Foxhound 4.0 FAQ
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Question: What's new in Foxhound 4?

Answer:

What's New in Foxhound 4

A. Release-Defining Features

B. New Features

C. Usability Improvements

D. Behavior Changes

E. Bug Fixes

F. Adhoc Queries

G. What's New in Build 4740


A. Release-Defining Features      

A.1 A new custom "ping" process tests separate connections to the target database.

A.2 Foxhound now supports SQL Anywhere 17.

A.3 Context-sensitive Performance Tips have been added throughout the Help.

A.4  No more pink!  Black and white and grey are now used for highlighting.

A.5  Banner warnings  now expose conflicts among different Monitor Options page settings.

A.6 let you switch among multiple target databases.

B. New Features      

B.1 Alert #35 - Separate ping failed - Foxhound has been unable to make a separate ping connection to the target database for [10] or more recent samples.

B.2 Incomplete Reads, Writes columns have been reintroduced for SQL Anywhere 17 target databases.

B.3 Alert #15 - Incomplete I/Os has been reintroduced for SQL Anywhere 17 target databases.

B.4 The database-level Throughput... Bytes columns no longer show server-level values for SQL Anywhere 16 and 17 target databases.

B.5 The connection-level "Volume..." columns have has been changed to Throughput... Req, Commits and Bytes.

B.6 Several other connection-level statistics have been changed from cumulative counts to rates of change.

B.7 The DEDICATED_TASK option can now be set for the Foxhound Monitor connection to the target database.

B.8 Many more context-sensitive Help links now appear on the Monitor, Sample History and Connection History pages.

B.9 The Email address(es) for Alerts and AutoDrop Notices field has been split into two separate fields.

B.10 Mutex and semaphore locks are now included in the connection-level Current Req Status and Block Reason: fields.

B.11 Disk-versus-cache performance comparisons are now displayed in the Disk/Cache: Internal Index, Leaf, Table columns.

B.12 Multiple let you switch among different option sets on the Monitor Options page.

B.13 The Monitor and History pages have been redesigned to show more data in less space.

B.14 A template is now used for the Foxhound Monitor connection name to the target database.

B.15 let you switch among different target databases on the Foxhound Monitor and Sample History pages.

B.16 The price has been dropped for the "Basic-to-Extended Edition" upgrade key.

B.17 All the Alert Help topics have been expanded.

C. Usability Improvements      

C.1 The Change Target Settings popup has been replaced by section 14. Change Target Settings on the Monitor Options page.

C.2 The Google Custom Search field has been added to all Foxhound Help pages.

C.3 The difference between server requests and client-server requests is explained in the Help.

C.4 The connection section Hide Details and Show Details buttons have been added to the Monitor page.

C.5 The effect of the connection section Hide Details / Show Details buttons is now persistent across the Monitor, Sample History and Connection History pages.

C.6 All Clear immediately issued for Alert #1 Database Unavailable when a sample is successfully recorded.

C.7 The patch process has been made more robust.

C.8 The Foxhound Activation page opens the Foxhound Menu page in the same window.

C.9 Buttons to Enable All, Disable All and Undo All have been added to the Alerts Criteria and AutoDrop Criteria sections of the Monitor Options page.

C.10 The Foxhound About page now has it's own Help page.

C.11 The Monitor tab on the Foxhound Menu page now displays the sampling_id in the new ID column.

C.12 Small Heartbeat and other elapsed time values are now shown exactly as measured.

C.13 Data rates 10 or larger are rounded to the nearest integer for more concise display.

C.14 The description of Transaction Time in the Help has been improved.

C.15 FAQ aliases are now displayed on each FAQ topic page.

C.16 The SQL Anywhere server and database names for the Foxhound database are displayed in the console log when Foxhound starts.

C.17 The Foxhound Menu Show Examples button now includes "SQL Anywhere Native", "SQL Anywhere 17" and "bin64".

C.18 The "HA:" field has been replaced with an untitled "database disposition" field that applies to all databases.

C.19 Wide Table Curiosity messages are now allowed to wrap on the Display Schema page.

C.20 Two security solutions involving simple GRANT EXECUTE statements have been added to the Connecting to Target Databases section of the Help.

C.21 Terabytes are now abbreviated as "T".

D. Behavior Changes      

D.1 The data upgrade process may take a long time to calculate new connection-level statistics.

