src/site/fml/whats_new_2.1.fml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<faqs xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/FML/1.0.1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/FML/1.0.1 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/fml-1.0.1.xsd"
	title="What's new in MetaModel 2.1" toplink="false">

	<part id="features">
		<title>New features</title>

		<faq id="mongo_db_support">
			<question>MongoDB support</question>
			<answer>
				<p>MetaModel 2.1 ships with MongoDB support! This means that you can
					get a traditional table/column view on your schema-less MongoDB
					databases. The MongoDB implementation of MetaModel has a number of
					interesting features:
				</p>
				<ul>
					<li>Autodetection of schema structure. You can provide a MongoDB
						instance and let MetaModel autodetect an appropriate schema
						structure automatically (it will inspect the first 1000 documents
						of each document).
					</li>
					<li>Or you can specify your schema structure manually!</li>
					<li>
						You can even write data to MongoDB, since the MongoDB
						datacontext
						implements our
						<a href="/apidocs/org/eobjects/metamodel/UpdateableDataContext.html">UpdateableDataContext</a>
						interface.
					</li>
				</ul>
				<p>We think that the addition of MongoDB to the list of supported
					datastores is significant. Both because MongoDB is really rising in
					popularity, but also because it demonstrates how MetaModel can be
					applied and provide a consistent and typesafe querying interface,
					even to NoSQL databases.
				</p>
				<p>
					The new MongoDB support is provided through the
					<a
						href="/apidocs/org/eobjects/metamodel/mongodb/MongoDbDataContext.html">MongoDbDataContext</a>
					class.
				</p>
			</answer>
		</faq>

		<faq id="xml_sax_support">
			<question>Fast and memory effecient XML reading (SAX based)
			</question>
			<answer>
				<p>Previously the XML support in MetaModel was based on DOM parsing
					which means that eventually the whole XML tree will be loaded into
					memory. That is of course not so memory effecient and not so fast
					as desired.
				</p>
				<p>MetaModel 2.1 provides a new strategy for parsing XML documents,
					in addition to the old DOM based one. The new strategy uses SAX
					parsing, which is a streaming approach that has a low memory
					footprint and a very quick response time.
				</p>
				<p>
					The new XML support is provided through the
					<a href="/apidocs/org/eobjects/metamodel/xml/XmlSaxDataContext.html">XmlSaxDataContext</a>
					class.
				</p>
			</answer>
		</faq>

	</part>

	<part id="bugfixes">
		<title>Bugfixes</title>

		<faq id="csv_append_newline">
			<question>CSV append newline issue</question>
			<answer>
				<p>There was an issue when inserting rows into CSV files, that an
					existing newline was assumed. If the CSV file where the rows were
					being inserted did not end on a newline, then the values would be
					appended to the existing last line. This bug has been fixed.
				</p>
			</answer>
		</faq>
		<faq id="jdbc_explicit_null">
			<question>Explicit inserting NULL in databases</question>
			<answer>
				<p>When inserting records into a database there is a difference on
					whether you insert NULL or if you just don't specify a value to
					insert. In 2.1 this issue has been fixed so that you can both
					insert NULLs or omit inserting a value (which will typically rely
					on the database to insert a default or generated value).
				</p>
			</answer>
		</faq>
		<faq id="excel_empty_string_parsing">
			<question>Empty string parsing in Excel</question>
			<answer>
				<p>There was an issue in the Excel adapter that caused it to throw
					an exception in certain situations where it would try to parse an
					empty string as a number. This issue has now been fixed.
				</p>
			</answer>
		</faq>
	</part>

</faqs>