JDecisiontable / Blog: Recent posts

Currently I do JDecisiontable 2.2.0. There will be three new menu items which enable you to copy decison tables or test specifications to the clipboard.

So, here it is: JDecisiontable for Microsoft® .NET® 2.1.0. I used a newer version of IKVM compared with JDecisiontable for Microsoft® .NET® 2.0.1 (7.4. release candidate 0), now it looks and feels better.

Furthermore I updated the documentation (README, LIESMICH, THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES because of IKVM).

Today I can release JDecisiontable 2.1.0.

There are not so much changes here. At first you may recognize that there is an additional column in the left hand table. Now each node has a number as each rule as a number. This number doesn't appear in the reports. If you open a CSV file in a spreadsheet application there is a line number for this purpose.

Another remarkable change is that CSV files are no longer encoded as UTF-8. Now they are encoded as UTF-16LE with Byte Order Mark. In brief, this change makes it a lot easier to open CSV files using Microsoft(R) Excel(R). Trying with different encodings and Microsoft(R) Excel(R) 2010 proved that this encoding caused Microsoft(R) Excel(R) to open such a file just by a double click! Libre Office also opened it but asks for the ecoding - "Unicode" is the right answer.... read more

Hello
Maybe you watch the commits I made but dont know about the goal behind them?

JDecisiontable 2.1.0 is code- and feature completed so far. All existing automatic tests were green. I am working on the underlying library JDecisiontableLib which temporary breaks JDecisiontable so the automatic tests will be red for few days. These changes were triggered by examining my source code with PMD and FindBugs. You will find more details in the JDecisiontableLib project blog.... read more

If you got some questions or need help you may email me. I can take a week until I answer but I will do.

And - a user emailed me. I could help him quickly. Now I knew someone out there uses JDecisiontable. I'm happy.

Moreover, this user uses the NET-version I did with IKVM! Without this users feedback I would have discontinued to provide NET-versions but so I will continue to provide them.

After having a release of Bifurcum/Bifurcumlib 1.0x/2.0.x I will care about JDecisiontable again. It would be nice to remember the files I used recently.... read more

Actually i'm busy with earning money as software-tester but development will go on.
I'm very interested in it because I want to get hired as developer. To have fresh open-source projects is meant to compensate that I'm an engineer but never studied informatics (and hired as software-tester, too).

There are some minor features like open recent files or copy the content of a decisiontable to clipboard left. I now have Emma to measure code coverage (after Cobertura quitted working right before JDecisiontable 2.0.1) and Findbugs to find possible bugs. I will apply both later.... read more

I got my first recommendataion for JDecisiontable!!!
Thank you, Hannah Smith!

I decided to apply the MIT licence after reading this helpful article: Closing the Loophole: Open Source Licensing & the Implied Patent License written by Christian H. Nadan.

I still don't hold any patent and have no patent pending. So the shift away from Apache License is not to trick you but to make life a lot easier again *).... read more

Main reason for this release is to fix the errors in version 2.0.0. List of changes (from README.txt):

1) Solved the problem with german umlauts and other non-ASCII chars in the version for Microsoft® .NET®. The solution was to change the class de.mgmechanics.myflipflops.File.TextResource. Now it is possible to read all resource files either from outside the jar or exe file XOR from inside. Which one will be used - those from inside or outside jar/exe? While launching JDecisiontable looks for a file StringResource.json in the same folder as the jar/exe is. If found it used it as default resource file and tries to read all other resource files from same place. If they are not there they are considered to be not available.... read more

JDecisiontable 2.0.0 was removed from download because JDecisiontable for Microsoft® .NET® wasn't working as expected. The bugs are fixed in sourcecode (HEAD of master branch) but I need some time (maybe a few days) to test it carefully.

Now JDecisiontable 2.0.0 is rolled out. Main new feature is internationalisation. First local version available is German. Furthermore there are some minor improvements and even a bugfix.

Today (2013-02-14) I uploaded a new zip file containig improved StringResource files (now with Windows linefeeds) and a German localisation for .NET without umlauts.

I am still looking for a solution how to run JDecisiontable under Windows without Java installed. I said I wouldn't release a version which contains a jre - but maybe I do. IKVM works great but does not provide same user experience as pure Java.... read more

If you upload two files with different version number within one day(?) the green button shows the older version i.e. yesterday I uploaded
- JDecisiontable_version_1.1.2.zip
- JDecisiontable_version_1.1.3.zip

And it offered JDecisiontable_version_1.1.2.zip in the green button. Today I uploaded same file - JDecisiontable_version_1.1.3.zip - again. Now this file appears in the green button.

Furthermore I observed that any executable over an zip file. I.e. after uploading both files yesterday the file JDecisiontable_1.0.2.jar disappeared after removing it fron Files area. I replaced it by a zip file containing this file and belonging help files.

This is a really huge release! We now have:

• JDecisiontable 1.1.3 (to run with .NET without Java installed on your machine)

• JDecisiontable 1.1.2 (also to run with .NET)

• JDecisiontable 1.1.3 (to run with Java)

• JDecisiontable 1.1.2 (to run with Java)

You need to go to **Files" to get the zip for version 1.1.3 - sourceforge.net offers version 1.1.2 in the green button. What the >piep< is the algorithm therefore?!... read more

Yesterday I bought Windows 7 Home Edition to try out IKVM. I'm installing it at Virtual Box virtual machines using my Linux machine. The Windows XP SP3 installations used before seems not very safe to me any longer.

