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Plans / Futures / Projects

Jack Delany

Release Schedule:

The current release is 4.82. It is a patch release of 4.81, and includes bug fixes and new features. We expect a minor release (4.83) early in 2004. The next major release will be summer of 2004 or later.

Versions and Support:

Historically, Daylight has supported our software more-or-less indefinitely. Most users stay current with the latest versions of the software on their own.

Bug fixes for older versions were generally handled on a per-customer basis; we don't automatically back-port bug fixes to older versions.

More and more users are adopting our software for their production applications. In this arena it's much more effort to modify or upgrade working production systems, so we expect that we will have users that can't or won't upgrade in order to address a deficiency.

With that in mind, it's worth reiterating our release version policy:

• Major releases.
  • Incompatible changes to current capabilities (languages, toolkits, APIs, servers),
  • New features/capabilities,
  • Removal of deprecated/discontinued products,
  • Discontinue support for older operating systems and tools.
  • Full documentation update.

• Minor patch releases.
  • Bug fixes,
  • Fully-compatible changes to capabilities,
  • New, compatible features,
  • Documentation of changes.

4.83 Plans:

• Bug fixes / Outstanding Issues
  • Graph normalization in Thor for Hydrogens.
  • Extproc memory leak.

• New:
  • PC Toolkit / Daycart for Windows2K, XP.
  • Daliserver (serve network addresses; floating licensing).
  • New depiction options.
  • Additional daycgi replacements.
    • Replacement db-specific applications (acd, wdi, medchem).
    • General Thor query/viewer
    • General Merlin query/viewer

• Oracle:
  • Database models for commercial databases in Oracle.
  • Distribution of commercial databases in Oracle.
    • ACD
    • WDI
    • Spresi

4.84+

• Bug fixes only, as needed.

4.9+:

• Discontinuing support for some tools:
  • Remote toolkit
  • Monomer toolkit,
  • Monomer database capabilities,
  • Java Grins.

• Oracle:
  • Optimizer; support for CLOB, better statistics, user-tuneable?
  • Partitioned tables, indexes.
  • Basic 3D data handling, searching.
  • Molecular formula index & searches.
  • Additional similarity searches.

• Thor / Merlin
  • Multithreading Merlinserver.
  • Additional search capabilities.

• Toolkits / Tools:
  • Conversion toolkit,
  • Multithreading in toolkits, merlinserver,
  • Depictions - continuing work on user-control of depictions,
  • New clustering methods.
  • SMILES/SMARTS/SMIRKS unification.
    • Hydrogen handling,
    • DB stereo,
    • New language features

• Platform Support:
  • Solaris - 7, 8, 9; both 32- and 64-bit
      Toolkits, Applications, Servers, Daycart.
  • SGI - Irix 6.5; (drop 6.4) both 32- and 64-bit
      Toolkits, Applications, Servers.
  • Linux - RH7.3, RH9, (maybe skip RH8).
      Toolkits, Applications, Servers, Daycart.
  • Windows - 2000 Professional, XP, 2003 Server
      Toolkits & Daycart
  • Mac - 10.2, 10.3 (32- and 64-bit)
      Toolkits, applications, servers (no X)
  • Oracle - 8i(?), 9i, 9iR2, 10g(?)

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