Opal 1.0.1 (1.0.1-b8149) is now available.
This release includes several bug fixes and several improvements. Specifically, Opal 1.0.1 has better support for Onyx variable structure, it can now write to Excel Spreadsheets (XLS and XLSX) and also allows renaming variables during copy. Read on for more information.
Improvements
Long Variable Names
Variable names coming from Onyx are very long. This Opal release improves the handling of these variables by doing the following:
- Each Onyx stage now has a table in the destination datasource.
- The stage name prefix is removed from the variable's name
For example:
| Opal Version | Original Name | Destination Table | Resulting Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | CiQuestionnaire.DO_YOU_SMOKE | Participants | CiQuestionnaire.DO_YOU_SMOKE |
| 1.0.1 | CiQuestionnaire.DO_YOU_SMOKE | CiQuestionnaire | DO_YOU_SMOKE |
Note that the new copy command can be used to transform existing data into this new structure:
Another improvement in regards to long names is the ability to rename variables during copy operations:
This command will copy the table opal-data.CiQuestionnaire to the sql-datasource and apply a transformation to the variables such that their name is taken from an attribute called shortName. This attribute can be manually added to variables by curing the Opal Database.
Excel Spreadsheet
Writing to Excel Spreadsheets has been improved. Firstly, it now supports writing values (as opposed to metadata only). Secondly, it now supports Office 2007 format (XLSX) which is much less limited in terms of maximum columns and rows.
The Office 2007 format supports 1M rows and 16K columns. Thus, it can be used to export large tables.
Split Command
A new command was introduced to allow splitting large Onyx export files into multiple smaller ones. See the user guide for more details.
Using Opal 1.0.1
To use Opal, you must first download it here.
Please refer to the Configuration Guide and User Guide for more information.
Upgrading from 1.0.0
To upgrade from 1.0.0, simply download and extract the 1.0.1 binaries on your application server. Copy your Opal 1.0.0 configuration files over the 1.0.1 configurations files. Redefine the OPAL_HOME environment variable if required.
Complete List of Changes
Opal 1.0 (1.0.0-b7835) is now available.
This is the first official release of Opal, OBiBa's Data Integration application. Read on for more details.
Opal 1.0
This initial version of Opal is a command-line application that allows:
- Importing Onyx 1.6.x export files
- Managing cryptographic keys (import key pairs, export public certificates, etc.)
- Managing Participant identifiers from multiple sources
- Exporting meta-data (variables) into an Excel sheet
- Creating "Views" for organizing data into more manageable components
- Connecting to existing SQL databases (where other Participant data may exist)
- Incremental copying of data into "flat" SQL tables (useful for reporting)
Using Opal 1.0.0
To use Opal, you must first download it here.
Please refer to the Configuration Guide and User Guide for more information.