This Roadmap communicates Synergex’s current plans for the
Synergy/DE product suite. Synergex is committed to advancing Synergy/DE to enable
long-term growth and success for developers creating and extending
Synergy-based solutions.
Planning Objectives
When
planning the Synergy/DE Roadmap, our objectives are to
Provide access to emerging technologies and platforms
Enhance developer productivity and the Synergy developer
experience
Enable developers to retain their investments in their
Synergy solutions
Evolve Synergy/DE on all supported platforms: Linux/Unix, OpenVMS,
and Windows
Incorporate ideas from Synergy developers
Provide Synergy integration with the latest Microsoft
Visual Studio® tools
Deliver frequent, incremental updates
Release Frequency
New
Synergy/DE runtime revisions with new features are typically released every 12
to 18 months, and patches with fixes every 3 to 6 months. New SDI developer
builds (Synergy DBL Integration with Visual Studio) are released when new
features are available and to support Microsoft Visual Studio releases. SDI
releases support a maximum of three concurrent Visual Studio versions (the
latest release of each version), as well as any Synergy runtime version back to
10.1.1d for Synergy .NET and 9.5.3 for traditional Synergy.
Current Focus
We are currently focused on extending Synergy/DE
in the following areas:
Cloud-based license key server. Simplifying license management processes by providing automatic installation and update of Synergy product keys on customer systems
Traditional Synergy development in Visual Studio. Enhancing the developer experience for creating traditional Synergy applications in Visual Studio
Visual Studio Integration. Keeping up with Microsoft to provide the latest Visual Studio features to developers creating traditional Synergy and .NET applications
WiX installations. Migrating Synergy/DE installations to the WiX toolset to provide a better and more standard installation experience
Security. Enhancing security, specifically service security (xfServer and xfServerPlus)
Cloud licensing. Researching how to support licensing Synergy applications in the cloud
Upcoming Synergy/DE Releases
A timeline of planned Synergy/DE releases and their primary features
*Depends on third-party (e.g., VSI and Microsoft) release schedule
Other Synergy/DE 11 Features
Additional features
planned for version 11
Security
TLS 1.2 compliance
enforced by default across product set
(TLS 1.1 will be new minimum)
Improved security
compliance for xfServerPlus
Windows runtime and xfServer built for Spectre compliance
(addressing hardware security vulnerability)
Synergy built with
upgraded tooling on Linux and Windows (C runtime libraries, .NET Framework
features, Visual Studio UCRT, and Linux GCC compiler)
Improved xfODBC security with new dbcreate option
128-byte
passwords encrypted using SHA256
Industry-standard
grant/revoke syntax for tables to users
Default
to continue with GENESIS_USERS
Traditional Synergy
New string methods
More
overloads for IndexOf, LastIndexOf, Insert, Substring, and Replace
IsNullOrEmpty,
IsNullOrWhiteSpace, TrimStart, TrimEnd, Split, and Remove
Console.Writeline and
Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine
Compiler updates
Extension
methods, ? an d ?? operators (targeting
v11 runtime) , ^nameof()
Debugger ability to
examine cast objects in path with multiple casts
HTTP API chunked
encoding, Head and Patch methods, base 64 encode/decode
SDI enhancements
“Find All References”
improvements to match C#
Repository project type order-independent
schema load
24×7 operation support
xfServerPlus no longer
runs under the System account
Windows
backup service for registering with backup provider and synbackup
Automatically
sets/resets synbackup to freeze I/O in conjunction with third-party backup
software
CodeExchange
script examples for Unix
Improved ISAM
reliability and performance
Improved
isutl with quicker rebuild
Xcallable
isutl
Ability
for isutl to rebuild files in place while open
Isutl
option to repair just out of sync files
Requirements
AIX 7.1 new minimum
Installation may require small changes if you wrap Synergy/DE installation
Windows C runtime upgrade and .NET Framework 7.2 required, Synergy clients will likely need upgrades.
Features Under Consideration
The following features are under consideration for research and development. We are also reviewing other features that have been submitted to the Ideas forum in Synergex’s Resource Center Community. If you have ideas for improving or extending Synergy/DE, we encourage you to post them on the Ideas site for consideration. Also, if you are interested in any of the ideas that are already posted, we encourage you to add your input and votes for those features in the forum.
VSI OpenVMS
VMS
advanced file system
VMS
x64 port
Coordinated ISAM file
atomicity framework with auto-rollback
Data at rest encryption
of .ism and .is1 files
Windows installations
use ProgramData for items edited by users and shared x86/x64
Synergy.ini
, Synbackup, and GENESIS_HOME
Traditional development
Composer
and Workbench become 64-bit-only products
.NET runtimes
Support
for .NET Core on Linux and the .NET API.
Synergy DBL Integration
for Visual Studio (SDI) / VSCode
CodeGen
as a NuGet package for the build system
CodeGen
template editor extension
Integration
for traditional Synergy in Visual Studio unit tests
VSCode
support
Code analysis tooling
A
utility based on a Visual Studio solution to find all places a variable is
used, including antecedents
Facilitates
changing size of a variable by showing all uses