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Retrospective Changelog

What's new in Retrospective 5.6.0

Oct 29, 2022
  • Again an update! The tech world is moving faster and faster, so it's good that there are stable tools like Retrospective that provide fundamental functions for busy IT professionals.
  • Because Docker and Kubernetes are already almost taken for granted in modern IT architectures, we have once again improved the log search in container logs.
  • With the upgrade to Java 11, we ensure support and have a clear path for our next upgrade to Java 17. In addition, we were able to meet customer requests for Retrospective on macOS Big Sur.
  • Improvements for grokking logs from Kubernetes and Docker containers:
  • When container logs are analyzed with Retrospective, it feels different than SSH access to VM logs.
  • Ephemeral containers can have short lifetimes and Retrospective is supposed to display logs from different containers with inconsistent formatting in a unified view.
  • In Retrospective, we have now added an option to use the timestamps generated by Kubernetes or Docker, instead of using the timestamps in the log data as we do with SSH logs.

New in Retrospective 5.4.0 (Oct 2, 2020)

  • New Features:
  • Support for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) in the SSH Transport Layer.
  • Export of result data to CouchDB through HTTPS (CouchDB is used as a data source by Koia.io).

New in Retrospective 5.3.0 (Sep 4, 2019)

  • New features:
  • Result Table
  • - Data export to Koia (https://www.koia.io) for advanced visualization and analysis
  • - Data export to JSON file(s)
  • New properties page "Koya Data Analyzis" within "Result Options"
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • # Subject
  • 4118 NullPointerException when dragging window during program startup
  • 4106 Adjust Time Offset does not respond consistently
  • 4098 Local text filter and filter out button does not function properly while searching
  • 4039 Column names incorrectly accept empty strings and names with blanks
  • 4021 Intermediate incorrect results with use of local filter
  • 4014 Times in current day search do not correspond
  • 4012 Information notice fills monitor screen on Mac
  • 4009 Search in result detail pane does not work properly
  • 4000 Advances search: offset days do not correspond to entries on Linux
  • 3998 Check boxes in Profiles on Linux are not visible
  • 3997 Insufficient view of selected profile on search page on Linux
  • 3994 IllegalStateException: Cannot add objects with not continuous primary keys

New in Retrospective 5.2.0 (Sep 4, 2019)

  • New features:
  • Collected data can be saved as result snapshots and be restored at any time later
  • - New "Result Snapshots" tab lets you open, edit and delete snapshots
  • Restoring result data from the last session depending on settings
  • - New preferences option for automatically restoring result data
  • - Otherwise restoring data upon user confirmation
  • Logically grouped and re-arranged items on the result table tool-bar
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • # Subject
  • 3947 StackOverflowError during Autofind
  • 3937 ParseException: Unparseable date when working with Docker
  • 3973 NPE during program startup
  • 3965 Wrong default selection mode for containers

New in Retrospective 5.1.0 (Sep 4, 2019)

  • New features:
  • Supporting enhanced compression methods for ZIP file entries
  • New preferences option for automatically deriving search tab name from profile
  • New "Custom Column" types
  • - Columns split by TAB
  • - Columns split by string
  • - Columns split by regular expression
  • - Column based on fixed position field
  • Result Details Pane
  • - Formatting of multiple JSON text chunks within same result entry
  • - Create fixed position "Custom Column" based on selected text
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • # Subject
  • 3657 Tab numbers are wrongly incremented
  • 3790 Fetching data from container in a monitoring session is too slow
  • 3810 Wrong enablement of menu entry Search/Monitor > Configure current Data Sources
  • 3816 SSH Console: Pasting long command doesn't work properly
  • 3822 Wrong file name when saving result data to text file
  • 3826 Pod Label Selectors are not working properly
  • 3832 Local search progress is not reported when no entries are matching
  • 3838 Date/Time format is wrong when result data is exported to CSV
  • 3840 "Custom Columns": Deleting of last selected column must be prevented
  • 3846 Error icon without message appears in Log Entry Separation wizard page
  • 3861 JSON Formatting does not always work
  • 3866 Manually setting log entry separation is ignored
  • 3867 File Browser: Edited directory path is ignored
  • 3868 Container Browser: Directory path field doesn't accept wildcards

New in Retrospective 5.0.0 (Sep 4, 2019)

