Version 3.2 (final) status

[Daniel Jebaraj]

Dear customers,

We have received good feedback about the existing build. We will not be making many changes to the product code itself.

Many had reported that licensing works fine. However, some users pointed out that our licensing system includes some unmanaged code and thereby deviates from our 100% managed, full source approach. We have taken this feedback very seriously and are currently moving this unmanaged code to managed code (and also change the underlying implementation to be such that we can ship source for it). Please bear with us for 3-4 days more till we complete our final tests.

In the meantime version 3.2.0.0 is stable and everyone should consider moving to it. The only exception is users who are using the product with Widbey. We would recommend that Whidbey users wait for the final release of version 3.2 (some of the unmanaged licensing code impacts behavior under the Whidbey IDE).

Best regards,
Daniel

[Tom Abraham]

Daniel,

I''m very confused by this message.

You wrote "We will not be making many changes to the product code itself" and then go on to say that you''re rewriting licensing code from unmanaged to managed. Rewriting anything is a very big deal at this stage of the game.

In your message here announcing a pre-release of 3.2 on April 5, you wrote that the final release would arrive in 7 days, and that the code should not change, only samples and documentation. By your new claim of 3-4 days, your date will have been missed by at least a week. Of course, there were many more dates promised and missed prior to that for 3.2.

Reading through the forums here, it seems clear that many changes have been made to the code in the last 10 days or so. With little effort I can find at least three postings where it is clear that last minute changes/fixes were made for 3.2. One is the Tab key problem in the designer, there are others in the edit control.

All of us are software developers, and it is painful to watch Syncfusion recklessly promise date after date after date (etc. etc.) for releases that never happen. Going back through the forums, there are threads that span more than a year in which Syncfusion promised that a feature would be released three, four, five times. You''d think the lesson would have been learned by now -- STOP promising dates.

We have had to spend a great deal of time working around bugs and idiosyncrasies in the Grid and other controls. Many of the 3.0.1.0 problems are well documented in these forums. Bottom line -- Syncfusion''s QA leaves a lot to be desired.

From our perspective as your customers, we cannot plan our releases because dates are promised and broken time after time. Even when we do get a release, we cannot simply trust it and must spend extensive time doing full regression tests.

The only saving grace is Syncfusion''s support, which has to try to make up for the other issues. The quick turnaround is great, but too often the response is "yes, that''s a defect and it will be fixed in a future release."

As a professional software development company, Syncfusion needs to:
1) Stop promising release dates
2) Ensure that QA is the most important focus of every release

I''m not sure why Syncfusion does not learn from past experience, but I hope that serious thought will be put to these issues.

Thank you,
Tom

[Daniel Jebaraj]

Tom,

Thanks for the feedback. We are not changing productcode for 3.2. There may be fixes made but to the extent possible we are not pulling latest files but are using images generated during 3.2.

The core licensing code has no implication on any of the product code. It is purely an internal implementation detail of the licensing system. We could have shipped with the unmanaged implementation that is currently included with 3.2. At this juncture we weighed keeping 3.2 available for a few more days while we change over to managed code and decided it was worth the effort.

We have a pretty elaborate QA process in place. We publish our complete bug list online. We try hard to fix things quickly. Sometimes in the past we have been overly optimistic about time frames. As I mentioned in a previous post we did make several changes in the way we plan and project releases and as a consequence our code changes were made on time with 3.2.

However, infrastructure code was behind. This led to delays. This issue has now been taken care of. We look forward to an on time release of version 3.3.

Thank you for using Syncfusion products.

Best regards,
Daniel

[Administrator]

Guess one have to use CTRL-K-F to format code and ALT-W to change windows in visual studio now that the tab key doesn''t work anymore.

[Ne]

I haven''t provided good feedback. 3.2 is not working for me. and you mentioned in my trac that some users have encountered problems.

Please give us a REALISTIC date of a stable working release.