There is also an article in the recent issue of Java Spektrum magazine about it. If you find out - mail me!

I also have to finish another project first before I can go on with this. But I care ...... read more

How Oracle ruins my business :-(

I appreciate very much that Oracle brings free Java to me at very high expenses. In this spirit and to give back just a very tiny humbe little bit to the Open Source community I spend hours and hours of my personal spare time to publish this humble little bit of source code you will find here.

It's a pain to see how it is ruined:

"Dangerous vulnerability in latest Java version" by The H
"Fix for critical Java hole released" by The H, reporting a second vulnerability
"Oracle's January patches close 86 holes" by The H, about other "nice" vulnerabilities open until Januar 15 2013... read more

JDecisiontable_version_1.1.2.zip was updated to make improved example of decision table rangeOfNumbers.5dt as well as belonging test specifications available to you.

I improved node descriptions and added example test data to the test specifications, available as rangeOfNumbersTs_withTestdata.* in three different file formats.

I hope that helps to understand better how to use JDecisiontable because several years of experience shows that people don't use this special kind of decision tables because they do not understand the use and how to do.... read more

JDecsiontable version 1.1.2 is released! The major change in this release is the ability to read in a text file (UTF-8 encoded) via menu item Decisiontable -> New from Node Description. This creates a new decision table. Each line in the text file is used to create a node with the text in this line as description.

This increases your productivity if you want to copy several descriptions from a document and paste it in JDecisiontable. Paste it in a text file (UTF-8 encoded), save it and open it with JDecisiontable - done!... read more

Copy and paste works fine with JDecisiontable in Linux and Windows® (both tested with JDecisiontable version 1.1.1) for the fields
- Description
- Successor

if you bring these fields to edit mode i.e. by
- double click
- type F2
- type any letter, number, ... and place the courser into the cell by clicking somewhere in the cell

Other fields needs to be set by key strokes.

One important feature of JDecisiontable is that it stores you decision tables as text rather than as binaries. This enables 3rd party developers to create or alter decision tables with tools they're familiar with. The format is JSON a very common format so you may read your decision tables as objects in many programming languages, i.e. Javascript. The encoding is UTF-8 without BOM for reading and writing.... read more

Precondition:
- I can not afford a capture-replay-tool like HP QuickTest(R) Professional(R).
- Even if I could - Open Source should never depend on Closed Source software.
- Trying two Open Source Frameworks (UISpec4J and FEST) end up in frustation: I couldn't get even the beginners examples running spending over an hour each.

Solution:
Inspired by an article in the MSDN Magazine (see also Wikipedia Lightweight software test automation I wrote my own solution. It works more like one of the well-known capture-and-replay-tool often used in big software projects but without "capture" function. Here it is done with three tiny classes which... read more

There is a new folder in the download area: TestCoverage. Since this is Open Source everything should open so here are
- screenshots of result of examining the test coverage by cobertura (i.e. version_1.1.1_2013-01-05-1426.png for version 1.1.1)
- build logs (i.e. version_1.1.1_2013-01-05-1443.log) showing results of automatic test executed automatically as part of the build process

For versions 1.1-PRE-4 and 1.1-PRE-5 I don't have a build logfile.... read more

As a late christmas present I'm happy to release version 1.1.1 today. The application itself got a very minor bugfix which does not affect the function of the application. But bug is bug so I fixed it.

Furthermore I changed some menus and messages slightly - so there should be no surprise.

The more important change is that there is a complete manual for JDecisiontable now! And it is complete: There is an own chapter for each menu with screenshots.
See JDecisiontable_Manual.pdf / .odt among the help files. There is even a html version available under http://mgmechanics.users.sourceforge.net/jdecisiontable/!... read more

Today I released version 1.1.0 of de.mgmechanics.jdecisiontable. Sorry that it tooks so long. Thanks to my home-brewed automatic integration test system (de.mgmechanics.myflipflops.swing.test.*) now I can release more often.

Writing the 130 test cases took most of the time - and revealed some bug which were fixed immediately. The next version will be either 1.1.1 or 1.2.0.

This means that there will be no longer"-PRE-" versions! So there is no need for the "Testing" folder in the download area no longer! For you this means that you do not need to decide either to work with an old version or to work as my beta tester no longer!... read more

Today I got the URL www.decisiontable.org for this project. Currently it redirects just to the project website on sourceforge. There is intentionally no "j" in the URL. For eamil please use the address shown in about dialog of JDecisiontableApp.

Additional to preview 5 (1.1-PRE-5) there will be a new check: You may then check if all nodes have at least one Yes decision in at least one valid rule. This is a fine instrument to find your mistakes earlier than others ;-)

The nodes which fails this check get a red background in the right hand table. Selecting any cell in the right hand decision table highlights the concerned row in left table. Of course you may reset the red background at any time to default colour using just the menu item "Clear check result".... read more