D.2 The Foxhound shortcuts choose SQL Anywhere 16 over 17, and 64-bit over 32-bit, by default.

D.3 Foxhound no longer displays "-" for unavailable Locked Row Query values.

D.4 The "Totals:" line has been removed from the Monitor and History pages.

D.5 The new Foxhound transaction log is deleted and recreated after an old copy of Foxhound is upgraded.

D.6 The current timestamp has been moved to the menu line on the Monitor and History pages.

D.7 The GlobalDBID (global_database_id) has been moved from page titles to the Status area of the Monitor page.

D.8 Out-of-range CurrIO values are no longer set to zero.

D.9 Some email settings have been moved around.

D.10 The Freeze Frame Heights setting on the Sample History Menu is updated when Foxhound 4 is installed.

D.11 New Alerts (e.g. Alert #35 - Separate ping failed) are enabled by default for existing target databases after upgrading from earlier versions of Foxhound.

D.12 The column titles in the Most Recent Sample and Top Sample sections are no longer highlighted for peak values.

D.13 The word "Latency" has been changed to "Response" in the Response... Heartbeat, Sample, Ping column titles.

D.14 The new Foxhound ping process "uses up" one SQL Anywhere connection number each time it runs.

D.15 The Foxhound "post-setup" process runs at an earlier point in the InstallShield setup.

D.16 The initial width of the Help frame is set to 50% after an upgrade from an earlier version of Foxhound.

D.17 The MultiProgrammingLevel for Foxhound's own database has been increased from -gn 120 to -gn 220.

D.18 Official recognition of target databases running on SQL Anywhere 5.5 software has been removed from Foxhound documentation.

E. Bug Fixes      

E.1 The Delete button on the String tab of the Foxhound Menu page no longer causes a foreign key violation.

E.2 The data upgrade process no longer causes foreign key violations by renaming old default Adhoc Schema connection strings.

E.3 The Activation process no longer fails after upgrading from an old database that has never been activated.

E.4 The Monitor Options page no longer fails with a "User-defined exception" when the sampling session is deleted.

E.5 It is now possible to start a not-yet-activated 'GA' copy of Foxhound with a SQL Anywhere server name other from "foxhound4".

E.6 Serious error messages have been moved from the database console log to the HTML interface.

E.7 Error messages are now displayed when the buttons don't work in section 14. Change Target Settings of the Monitor Options page.

E.8 The Sample History Status Area now matches the age of the Top Sample section.

E.9 The scroll amounts in the Sample History Menu now work as expected.

E.10 The Interval value for a successful sample following an unsuccessful sample is calculated correctly.

E.11 The message "Please fill in both User Id and Password, or leave both empty" is now correctly displayed on the Foxhound Menu page.

E.12 An All Clear for Alert #13 File fragmentation is now correctly issued when the number of fragments falls below the threshold amount.

E.13 Invalid dependencies in rroad4.dll and rroad464.dll have been removed to avoid "Could not load dynamic library" errors.

E.14 The Monitor Options page now correctly cancels alerts when the criteria has changed.

E.15 The alert_union view for adhoc reporting has been fixed to correctly use the alert_in_effect_at columns.

F. Adhoc Queries      

F.1 A new page devoted to Adhoc Queries has been added to the Help.

F.2 A cross-table row numbering system now makes adhoc query UNION ORDER BY clauses easier to code.

F.3 Lots of new columns are available for adhoc queries.

F.4 Lots of new adhoc query examples have been added.

G. What's New in Build 4740      

G.1 Fix "unable to load dll" messages (previously published as Patch 3)

G.2 Fix Display Schema for billion-row tables (previously published as Patch 4)

G.3 Prevent Foxhound from becoming unresponsive when the Monitor cannot connect (previously published as Patch 5)

G.2 Prevent Ping-Only Sampling from becoming unresponsive (previously published as Patch 8)

G.5 Prevent Foxhound from becoming unresponsive on startup (previously published as Patch 10)

G.6 The patch process now skips files that don't have the matching build number in the file name.

G.7 The purge process has been changed to delete more data during each run.

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See also...
How do I get a copy of Foxhound?
What are the differences among the different editions of Foxhound: Rental, Basic and Extended?


This page was last updated on October 2, 2017.      Foxhound 4.0 FAQ Home      Foxhound Home      RisingRoad      Breck.Carter@gmail.com