[Administrator]

Ken: Do you mean 3.2 is not working period? or do you mean you were unable to successfully upgrade to 3.2. There is a difference between upgrading a product and using a product. I''m sure you will like 3.2 once you are able to successfully upgrade.

[Daniel Jebaraj]

Ken,

Sorry that you are having trouble with version 3.2. We have pushed this update to several thousand users now and while there have been a few issues reported, overall version 3.2 is very stable.

Please send me information on the issues that you are currently experiencing and we will make every effort to get these addressed at the earliest. If you have already logged Direct-Trac incidents please send me just the incident numbers.

My email address is [e-mail].

Thanks & best regards,
Daniel

>I haven''t provided good feedback. 3.2 is not working for me. and you mentioned in my trac that some users have encountered problems.
>
>Please give us a REALISTIC date of a stable working release.

[Sue Harris]

Speaking of one of those few who had trouble going to 3.2 - it does look to be a fairly good release. Unfortunately, however I couldn''t successfully upgrade to it - my project compiles, but it throws a Null Pointer exception when it tries to check the licensing (yes Daniel, there is a direct track incident open about it).

So, my view of the 3.2 release appears to be, if you can get it running and upgrade your projects successfully it looks fairly good (I''ve only been testing sample projects though). But there are still some issues in the licensing.

Hope that helps some of the fence sitters decide.

Cheers,
Sue

[Michel T Dallaire]

Hi, I upgrades my projects too. All of my projects worked and upgraded with none to very few problems. All except 1 that is not, I have the same error message than Sue (I have a direct track too). But strange part is that if I put a new form in the same exact project and put that form as the startup form. I can put anything on it and it works, perfectly. But if I then put a button that open the old form, the Null exception comes back. I know the problem comes from the licence checking function, but it looks to me as if it is a wrong winform resources file. There is no way that I will reconstruct that form to check my theory. It is too complicated. I already had to change it when moved from V1 to V2. The move from V2 to V3 was not painful, but V3 was working fin. I will not do it again for a minor version. There are too much controls one inside another. I also get strange behavior since moving to V3 for the first time. Since the program was working, it didn''t bother me. But now it''s getting a bit confusing when modifying the interface. As you can see in the attached file, sample_623.zip the headers of the docking pannels are gettin doubled. The higher one is some kind of hole, if I drag another window over it, that part gets painted with the window content. At runtime, it''s working fine. But I tried to change the panel of place at design time, and it''s very hard to get a grip on the panel. Does anyone else got that kind of problem? Regards, Mike

[Ne]

3.2 is not working PERIOD for me.

>Ken: Do you mean 3.2 is not working period? or do you mean you were unable to successfully upgrade to 3.2. There is a difference between upgrading a product and using a product. I''m sure you will like 3.2 once you are able to successfully upgrade.

[Administrator]

Any idea when the final version will be out. Im not asking for a date. The only reason im asking is because i have a direct trac(18057) i just opened that i started in the forum with clay and wondered if it would be addressed in the final version. I really dont see how you couldnt address it because it wont let me type data in the cell and i cant see of any work around. We had a work around for when it wasnt working in 3110 but now its totally messed up in 3.2..i know i just opened the direct trac but wondered if this would make it in the final 3.2 since you said it WAS fixed in my last direct trac i started with you about it before 3.2 came out and in the release notes in 3.2 you said it was fixed but its like nobody ever tested it and now its worse then it was and now no work around will work.

[Bernhard Hombitzer]

I am very interested in a release date, because we
upgraded all our projects from 1.6 to 3.0 and just when we wanted to start QA, version 3.2 was announced.

Now since the release is close we decided to
postpone QA and upgrade to 3.2 before.