  • New features:
  • Support for containerized subsystems Docker and Kubernetes
  • Pod label selectors
  • Support for Kubernetes deployments and dynamic detection of changes in environment
  • New Container Browser tab
  • Improved search tab layout
  • Program registration
  • - Moved from activation mode to registration mode
  • - Provide more information about current registration
  • Inform user when fields detected in new data source match the ones from a custom column
  • Let user split custom columns by space
  • Result data export
  • - Let the user select the columns to be exported to Excel or CSV
  • - Provide additional formatting option for Excel export
  • Preferences dialog
  • - New Container page
  • - Let the user reset the "Don't show again" flag in dialogs
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • # Subject
  • 3773 No error icon appears with error message in Container Browser
  • 3772 autofind and searching ZIP file results in IllegalArgumentException
  • 3771 SSH Console tab does not close with keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W
  • 3769 On Linux, Retrospective closes down when exporting result data
  • 3767 layout problems in different places on Linux
  • 3762 Jump Host loop error message not visible on Linux
  • 3757 Mac installer bundled with JRE does not use the bundled JRE
  • 3751 Flashing empty result table
  • 3748 SSH Console: context menu is broken
  • 3747 Reported disk space usage is wrong
  • 3743 Non editable table cells appear as if they were editable
  • 3739 Tooltips on Mac are not correctly displayed
  • 3736 Files selector table looses selection upon refresh
  • 3734 NPE when choosing new data sources from drop down menu
  • 3733 Custom profile selection disappears when mouse is outside of box
  • 3731 Wrong profile shown when creating new search from welcome page
  • 3698 Message bar with multi-line message is wrongly displayed
  • 3684 Search criteria disappears with "Text not contains"
  • 3680 Closing search tab with big result data takes too long
  • 3660 Local filtering by entry date/time via right mouse click
  • 3652 User is not notified when custom column value cannot be extracted due to format mismatch
  • 3651 Result Details: Custom columns are highlighted even if corresponding table cell does not contain any value
  • 3648 Profile Manager: Incorrect element selected after deleting element(s)
  • 3643 Refreshing result table is flickering
  • 3642 Detected fields are not displayed in Profile Manager
  • 3641 StackOverflowError occurred during pattern matching
  • 3639 Incorrect field names when adding character split columns
  • 3638 Custom columns visibility is incorrect in preview of Field Extraction Definition
  • 3630 Result table behaves strangely when search is quickly restarted
  • 3628 SSH Console: Terminating command with Ctrl+C does not work
  • 3619 No warning message on opening deleted temporary profiles in History
  • 3618 Preferences pages do not work properly
  • 3613 Detected fields lost on Host edit/save
  • 3515 "End" button not going to the last line in Result Table
  • 3512 Result details view disappears after exploding search tab
  • 3475 Hidden search criteria are shown after explode
  • 3455 History search doesn't highlight results of selected entries
  • 3413 Mouse wheel scrolling in Result Table does not work properly

New in Retrospective 4.2.0 Build 4 (Aug 7, 2017)

