MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 22
Friday 6th May 2005

covers versions 3.4.2 stable, 3.5.0 development

News

3.4.2 Release Did Not Quite Happen

The 3.4.2 stable release planned for Monday did not happen as expected. The MySource Matrix web site is currently being replanned and rebuilt from scratch, so future public releases will not be conducted until this has been completed. However, MySource Matrix was tagged at 3.4.2 on Monday and clients can be upgraded to the mysource_3-4-2 tag whenever required. We just didnt make a public release this month.

MySource Matrix Licence Update

There have been some recent complaints about the MySource Matrix licence and the fact that it is not OSI approved and doesnt "feel" open source. The licence has now been updated to alter some of the wording, hopefully making the licence feel more like an open source licence.

Performance Improvements

A change has been made to the getTypeInfo() method of asset_manager.inc to significantly improve the performance of some areas of the system. This method was using the PEAR:DB tableInfo() method to check that the passed table columns did actually exist in the database. PEAR:DB was executing about 35 queries to gather this data. During installation, this was occurring over 4000 times, actually taking longer to process than the MySource Matrix queries.

No developer should ever use the DB:tableInfo() method for checking table columns unless absolutely necessary.

Thumbnail Size Restrictions Removed

Thumbnail assets used to have a 100x100 pixel size restriction to differentiate them from normal Image assets. Somewhere along the line in the development version, this restriction was no longer being enforced. One of our clients as since abused this bug and created a lot of thumbnails larger than 1100x100 pixels. Adding the restriction back in would not allow them to continue using the system as they currently do. For this reason the size restriction has been removed.

User Group Security Unrestricted

When users are created within MySource Matrix, they must first be placed in a group to allow them to access asset editing screens. The group's security restrictions must be configured to allow for this also. Previously, the default group security restriction settings for user groups were to deny unrestricted screen access. Now, the default is to grant unrestricted screen access.

Asset Statuses Report Now Commercial

The asset statuses report, that allows you to see assets that have not changed statuses for a specified period of time, has been moved into the CMS package and is now released under the commercial module licence.

New Features

Indexing Locked PDF Files

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Some people have had problems with the indexing of PDF files that require a password for access. The external tool used by MySource Matrix to read PDF content will not work on locked PDFs unless you provide a password. PDF File assets now have a password field where you can enter the password to unlock the PDF. The indexing system will then use this password to retrieve the content of the PDF as normal.

Password Rules

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Previously, new user accounts created within MySource Matrix had only one rule - they must be at least 6 characters in length. A new configuration screen has been added that allows users to define their own password rules. The screen can be accessed by clicking the System Configuration icon in the top right corner of the administration interface and selecting Password Rule Configuration from the drop down list.

Passwords can have the following rules applied: - Minimum length required (eg. must have at least 6 characters) - Disallow user information (eg. password cannot be the user's name or email address) - Minimum number of capital letters (eg. must have at least 1 capital letter) - Minimum number of lower case letters (eg. must have at least 3 lower case letters) - Minimum number of numbers (eg. must have at least 1 numeric character) - Minimum number of punctuation (eg. must have at least 1 punctuation character) - Minimum number of spaces (eg. must have no spaces)

Blocking Triggers

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Triggers now have a new blocking option. If a trigger is a blocking trigger, if any of its required actions fail, it will stop execution of the current triggers and return false back to the calling function. This can be used in conjunction with the new before asset created event to perform some tests on new assets before they are created and abort the create if they fail.

Better PDF And DOC Indexing

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Some users reported that the indexing system was indexing the tags and other metadata within MS Word and PDF documents, not just the text displayed on the screen. The indexing system has been improved to remove additional words inside the tags so they are not indexed.

Search No Results Bodycopy

Added to: 3.5.0 development

The search page now has a new bodycopy to let you define the screen displayed if no results were found for a search. All existing users should add content to this bodycopy to ensure failed searches are displaying a message to the user.

Planned Development

Backend Translation (stage 4)

To be added to : 3.5.0
Estimated start date: already in development
Estimated end date : 13th May 2005

Search Exact Phrase Matching

To be added to : 3.5.0
Estimated start date: already in development
Estimated end date : 27th May 2005

A new feature is being added to allow for searches to be performed on phrases rather than just individual words. These changes will probably result in faster overall times for searches due to the new database indexing scheme that must be used.

Force Password Change

To be added to : 3.5.0 development
Estimated start date: 9th May 2005
Estimated end date : 13th May 2005

A feature will be added to allow system administrators to enforce a mandatory password change period for users. For example, a rule could be created to force users to change their password after 3 months.

Design Area Access History

To be added to : 3.5.0
Estimated start date: already in development
Estimated end date : 10th May 2005

A new design area is being developed to store and display the last few assets that a user views while accessing the frontend of a site. You would be able to use this design are to display links to the last 5 searches that a user access, or the last 10 products they viewed.

Upgrading

3.5.0 Development

Additional queries: No additional queries are required for upgrades.

Additional comments: No additional upgrade steps are required.

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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