Berni

[Administrator]

Here is my problem with any upgrade we have received and this one included. You guy change sooooooooooooooo many little things that every time we get a new version we are scared to put it on. For instance from like 1.6 to 2050 you totally messed with the nullstring and how it worked. Then we are told from you to do it another way. So we went about things another route you suggested in direct trac. The part that floors me is in 3110 everything is still working fine for the most part and then bam now in 3.2 you changed some things back to how they worked in 1.6 and now say its the right way. Its like some times you don’t take in to account what affect the smallest change may have on a user. Also that you''d make such a big change going from 3110 to 3.2 seems odd to me. So now I have to go in to 150 plus forms and change things to match how nullstring now works. It’s enough to drive you crazy. Some forms will need changes others wont, but regardless it means weeks more of testing everything IN DEPTH just as if it was the first time you tested your app because who knows what other little quirks will pop up because of the new grid.

Then for example you have things like I described above where something is working in version 2 and then you break it in version 3110. We tell you about it. You say its fixed, and even say its fixed in your release notes for 3.2 an then when we test it well now its worse then it was in 3110 and still doesn’t work. I now have a cell I CANT enter data in unless I tell the user they have to upper case it. Well we can’t tell users that. That’s what really ticks me off about things. Its almost like nobody ever really tested it or something.

That takes me back to my original thoughts in another forum post where myself and everyone I work with feel as if we are your full time beta testers. Granted 3.2 isn’t FINAL but even when I do have a FINAL release I am still scared to put it on not knowing exactly what you changed that might affect something else. Like now I am spending more time testing your product then I am my own.

Again we couldn’t find a better grid on the market when we bough your grid. As I’ve always said the forum response time and level of service you give is top notch. I just wish going to a new version didn’t have to be such a frightening experience.

Phil

[Pascal Tellier]

Licensing did not work for us either in our test environment. I ran the licensing utility against each project however continue to get NullReference exceptions in the licensing component as well as errors saying that licenses.licx cannot be added because it already exists. I hope that the licensing issues will be sorted out in the final version.

Pascal

>Tom,
>
>Thanks for the feedback. We are not changing productcode for 3.2. There may be fixes made but to the extent possible we are not pulling latest files but are using images generated during 3.2.
>
>The core licensing code has no implication on any of the product code. It is purely an internal implementation detail of the licensing system. We could have shipped with the unmanaged implementation that is currently included with 3.2. At this juncture we weighed keeping 3.2 available for a few more days while we change over to managed code and decided it was worth the effort.
>
>We have a pretty elaborate QA process in place. We publish our complete bug list online. We try hard to fix things quickly. Sometimes in the past we have been overly optimistic about time frames. As I mentioned in a previous post we did make several changes in the way we plan and project releases and as a consequence our code changes were made on time with 3.2.
>
>However, infrastructure code was behind. This led to delays. This issue has now been taken care of. We look forward to an on time release of version 3.3.
>
>Thank you for using Syncfusion products.
>
>Best regards,
>Daniel

[Administrator]

If you are getting the license.licx already added warnings when you build, you need to manually hack your VS project files, as the license utility erroneously adds a duplicate reference. Delete the duplicate.

Tim.

>Licensing did not work for us either in our test environment. I ran the licensing utility against each project however continue to get NullReference exceptions in the licensing component as well as errors saying that licenses.licx cannot be added because it already exists. I hope that the licensing issues will be sorted out in the final version.
>
>Pascal
>
>>Tom,
>>
>>Thanks for the feedback. We are not changing productcode for 3.2. There may be fixes made but to the extent possible we are not pulling latest files but are using images generated during 3.2.
>>
>>The core licensing code has no implication on any of the product code. It is purely an internal implementation detail of the licensing system. We could have shipped with the unmanaged implementation that is currently included with 3.2. At this juncture we weighed keeping 3.2 available for a few more days while we change over to managed code and decided it was worth the effort.
>>
>>We have a pretty elaborate QA process in place. We publish our complete bug list online. We try hard to fix things quickly. Sometimes in the past we have been overly optimistic about time frames. As I mentioned in a previous post we did make several changes in the way we plan and project releases and as a consequence our code changes were made on time with 3.2.
>>
>>However, infrastructure code was behind. This led to delays. This issue has now been taken care of. We look forward to an on time release of version 3.3.
>>
>>Thank you for using Syncfusion products.
>>
>>Best regards,
>>Daniel

[Pascal Tellier]

Should I bother trying to get this to work using the 3.2 RC? As I understand you are changing your licensing implementation, will this require updating all of the licenses.licx files again? Should I just wait for 3.2 final?

