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PostgreSQL Maestro 13.7 released

Jul 8, 2013

SQL Maestro Group is happy to announce the release of PostgreSQL Maestro 13.7, a powerful Windows GUI solution for PostgreSQL administration and database development.

Please consider the list of new features implemented in this version since the last official release:

Server management extensions

This version of the software has been successfully tested with all the modern database server versions up to PostgreSQL 9.3 beta 2 (the latest version available at the moment). We have also implemented support for some 9.x new features:
- Current version allows you to manage foreign data access objects (PostgreSQL 9.3+). You can create, edit and drop such database objects as foreign servers, user mappings, and foreign tables as well as browse and edit data accessible through foreign tables. To learn more about the foreign data technology implemented in PostgreSQL server, please refer to the appropriate section in the PostgreSQL manual.
- Support for composite types has been significantly improved: now you can add a new attribute to an existing composite type as well as edit, rename, and drop its attributes (PostgreSQL 9.1+).
- Support for json data type (PostgreSQL 9.2+) has been added. Json (JavaScript Object Notation) data can also be stored as text, but this data type has the advantage of checking that each stored value is a valid json value.
Support for keyboard interactive SSH authentication has been implemented. This method provides for a multiple challenge-response dialog with the user in which the server sends a text query to the user, the user types in a response, and this process can repeat any number of times to ensure that the client is a human.
Picture 1. SSH Options: keyboard interactive authentication
Get SQL Dump wizard has been significantly updated:
- Now it is possible to rename output columns in the result SQL script. To set a new target column name, enter a value to the Target column in the grid at the first step of the wizard.
- You can also change the order of output columns using the appropriate commands of the popup menu or Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down shortcuts.
  Picture 2. SQL Dump: target column order
- Starting with this version it is possible to specify the SQL syntax the result script to be written on. This feature allows you to restore the dump contents to a table in a different database server such as MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Firebird, or SQLite.
  Picture 3. SQL Dump: setting SQL syntax
Nullable Column Checker has been implemented. This feature allows you to refactor your database schema by enforcing omitted NOT NULL constraints. It is useful, for example, if you have got a legacy schema with a lot of columns allowing NULL values and plenty of data. To invoke the wizard, use the appropriate link in the Generate SQL section of the table popup menu at the Explorer tree.
Picture 4. Nullable Column Checker
Database Explorer: now it's possible to hide rarely used objects from the Explorer tree to reduce it size and speed up the database schema refreshing. For example, if you never work with remote data, you can disable the displaying of such objects as foreign servers, user mappings, foreign tables and so on.
Picture 5. Database explorer options: excluding rarely used objects
Support for time with time zone and timestamp with time zone data types has been improved. Now it becomes easy to add such columns to a table and to enter their values in data grids with time zone abbreviations or with time zone names.

Interface improvements:

The Start Page has been redesigned in order to provide quick access to recently connected database profiles and display the latest company news.
SQL Editor features:
- Now on executing several statements from a single editor tab (did you know about such a possibility?), the corresponding result tab is marked with an appropriate image.
  Picture 6. SQL Editor result tabs images
- Starting from this version you can copy the selected text from any editor to Clipboard as a ready-to-use string written in one of the following programming languages: C#, C++, Delphi (Object Pascal), and Java. This feature is accessible in the Export section of the editor area popup menu.
  Picture 7. SQL Editor: copy selected text as a string written in programming language
Database Explorer: now it is possible to assign a custom color to a certain database profile. For example, you can mark development and production databases in different colors in order to prevent casual metadata or data changes in the production. The desired color can be selected at the Options tab in the Edit Database Profile dialog.
Picture 8. Colored profiles in the explorer tree
Hints for foreign key columns now include the name of the parent table. Hints for domains contain the information about the underlying data type of the domain.
Picture 9. Foreign key column hint
Script Runner allows now to execute archived scripts directly from .zip files. The tool unpacks zip archives to temporary files by itself for further executing.
Data Grid features:
- Multi-column lookup editors become available. Such editors modify values of several columns in the record simultaneously in order to guarantee referential integrity.
  Picture 10. Multi-column lookup editor
- Now the headers of primary and foreign key columns are marked with the 'gold key' and 'silver key' images accordingly as well as the headers of required columns are marked with a red asterisk. The existence of any column marked with a gold key in the dataset means that you can modify/delete the records of this dataset without risk of updating/deleting several records at a time.
  Picture 11. Key columns in the data grid
Data Export: now it is possible to specify decimal and thousand separators for the generated files (when applicable).

In addition to this, several bugs have been fixed and some other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

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