Version 3.8 has been released and is available for downloading on our
web-site. Here is an overview of the most notable changes:
Transformations are now called actions
From the beginning, EasyMorph has had a number of transformations such as “Run Program” or “Export to Excel” that actually didn’t transform anything. As its automation capabilities keep expanding, new transformations “that don’t transform anything” keep adding, making the term “transformation” increasingly confusing. Therefore, starting from this release all transformations now called
actions.
For some time, both terms action and transformation will be used interchangeably, as we make relevant edits in the documentation, tutorial and other places. Eventually, the term “transformation” will only be used occasionally for actions that actually transform data.
Arbitrary order of actions
Up until the previous release, all actions in EasyMorph were divided into two categories: start actions, and regular actions. A start action must always come first in a table, while regular actions could only come after a start action, or another regular action. With the growth of automation use cases for EasyMorph, such separation introduced unnecessary limitations. For instance, importing a file is frequently done after copying it from another location. In such cases, importing had to be done in a separate project called via the “Call” action. This was inconvenient and cumbersome.
Starting from this release, this division is removed. From now on, any action can be first in a table, and any action can be inserted after any action. As the number of available actions in EasyMorph has become rather big (90+ actions as of this release), they have been separated into 5 categories, to simplify navigation:
- Import – actions that import data (e.g. “Import from Excel”).
- Create – actions that generate a table (e.g. “List of files”).
- Transform – actions that modify input dataset (e.g. “Filter by expression”).
- Export – actions that export data
- Workflow – actions that affect internal workflows (e.g. “Iterate”), or interact with external systems and data (e.g. “Download file” or “Run program”).
If an action doesn’t expect any input data (typically actions from categories “Import” and “Create”), then the result of previous action is silently ignored without a warning or indication.
The equalization of actions has caused a few changes in the user interface of EasyMorph of which the most significant are two:
- The button “Insert/create table” used for selecting a start action and creating a table, has been removed. The “Add new action” button has moved to 1st position in the “Main” toolbar.
- The catalog of available actions is now two-tiered (it was one-tiered). Actions are grouped by categories and, optionally, by subcategories.
Column profiler
To simplify detection of data quality issues, the “Filter/Profile” dialog (invoked by double-clicking a column header) now implements a column profiler.
The profiler automatically calculates various counts. Each count has according “Filter” button to keep only rows with counted values.
The profiler also builds a histogram with distribution of numeric values in the column. The histogram allows filtering a range of values visually.
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Notice that the profiler dialog window is floating meaning that you can click different columns in different tables without closing the profiler window.
Error handling
The "Call" action now has a new mode that allows capturing errors in the called project ("Iterate" has had this ability for a while):
The new mode makes it possible to arrange an error handling workflow in case of failure of the called project. For instance, send an email notification if the called project failed. The ability to handle project errors was frequently requested by EasyMorph users.
MS Exchange email connector
The generic SMTP email connector and the ability to send email notifications introduced in v3.7.1 sparked a lot of interest among EasyMorph users. However, in many cases sending emails through SMTP in MS Exchange was not possible due to Exchange settings or network connectivity issues.
In this release we're adding a native email connector for MS Exchange. Now, sending emails for organizations that use MS Exchange is not a problem.
New Plus licensing
The Plus license now always includes following features :
- Unlimited actions
- The “Input” action
- The “Split delimited file” action
Support for HTTPS in EasyMorph Server
EasyMorph Server now allows installing SSL certificates and has HTTPS-only mode. To simplify procurement and setup, EasyMorph Server license now includes 1 SSL certificate from a major certificate authority.
Also, from now on version numbers for the Server are synchronized with desktop EasyMorph. Thus the latest Server version is also 3.8.
What's next
In a few weeks we will be releasing minor version 3.8.1 with a few new actions as well as
data quality suggestions introduced in the Column Profiler. It will also have new error cards that will simplify debugging call/iteration errors.
In version 3.9 planned for release in early July we will continue improving automation capabilities in EasyMorph with the addition of two major features: transferring files via SFTP/SCP and receiving emails with attachments. This would make EasyMorph Server a very versatile tool for data collection and publishing.
Read also:
Release notes v3.8
