What Was New in Previous Versions

This is the What's New Section from the previous release, Version 3.0

Wow! Where to start?

Of course, the big news is that we now support the new kid on the block Access 2000. Both Access ELF 97 and Access ELF 2000 use the latest Jet technology, with no additional "compatability layers" as in previous versions.

Version 3.0 introduces many new features. We think that the most important one will prove to be "scripting" capability. You can now write scripts in either VBScript or JScript and have these "mini-programs" triggered from within Access ELF. You can trigger scripts off questions (to validate users and change views based on the user and/or his question). You can intercept specific words or phrases and run scripts to change them as you like. You can intercept the SQL that's generated by Access ELF, for instance to run a security check verifying that the user is entitled to see the information generated. You can even run scripts that catch spelling errors, and use it to supply your own suggestions to our spell check window -- or just handle the spell checking yourself. (You can also intercept the feedback from our spell checker -- in case someone tries to use "misspelled" words as a way of passing proscribed terms past your Question-intercepting scripts!)

The Worksheet mode has been refined, with better formating of data and graphs, and we've added a new feature that lets you see hierarchies (such as organizational structures) at a single glance. To use this, all you do is connect two fields from the same table (for instance, [EmployeeID] and [ReportsTo]) in the Verb Mapper. Now you can click the hierarchy button to see the tree, or sum different values over the hierarchy -- for instance to see the total sales in each division, with the totals being credited upwards from employee to boss. Another use would be to see the next, or previous, occurrence of some date -- such as an anniversary or birthday. In other words, you can push a button and see what's the next birthday along every path of the organizational tree.

You can also export all of the Worksheet; selected rows; selected columns; or a selected "rectangle" of data, to Microsoft Excel with a single click.

The Verb Mapper has also been extended to handle a much-requested feature -- letting you automatically link up two fields so that when one is displayed, the other will be too. Just add an entry in the Verb Mapper using the special verb "imply". The two fields can come from the same, or from different tables. (Note: if the two tables are related, Access ELF will fill in the relationship in the place where you want to select the fields to relate. To override, just type in the verb IMPLY, then double-click one of the fields pre-selected by the program. This will unlock the list of fields in each table so that you can click one on each side.)

Still Faster and Yet Smaller: Just as in Version 2.0, this time around we've again added new compression features that allow Access ELF to be used with ever larger databases -- while continuing to efficiently index all the most relevent information in your database. Now that Access ELF shares most of the properties of its big sister, VB ELF, it needs to be able to handle bigger databases, like SQL Server and Oracle. Since Access ELF works from within Access, it doesn't need to directly support SQL Server dialect, but we've added the ability to switch back and forth between these similar but subtly different versions of SQL, just in case you need a "pocket translator".

A few things that were missing from the last version has been added, like the ability to set the Acknowledge flag on non-text fields (right-click a tablename from the Custom Analysis window to get to this option). This lets you exclude numeric information from your analyses -- most importantly perhaps, the system fields that are generated in replicated databases.

We've also changed the way crosstab queries are triggered. You no longer have to use the "compare" keyword; using "down" and/or "across" will usually be enough to get a 3D dataset -- for instance, "Give me the total quantities, showing employee name across and product down." or "Display the average discount, with the month of order date down and customer name across."

Here's the What's New from the previous release, Version 2.0.

Ease of use features on the Custom Analysis window: Select All/Select None buttons to help you quickly choose the Data Sets you need; the Save button has Access ELF remember your selection, and the new Defaults button lets you return to the original system selections if your current choices haven't worked out. On the Field Selection window (reached by right-clicking any table) we've added an "Acknowledge" checkbox that lets you instruct Access ELF to ignore certain fields completely.

Toolbar: Of course, everything is now reachable by the new Access ELF toolbar. You can grab the toolbar by the double lines and position it on any edge of the screen, or resize it and float it in the middle of the screen (it looks pretty cool as 2 lines of 6 icons each).

Selectable Settings: We've also centralized all the option settings on the new "Settings" window. This includes new features like the choice between Local Help and Web-based Help. (If you're reading this in your browser, I guess you found this!) The Responses tab shows the new Worksheet selection, and a whole new category of Response Style -- your own pre-defined forms. Now Access ELF will read all the fields required to populate a form right off the form itself. For instance, in Northwind, you could simply click on the Suppliers form, check off "Use as Active Form", then type "Show me the German companies." For more details, see the Query topic.