  • New features:
  • Preferences Dialog:
  • Option "Enable disk storage index" on Result Options page
  • Fully customizable highlighting sets (matcher, color, font etc.)
  • Predefined highlighting sets for common use cases
  • Name/value pattern fields
  • Amount with currency
  • Date/Time
  • etc.
  • Import/export definition from and to XML file and share among other people
  • Profile Manager & Configure Data Sources dialog:
  • Changing position and visibility of columns
  • Custom column definition with field assignments
  • Adding new fields by selecting them from automatically detected name/value pattern fields
  • Adding new fields by selecting them from predefined patterns
  • Name/value pattern fields defined by regular expressions
  • Split Fields obtained by fragmenting data using split character
  • Field scope for individual data source or for all data sources of the profile
  • Assign One or multiple distinct fields to individual columns
  • New Configure Data Source(s) wizard page for manual field extraction definition
  • Highlighting of detected name/value pairs in sample data loaded from data source
  • Core Engine:
  • Name/value pattern fields detection during Autofind using predefined patterns
  • Optional Name/value pattern fields detection during search and monitoring
  • Name/value pattern fields extraction through regular expressions
  • Field extraction through result data splitting
  • Field detection and extraction from JSON formatted data
  • Result Table:
  • Column positions and visibility depending on user choice
  • Display of custom columns
  • Local text filter now also accepts the wild card characters '*' and '?'
  • Filtering by custom column values (including option for filtering non-empty values)
  • Emphasizing individual rows through instant highlighting or by selected highlighting set
  • Display archive name and included filename in case a ZIP file contains multiple files
  • Include custom columns when exporting result data to Excel file
  • Result Details Panel:
  • Merging colors of overlapping highlighting colors
  • Emphasizing terms through instant highlighting or by selecting existing highlighting set
  • Highlighting content found in custom columns
  • Enabling/disabling word wrap through toggle button
  • Formatting of JSON data
  • Merging hosts and profiles during import from XML file, instead of overwriting existing definition
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • Subject:
  • 3552 Wrong selection after deleting a profile
  • 3541 Time spent so far is wrongly computed
  • 3528 Data entered in Preferences dialog is not properly validated
  • 3520 "Disk option limit" is not validated when preferences dialog is closed with OK button
  • 3509 Result Table: State of "Show/hide filtered out result entries" button is not remembered
  • 3507 Result Details: Displaying large text with word wrap is very slow
  • 3504 Exception when changing Result Table font
  • 3490 Tab name index increments when moving tabs
  • 3487 Switching host in File Browser by mouse click responds only to every second mouse click (Mac)
  • 3483 IllegalStateException in Host Manager when deleting Target User
  • 3479 Wrong cell background when editing log level patterns in preferences dialog
  • 3474 NullPointerExceptoin while cloning/bookmarking tab through menu
  • 3472 Batch edit is not closed when a single host is selected
  • 3470 Buttons in Host Manager not visible when there is too little vertical space
  • 3469 DnD in Host Manager from cluster to default list does not work on Mac

New in Retrospective 4.1.0 Build 56 (Mar 3, 2017)

  • New features:
  • Support for evicting micro/nano seconds in Date/Time column of the Result Table
  • Introduced local Result Table filter for Date/Time
  • Log level patterns
  • Added support for non-alphanumeric log level patterns
  • Added support for non-alphanumerically delimited log level patterns
  • SSH Console now supports mouse wheel scrolling inside commands
  • Non-active tabs show counter reflecting newly detected entries while monitoring is ongoing
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • Subject
  • 3441 IllegalStateException: Cannot add objects with not continuous primary keys
  • 3440 NullPointerException on Mac related to window resizing
  • 3454 IllegalArgumentException when choosing Results table font in Preferences on Ubuntu
  • 3452 Load View doesn't show saved views on Ubuntu
  • 3369 SSH Console: terminal encoding is permanently changed with zcat
  • 3444 Disallow enabling disk storage when search/monitoring is ongoing
  • 3437 ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException in TerminalTextDataStore
  • 3433 Previously disabled controls are enabled after search/monitoring is finished
  • 3423 Font color is not applied to Result Table when it's changed in Preferences dialog
  • 3416 AWKERROR while searching
  • 3386 SSH Console: Support for jumping by words is missing
  • 3411 SSH Console: problems in scrolling in less command
  • 3408 UnsupportedOperationException during search
  • 3403 Additional empty window appears when launching Retrospective
  • 3333 Cloning inactive tab doesn't work
  • 3311 Hidden folders are visible in File Browser
  • 2994 Layout problem when loading view on Ubuntu
  • 2993 Modifying the Data/Time search criteria makes the tab invisible
  • 2752 Host Manager on Ubuntu: text boxes are cut on the right
  • 2693 File Browser: cannot be easily navigated through keyboard only
  • 2991 Windows are not properly layed out when exploding tabs on Ubuntu
  • 3407 Host Manager: Incomplete host form is displayed when dropping several hosts to different cluster

New in Retrospective 4.0.0 Build 51 (Nov 11, 2016)

  • NEW FEATURES:
  • Fully featured xterm-based SSH Console:
  • Creation through main menu or from within Host Manager
  • Customization of SSH Console appearance: colors, font, cursor
  • Support for Alternate Screen Buffer
  • Support for Copy/Paste in quick and regular mode
  • Support for Alternate Character Set (e.g. line drawing characters in non-UTF8 encodings)
  • Automatic detection of remote host encoding
  • Support for exploding/imploding SSH Console tabs
  • Host Manager:
  • Grouping of hosts within clusters
  • Result Table:
  • Case sensitive local filtering
  • Local filtering by log entry date/time pattern
  • New context menu item for tailing log file of selected entry in SSH Console
  • Other:
  • Preference for max. number of threads used for local search/monitoring
  • Warn user that loading a view dismisses the current view
  • MAIN BUGS FIXED:
  • 3331 "Enable disk storage index" button has wrong initial state
  • 3330 Highlighting in result detail view is wrong
  • 3304 NullPointerException in ProfileComposite
  • 3271 JdbcSQLException when entering local filter containing single quote
  • 3270 Assertion failed in "Add Data Sources" dialog
  • 2730 Activate last active tab when restoring view from last session or loading view
  • 2691 Dialog with the Keyboard shortcuts should be non-modal

