and loading time for users with large amounts of data. A completely overhauled data format, where common items such as Debt/Credits and Projects are stored in a local SQL database as opposed to an XML file, produces incredible performance results. Load times will be significantly faster after a one-time process of converting your data to the new format. In testing we have seen Studiometry 6 take as little as 40-50% of the time Studiometry 5.x took to load the same data.

The best part of the new data format, however, isn't the improved load times. With the new SQL database behind Studiometry, all changes made to the common data items (projects, clients, debt/credits, etc) are saved IMMEDIATELY to file. This removes the need for periodic data saves, which previously could take upwards of 10 minutes in the background for users with tens of thousands of items in Studiometry. This also removes the need for Studiometry to save all data when quitting, which produces a reduction in quit and save times from several minutes to less than 5 seconds in nearly all cases.

The new data format still maintains the flexibility of the previous format where all data is stored locally on every machine and can be accessed without a connection to the server. It's the best of both worlds with an SQL database mixed with the previous XML data file format.

In addition to the revamped data format and performance, Studiometry 6 will contain over 75 new features, updates, and enhancements. Other notable new features include Data Rows for Visual Invoice templates, allowing you to create a template-within-a-template for displaying items such as Debt/Credits. Data rows are vertically a flexible space that will stretch based on the information shown for each item, giving unsurpassed flexibility in creating your custom templates.

Additions to the Report features allow you now to select specific items for each report, either manually or via Item Sets such as Paid, Unpaid, Estimated, Un-Invoiced, Billable, Purchase Order, and more. These new features give Studiometry the ability to create itemized estimates and purchase orders based on entered information.

Other features include a completely overhauled interface, one-click invoice and report generation, additional keyboard functionality, updated Time Sheet entry window, and many others. More information about these and other new features will become available soon via our website and blog. Keep checking back for sneak peaks and beta status updates.

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3 Comments:

  • Wow! The new database functionality sounds incredible. We have about 5-minute (in the background, but still annoying nonetheless) saves with 9000 DCs, so these just won't happen at all now? Not periodically nor when quitting? Really sounds like you guys are staying on the right track with development, can't wait to see the new version.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At July 9, 2008 at 2:01 PM  

  • @ Arturo: We're very excited about the new database format and what it means for the performance of Studiometry. You've got it right that there will be almost zero save time no matter the size of your data file due to the fact that changes are saved immediately and individually as opposed to the old method of periodic saves of all data. This also means that when Studiometry quits, all of the data (besides preferences, categories and a few others that take literally seconds to save) has already been saved.

    By Blogger Tom Iwaniec, At July 9, 2008 at 4:59 PM  

  • Sounds like a big update with a lot of interesting new features. Any chance we'll be able to see the new features in use before upgrading if we choose not to be part of the beta program? Were running 12 computers here and it would be too much work to be part of a beta, but some writeups would be greatly appreciated.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At July 9, 2008 at 9:52 PM  

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