Pascal

>If you are getting the license.licx already added warnings when you build, you need to manually hack your VS project files, as the license utility erroneously adds a duplicate reference. Delete the duplicate.
>
>Tim.
>
>>Licensing did not work for us either in our test environment. I ran the licensing utility against each project however continue to get NullReference exceptions in the licensing component as well as errors saying that licenses.licx cannot be added because it already exists. I hope that the licensing issues will be sorted out in the final version.
>>
>>Pascal
>>
>>>Tom,
>>>
>>>Thanks for the feedback. We are not changing productcode for 3.2. There may be fixes made but to the extent possible we are not pulling latest files but are using images generated during 3.2.
>>>
>>>The core licensing code has no implication on any of the product code. It is purely an internal implementation detail of the licensing system. We could have shipped with the unmanaged implementation that is currently included with 3.2. At this juncture we weighed keeping 3.2 available for a few more days while we change over to managed code and decided it was worth the effort.
>>>
>>>We have a pretty elaborate QA process in place. We publish our complete bug list online. We try hard to fix things quickly. Sometimes in the past we have been overly optimistic about time frames. As I mentioned in a previous post we did make several changes in the way we plan and project releases and as a consequence our code changes were made on time with 3.2.
>>>
>>>However, infrastructure code was behind. This led to delays. This issue has now been taken care of. We look forward to an on time release of version 3.3.
>>>
>>>Thank you for using Syncfusion products.
>>>
>>>Best regards,
>>>Daniel

[Michel T Dallaire]

I tried internal version 3201 for testing purpose and licencing problem seems to be solved.

I don''t know for other issues, but the NullException is gone and everything compile and run pefectly.

Regards,
Miky

[Administrator]

I can agree, after a first look, the problem seams to be solved.

Regards,
Thomas

>I tried internal version 3201 for testing purpose and licencing problem seems to be solved.
>
>I don''t know for other issues, but the NullException is gone and everything compile and run pefectly.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>Miky
>
>
>
>

[Administrator]

I can agree, after a first look, the problem seams to be solved.

Regards,
Thomas

>I tried internal version 3201 for testing purpose and licencing problem seems to be solved.
>
>I don''t know for other issues, but the NullException is gone and everything compile and run pefectly.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>Miky
>
>
>
>

[Administrator]

Where is the problem solved at ?? I still get licensing problems with new projects. This new licensing thing in my opinion SUCKS.

[Daniel Jebaraj]

Hi,

Can you provide more details? With new projects you should get the standard licensing enabler warning - once the enabler is run everything should work just fine.

Thanks,
Daniel

>Where is the problem solved at ?? I still get licensing problems with new projects. This new licensing thing in my opinion SUCKS.

[Sue Harris]

So, is there any update on when the final version will be released? The last comment was that it would be available in 3-4 days (and that was 2 weeks ago). I don''t mind the delays so much, but *please please please* let us know whats going on.

Thanks,
Sue

[Tom Abraham]

We don''t really want an answer to that question. Syncfusion needs to break the habit of ever promising dates. If Microsoft is having trouble getting a release done, they''ll announce a delay of six months, not a three day delay week after week.

[Daniel Jebaraj]

Sue / Tom,

The final release is now available. I just posted the link in the general forum. Thank you for your patience.

Best regards,
Daniel

>So, is there any update on when the final version will be released? The last comment was that it would be available in 3-4 days (and that was 2 weeks ago). I don''t mind the delays so much, but *please please please* let us know whats going on.
>
>Thanks,
>Sue