New in Retrospective 3.6.0 Build 20 (Feb 22, 2016)

  • After the last, fine release it was clear that Retrospective is a one fine stable performance beast that can handle challenges of enterprise environments with calmness and grace. However, since we strive for perfection, we can always easily find some new dimensions for improvement. Release 3.6.0 once again produces the fruit of such an attitude. In the past few months we focused on making the user’s life easier by providing several cool features that can easily transform even the most tedious kind of searching into a painless smooth ride. Yes, I agree, it is hard to believe ? … but let me just mention the main points to make you a believer:
  • Automatic time offset adjustment – how often did your servers have problems with time synchronization or were simply located in different time zones. Automatic time offset adjustment allows you to forget about this by firstly detecting the time difference and then applying counteraction so that the difference is invisible to the user.
  • Custom log level definition – sometimes your log files may have quite exotic names for various log levels. So far Retrospective has tried to look for all possible log level name variations but it was not very efficient. Now you are able to define your own log levels, assign some fancy icons and colors and also specify how the levels are recognized. So you get the information about log levels in a suitable fashion and searching goes faster.
  • Splitting search results and saving to Excel – this can be extraordinarily useful when your search gives a lot of data. Now the results can be automatically split to several files and you can have them saved directly in Excel format where some further analysis can easily be performed.
  • File browser enhancements – if you use a Mac and you go to your home folder, then all hidden files are not visible. It’s quite handy because mostly you are not interested in these files. Now Retrospective lets you decide whether hidden files should be visible or not. Additionally special files like sockets and block devices are marked with dedicated icons, which makes navigation through your servers much more pleasant.
  • Adding/replacing time search criteria from selection – when you’re searching for something, then it’s common that one search result gives input for another searching and step-by-step you get closer to your final goal. Retrospective now allows you to easily extend and modify the time search criteria of new searching on the basis of entries visible in the current search. So now the transition from one step to another is really smooth ?.
  • Indeed, the features are cool and fun but most importantly they just really make your life easier. On top of the above main improvements, we’ve added handling monitoring of single files appearing in the future, implemented search optimization for tarballs with a single file, improved Autofind encoding detection and synced Autofind implementation between different parts of applications. We’ve also improved the support for XML highlighting and formatting.
  • Besides adding new features we have fixed plenty of bugs. We are confident that Retrospective is a stable and dependable piece of software that can serve you in the most demanding situations. Should you take all the above on faith? Not at all! The 3.6.0 release is ready to be grabbed and it simply challenges you to try it and check for yourself that once again good engineering has been delivered and your searching can be far smoother and more painless than before.

New in Retrospective 3.5.0 (Feb 13, 2016)

  • Time since the last release has passed quickly and here we are today providing you yet another release of our cool Retrospective Log Analyzer. Everybody knows that the devil is in the detail, thus in the 3.5.0 release we tried to polish small but significantly important details of our software. Let’s see what the new version can offer you so you’ll always be able to find your needle in a haystack of any kind of log data:
  • A broad extension of available search criteria covering not only text filtering such as regular expressions (regex) and wildcards but also time-based filtering allowing you to search your log data produced in the last hour or during the current day.
  • Flexible joining of time search criteria in a way that matches data to any of the formulated criteria. Previously you would be forced to run search several times looking for files from last week, yesterday and today. Now you can do it in a single search without needing to click around and switch between tabs.
  • User-friendly extension of the context diving that aids you in the quite common problem: “Ok I’ve found what I was looking for but now I want to know what happened just before it and just after it”.
  • Nice highlighting and formatting of Xml data appearing in the log files that allows you to understand and analyze any piece of Xml more easily than ever.
  • Full upgrade to Java 8 which is definitely not something easily noticeable but “under the hood” ensures that your machine is used as effectively as possible when doing intensive searching or monitoring. Besides, every geek knows that Java 8 is cool as hell which ideally suits the coolness of Retrospective :D.
  • We also fixed the little things, for example, “I want to monitor a directory but Retrospective does not allow me to do it because it’s empty”. A support for initially empty directory is now available for you. Also when the file was skipped from searching because of its modification time you could wonder what makes the results not appear in the result table. Now you are appropriately notified about skipping files performed in optimizations. We also improved the memory allocation and buffer handling so you can notice a smaller footprint of Retrospective especially when doing some searching. Finally, we have fixed a lot of bugs both on the UI side and on the Core side so … if they annoyed you, they are gone now, wandered away to green pastures – a proper place for all kind of bugs ;).
  • So there are bigger things and there are smaller things added to Retrospective making it better but for sure there are a lot of them and it makes checking out this shiny new release hard to resist :) … especially when you have a bunch of needles to find daily in different kinds of haystacks!