The new Verb Mapper tab gives you a quick way to associate action words with the relationship between tables, or even between tables and queries. For instance, if you want "require" to imply the relation between Customer and Product, you can click the Add New >* record selector, and enter a new relation record for Customers and Products. Type REQUIRE into the verb box, and you're done. Now Access ELF will understand that "Who requires seafood?" means "Which customers buy seafood?"

We've also added many new Customization features. From the Advanced tab you can customize the message displayed when Access ELF can't process your query, and a default header for custom responses to off-topic or improper queries. You can define these responses themselves in the Phrase editor, by starting the definition with an exclamation point. See the Customizing topic for more on this.

Slimmer, trimmer History form: The Query History form is now more compact and easy to use. Just double-click any panel and an old query will be rerun.

Easier lookups: Browse panel in the Lex Lookup form makes it easy to find all the words that have a given attribute. When the new AutoBrowse feature is on, all the words that are synonyms of the selected word are displayed. Double-click on any word in the (resizable) browse list and instantly see its attributes as well.

New phrase definition capabilities: Data-aware substitutions, data-sensitive triggers, plus techniques for "passing along" numeric values from the input to output are some of the new features. Don't worry if these sound mysterious, we've got plenty of examples in this help file and in the Tutorials that show how these features can really put a polish on your interface. (Almost forgot -- custom error messages too!)

Worksheet mode: A tip of the hat to Boris Gendelev; in his critique of ELF for Database Programming & Design, he suggested that a step-by-step view of the execution plan might be a confidence-booster. So we built it. We'll let Boris give his opinion:

The worksheet showing the stages of the query is indeed tremendously useful. My article might have helped to identify a problem and have thrown some ideas around, but you developed a coherent original solution.

Form Designer: Sometimes it seems we spend more time designing Access forms than we spend with our families. That's why we came up with the guaranteed best tool for form design in Access you're likely to find. And we've gotten so many thank-yous from folks who've picked it up from various freeware distributions, that we decided to add it right into the Access ELF toolbar. It's STILL freeware, though. If you like, you can import the Form Designer, called @Design Tool, from ELF32.MDA and pass it around to your friends.

New Graph Options: Click Zoom on the Pinnacle Graph form to zoom in on the area between the lowest and highest values. Especially useful with high-low-close stock charts, which is also a new feature.

This is the What's New Section from the previous release, Version 1.2

Here are some of the highlights of this new version.

Version 1.2 has an improved grammar for better English query coverage, and incorporates some measures to reduce the amount of "bloat" of Jet MDBs during analysis. A major new feature is the string substitution facility now included as part of the Phrases oprion.

Alternate spellings of words with accent marks or other foreign characters are now added automatically. For example, the Northwind database contains a customer "Blondel père et fils". If you type, "Which products were ordered by Blondel pere et fils?" the substitution from "pere" to "père" is now made automatically. Note that this substitution will not occur if the word "pere" appeared anywhere in the database (without the accent).

Many common constructions using "begins with" formerly required quote marks around the template, for instance: Show companies that start with "S" or Show companies like "S" Access ELF now permits the simpler Show companies that start with S and Show companies like S. When a single letter, say X, follows a like operator, Access ELF 1.2 expands it to "X*", so that Show companies like S maps to Show companies like "S*". Quotes are also now added similarly for constructions like: the word abc ("abc"); the string/text/phrase xyz ("xyz").

Version 1.1 could not correctly graph recordsets with only a single record. Due to a limitation of the Pinnacle graph control, this is still true if you are trying to graph a single value for a single record. (You always get a second bar set to zero.) However, now if you try to graph multiple values for a single record (for instance, four quarterly values), Access ELF 1.2 will treat the four values as if they belonged to four separate records, producing a correct graph. In this case, the sort and filter drop-down boxes become disabled, since there's really only a single record, which cannot be sorted or filtered.

Access ELF 1.2 has been enhanced to add the data from (analyzable) queries into the dictionary in those cases where the source table for the query is NOT selected for analysis. For instance, let's say you wanted to include only the US customers when analyzing the Northwinds database. First, you'd create a query that included all fields from the Customers table (you can use Customers.*). Then you need to add a field that filters on Country="USA". (Note that this field must be in the SELECT clause for this process to work properly.) Also, you cannot have two fields with the same name in an analyzable query, so change the name of the filter field to "Filter" (eg. SELECT Customers.*, Customers.Country As Filter FROM Customers WHERE Customers.Country = "USA").

