News

27th May, 2009

ASM 2.4.1 is released. This release is mainly bug fixes for the previous release and fixes some problems encoutered by volunteers during translating. In addition, image support for Abiword was added.

25th May, 2009

A new translation guide is available. This contains a lot more information than the old one and should be a lot clearer. Thanks as well to Rimas Kudelis for the Java property file encoder for unicode chars.

14th May, 2009

ASM 2.4.0 is released. This adds Abiword support with templates, a new additional fields configuration section that allows shelters to add their own fields to the animal and owner screens (and use them in documents), better video capture support including IP webcams and integration with command line tools. Most of all, a lot of niggling little bugs have been fixed and the UI cleaned up in a few places (particularly around media).

This is the first ASM of the 2.4 series. I'm modifying the version numbering from now - anything with the same major/minor version will be database compatible, so you know that 2.4.0, 2.4.1, 2.4.2, etc. will work on the same database without the need for the database structure to change. Each time database changes need to be made, the minor version number will increment in future.

15th April, 2009

ASM 2.3.8 is released. This adds Word 2007 templates and a new animal print button. In the main though, this release contains lots of bugfixes. If you are a Debian or Ubuntu user, you can now add our Debian repository to your sources list and then install the "sheltermanager" package to track the latest ASM:

deb http://sheltermanager.sourceforge.net/deb/binary/ ./

10th March, 2009

ASM 2.3.7 is released. This adds some fixes to the vaccination book, a new $VAR$ tag for custom reports, an error log to assist with debugging, better layouts for the animal and owner screens and some cosmetic fixes for GTK2 with Swing.

24th February, 2009

ASM 2.3.6 is released. This adds a new easy networking setup for people with local databases. You can now run the "Local Database Server" shortcut from your Programs menu (or run_hsqlserver.sh for Unix/Mac) to share your data over the network. A new scan button on the database locator tool allows clients to find you easily and connect.

Applet mode has been vastly improved to integrate better to the browser with some UI tweaks just for it. Of course, a few bugs have been fixed too.

28th November, 2008

ASM 2.3.5 is released. This adds quite a few new features, including support for Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice 3! You can also finally include images in generated documents for OpenOffice/MSOffice now.

In addition to this, a few small bugs were fixed, integration with AdoptAPet.com improved and a new UI widget introduced for spin controls (and better busy indication). A new database configuration screen allows setting of "hidden" properties, such as the max search results and incoming image scaling. A new SQL console allows you to paste in those intractable bits of SQL I like posting on the forums and should save quite a lot of hassle.

Finally, the code generation routines have been optimised and streamlined so it should speed things up for those of you with remote databases with lots (20,000+) of animals.

13th November, 2008

You can now buy a CD of ASM 2.3.4.1 - at long last we're back upto date!

22nd October, 2008

2.3.3 is now up, this fixes outstanding Mac issues and adds even more performance with a new pure Swing renderer for Mac/Unix. Applet support is now available in the build and all sheltermanager.com users can now use ASM as an online web application without having to install it locally (or ever worry about upgrading again).

1st October, 2008

2.3.2 is available - this fixes a nasty swing rendering threading bug that could cause tables to crash. Some small fixes were added as well as a rewrite of the Windows file scanning code to use a tree search over the Program Files directory (and to look for Adobe Reader for PDF viewing).

25th September, 2008

2.3.1 is now available which will automatically migrate TEXT based HSQLDB databases during the upgrade. This release also adds a significant performance improvement for MacOSX and Unix users running with the Swing renderer.

24th September, 2008

I've pulled the 2.3.0 release as there is a serious problem with the HSQLDB driver. If you were running 2.2.2 with a local database and have downloaded 2.3.0 but not upgraded yet - DON'T DO IT!

The HSQLDB TEXT driver does not allow column updates (required by 2.3.0) and it will effectively break your database. If you have already run it, re-download and install 2.2.2 and open the local database manager program from the start menu (under ASM) and in the box on the right enter:

UPDATE configuration SET ItemValue = '2210' WHERE ItemName Like 'DatabaseVersion'

and hit the Execute button. This should enable you to carry on with 2.2.2. A fixed 2.3.1 will be out soon with a working migration path for HSQLDB users.

If you're using MySQL, or PostgreSQL or sheltermanager.com hosting, there is no issue.

22nd September, 2008

2.3.0 is released. This release has focused mainly on bug fixing and performance and should be extremely stable. Some features have been added (eg: Button to copy animal comments to media), but the most attention has been spent on fixing bugs and tidying things up.

Mac compatibility is now much better and two builds are available for the Mac - a compatible build for OSX 10.3 (Panther) and earlier, and a faster, Carbon build for OSX 10.4 and later.

12th April, 2008

2.2.0 is finally released - too many things to list here, but the entire UI has been overhauled and reworked, with date pickers, better combo handling and many bugs fixed.

22nd February, 2008

2.1.1 is released. This release adds many cosmetic improvements and fixes to many areas of the application. The icons have all been overhauled to look a lot better, form layouts have been tweaked to get the most space where it is needed. Media handling is now a lot better and whole directories can be imported/exported. The main area of improvement is database handling - you can longer have ASM in a broken state where it will not start due to a misconfigured database. The days of manually entering JDBC URLs are gone as well, to be replaced with a friendly database selector that will not allow you to continue until it has checked that the connection is valid and actually holds an ASM database.

In addition to these changes, I've fixed a lot of niggling little things people have let me know about, so this is well worth upgrading to.

10th February, 2008

2.1.0 is released. This release adds a Spanish translation, much improved performance and many bug fixes.

A new intelligent matching system will auto filter breeds based on your data, adoption donations will default based on previous donations for that type of animal.

The Windows installer has been overhauled (no more DOS boxes popping up) and much of the codebase/build system refactored for ease of maintenance. Media files can now be attached to waiting list entries, animal images can be included in custom reports now and custom reports can disable the header/footer and output of criteria. Mac OSX integration has also been improved.

Note that the code layout has changed, so there is no jar file upgrade (hence a major revision version). You will have to rerun the installer to upgrade (do not uninstall your current ASM first, just run the new installer).

14th January, 2008

New features have been added to the sheltermanager.com hosting site. Accounts can be managed online now, along with information about database backups, etc. A new automatic publisher will publish your animals to free hosted space on sheltermanager.com. See my example.

1st January, 2008

Happy new year everyone!

Some new things have been uploaded - there's a beta release of 2.0.23, which features some PetFinder fixes, owner criteria fixes, rabies tag searching and better integration with charts.

Thanks to Chris Thomas for mailing me a patch for 2.0.23 (which is now included), which greatly improves integration with MacOSX.

I've uploaded my conversion code with some examples for people who want to convert their old data from Excel as CSV files. Note that this is pretty rough and ready and you'll need to have some programming skills to modify it to your needs.

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