New in Retrospective 3.4.0 Build 30 (Feb 27, 2015)

  • NEW FEATURES:
  • Host Manager:
  • sudo/su' support: the user can now configure an identity change on the target host
  • SSH jump host support: there is a new option to configure one or a chain of jump servers for a host
  • nice' support: the user can now configure nice adjustment for Retrospective activities on the target host
  • Configuration of the maximum number of SSH connections per host
  • Extended host compatibility information in the connection test output
  • File Browser:
  • Improved Windows shortcut resolution on network drives
  • Support for shortcuts to files and folders on Windows was added
  • Different file types have now individual icons
  • Core Processing Engine:
  • Various performance improvements which makes searching and monitoring faster and ensures less CPU and memory is consumed
  • Logic of verifying and identifying log-entry separation and date format pattern got a lot smarter in dynamic tail
  • Improved SSH connection handling: Unused connections timeout after 5 minutes and are automatically closed
  • Improved log level identification: It is now performed in several dynamically adjusted threads simultaneously
  • Improved file encoding detection during autofind, now considering bigger data context and locale on remote host
  • Support for dates containg time zone specified in ISO 8601 format
  • Simplification of filters before passing them for matching - increases the overall performance in most typical cases
  • Search / Monitor:
  • The summary bar chart on search/monitor tabs allows now to quickly zoom/jump to individual sections of the result
  • Profiles:
  • Ad-hoc created profiles can now easily be converted into permanent profiles
  • Profiles that are currently in use in a search/monitor tab are marked with a different icon
  • General:
  • New configuration option to adapt the interval for showing SSH connection related starvation warnings
  • Search/Monitor functionality is now also available in the main menu
  • Program home directory can now be changed manually to prevent slow program startup when user home is on a network drive
  • MAIN BUGS FIXED:
  • Autofind date pattern cannot be changed in case it doesn't match all the files
  • Resizing of result detail panel in search/monitor tabs does not work on some platforms
  • Unusable host left in host manager tab
  • Ubuntu: Saved view cannot be selected right after installation of a new Retrospective version
  • Directories discovery in mapped drives on Windows takes far too long
  • NOthing happens when trying to export/import bookmarks on MacBook
  • Ubuntu: Filter results by log level does not work correctly
  • Sorting results by log level takes too long
  • CoreException during Dynamic Tail: State not present for file
  • Large log file: org.h2.jdbc.JdbcSQLException: Unique index or primary key violation
  • Operating system non-compliant for CYGWIN on Windows 7 host
  • Wrong handling of GMT +0200 time zone format
  • "MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss aaa" date format is wrongly detected in autofind
  • Shell search with date filtering should not fail on wrong date format
  • DnD of data source between profiles doesn't work
  • Wrong result when searching with date filter joined by OR with empty text filter
  • NullPointerException when exploding tabs loaded from a view
  • Fix ignoring locally administered addresses in MacAddressHelper
  • H2 db: java.io.IOException: Stream Closed
  • Autofind pattern recognition is throwing IllegalArgumentException
  • Re-positioning of result detail panel after minimize/maximize is wrong
  • No filename is shown in search tab profiles combo box after DnD
  • Path does not exist error when tailing an existing folder
  • RuntimeException when lower date filter boundary is after upper date filter boundary
  • Setting 'tail start offsets' to more then 999 results in validation error
  • Dynamic tail fetches non-changing files when a lot is happening in the monitored folder
  • OutOfMemoryError when searching a big file with wrong log entry separation