Now the query has become "analyzable" because
1) it uses an alias or a computed field (in this case an alias) and
2) it references at most one additional table besides the table used for the aliased (or computed) field.

Briefly, the idea here is that in addition to tables, we want to allow in fields that are the specification of "virtual fields"; the classic example is the Subtotal field of the [Orders Subtotal] query in Northwinds. This query sums up all the line items in an individual order, and pairs it with the [Order ID] from the [Order Details] table. Because [Order ID] is also a 1-1 link to the Orders table, each Subtotal entry is effectively joined in a 1-1 fashion to a record of the Order table. In other words, Subtotal acts just as if it were a field of the Order table (which is why we call it a "virtual field").

So now that this new query (let's call it [Filter]) is created, it appears in the list of Analyzable objects the next time you run an Analysis. Normally, the data for a query is not entered into the dictionary, because Access ELF assumes it's just a subset of the data from some table which will already be included. Beginning in version 1.2, Access ELF will now also CHECK to see whether the source table has been selected in the list of objects to analyze. If it is not selected, the data from the dependent query will be added.

This is a powerful new feature which allows you to split your database grammars up easily by using queries as filters, so that you can have separate interfaces for domestic and foreign, East Coast and West Coast, etc. These interfaces could easily be bound to different forms, allowing ad hoc queries to be targeted to particular cross-sections of your database. There is one additional change in behavior when the underlying source table of a query is not included in the analysis. If both the query and the table are included (for instance, both [Order Subtotals] and [Order Details]), then when queries mention the query name ("Order Subtotals") the default display field is the field that caused it to be identified as Analyzable; ie, the aliased, or in this case, the calculated field. So a request to display the Order Subtotals will display the Subtotal field. On the other hand, if ONLY the query is selected, then the default field will be selected just as if the query were a table. For the Filter query, which filters on "USA", the Filter field won't be treated specially, and so Access ELF will decide based on its weighting algorithms, to choose the Company Name field as the default field for display.

Version 1.1 was updated for increased fluency and extra speed, especially with larger databases. It's also been made fully-compatible with its sister product, VB ELF (the English Language Frontend for Visual Basic). This means that the same grammar and dictionary can be used with either ELF product. (Note that the Access ELF 1.2 release corresponds to VB ELF release 1.1.)

Note: VB ELF allows developers to add the ELF language engine directly into their own database projects, whether written in 32-bit VB4, VB5, or languages such as C++ and Delphi which can access ELF functionality through our ActiveX controls. Like Access ELF, VB ELF is royalty free. There is no per-desktop charge whatsoever. For more information on VB ELF, visit our Web site at http://www.elfsoft.com

Features introduced in 32-bit Access ELF versions (Access ELF 95 and Access ELF 97) :

Click on the ELF logo in the Query window, and you'll find a new window that lets you quickly modify the queries produced by Access ELF. Errors and omissions can often be fixed with a few clicks of the mouse.

This same window lets you see sample queries that are similar to the query you've typed in. Now it's easy to get a feel for the types of queries ELF is able to handle.

We've added a new style of graph. Now you can choose to have your queries graphed either by Microsoft Graph, or by the Pinnacle Graph custom control. Try a graph query like: "Graph the average price of products in each category." You can click on the "x" (lower left) to hide the interactive graph controls (Pinnacle), or right click the graph (Microsoft).

The Pinnacle graph control GRAPH32.OCX comes with MS Visual Basic and is widely available from other sources. It must already be registered on your system in order to work with Access and Access ELF. The Access ELF installation will NOT register this control. If you don't have the Graph32 control, it can be downloaded from the ELF Software site at http://www.elfsoft.com

You can now set a time limit on how long ELF takes to answer queries. When the program CAN answer your question, it usually does so pretty quickly...when it can't, it often takes a lot of "grinding its gears" to find this out. Just set the limit to, say, 30 seconds and compromise between speed and thoroughness. Of course you can set the limit to 0 (unlimited) and use the Cancel button at any time.

Crosstab queries? Yes! Access ELF will create crosstab queries when you use the "compare" or "pivot" keywords. For example, "Compare the total quantities showing employee name and category." or "Compare the average subtotal for each salesperson and category." Starting in version 1.1, Access ELF can graph these crosstab queries three-dimensionally (but only when using the Pinnacle Graph control).