New in Retrospective 3.3.0 Build 22 (Sep 13, 2014)

  • New features:
  • Core Processing Engine
  • Dynamic Tail (Automatically recognize new files matching wildcard pattern during monitoring)
  • Search Optimization on the level of shell scripts (logarithmic narrow-down procedure)
  • Zone names taken for date filtering are now locale-sensitive
  • Improve aborting search when beyond time frame for compressed files
  • Shell search script now generates metadata about approach used for searching
  • Empty files are ignored during searching
  • Detection of default locale on remote SSH host
  • Improved and enhanced reporting of warnings during autofind process
  • File Browser:
  • Provide breadcrumb style directory navigation
  • Remember last selected path on individual drives
  • Allow for scrolling with a use of mouse scroll wheel
  • File selection component
  • Selection modes have been simplified ("Directory Selection" and "Filter Selection" replaced by "Group Selection")
  • Support sub-directory file selection
  • Individual data sources in profiles can now be disabled/enabled
  • Improved display of warnings from autofind process
  • Support for "not contains" search criteria
  • Preferences
  • New option for enabling/disabling Dynamic Tail
  • New option for enabling/disabling Modification date dependent file skipping
  • Improved view management
  • Enable configuration of proxy server from within activation dialog
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • 2685 Status information from previous search is not cleared
  • 2649 shortcuts for MAC have to be adopted/updated
  • 2647 Filename in the error message is missing
  • 2645 NotEnabledException when clicking "Manage connections to remote computers"
  • 2643 View file contains invalid XML after importing it from a previous retrospective version
  • 2642 Test support for Java 7 on iMac
  • 2641 Delete of multiple Profiles should be possible on right mouse button.
  • 2640 DnD onto a runnig search/tail panel does't create correct profile name
  • 2637 Autofind Pattern Recognition is throwing an exeption
  • 2634 Dnd on profile in use must not be allowed
  • 2629 DnD onto search panel does not update selection in drop-down list
  • 2625 Retrospective disappears on Linux after 2 sec in case of a invalid Licence
  • 2621 Columns reset every time when user starts new search.
  • 2617 Local directory and file discovery with wildcard doesn't work
  • 2609 File Browser: Problem when selecting non longer existing directory from selection history
  • 2604 When searching a binary file, Offsets not found message can be displayed
  • 2603 Limit of opened sessions reached exception
  • 2602 SearchOffsetHandler makes wrong assumption about strategy used for searching
  • 2597 Autofind: Group optimization performed during autofind of multiple single files may lead to strange results
  • 2596 no tab opened at start up of retrospective
  • 2592 timeFormat of MS-Dos not recognized 02.05.2014 10:51:55.45
  • 2589 File Browser: Selected entry not visible on Windows XP and Windows 7 (classic style)
  • 2588 NotEnabledException while tail in progress
  • 2586 missing Errormessage in the Status and mainscreen
  • 2576 Memory leak in TaskStoreImpl
  • 2575 Progress Bar goes crazy on compressed files
  • 2573 "Remove not matching" is not working"
  • 2558 Search criteria icon disappears in Status, History and Bookmark Tab"
  • 2537 Month names with letters outside ASCII impose problems during searching
  • 2535 Sometime byteOffset is higher than size of DataUnit
  • 2512 Regex pattern proposed by autofind is too long for some awk implementation
  • 2511 After adding new host, a root directory is displayed instead of user's home
  • 2409 Log level is not always shown

New in Retrospective 3.2.0 Build 2152 (Apr 12, 2014)

  • New features:
  • Date/time is now filtered remotely on hosts accessed through SSH
  • Autofind Improvements
  • Optimized encoding detection for directories and filters
  • Performance optimization through asynchronous processing, file group analyzis etc.
  • Displaying autofind configuration mismatch in Profile Manager
  • New File Browser tab for quick access to search and monitoring
  • Improved layout and functionality of Host Manager
  • Window and tab state is now saved at program exist and re-established at program restarts
  • Tab position can now be changed by drag-and-drop
  • Host panel: Save button should be active only when changes have been made
  • Let user limit the number of analyzed files for automatically find the strategy
  • Improved performance when working with result data stored on disk
  • Improved main menu, toolbar and short cuts
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • Subject
  • 2318 Encoding mismatch in Filter/Directory causes exception during search
  • 2356 NumberFormatException while search in progress
  • 2407 SWTException: Widget is disposed after exploding/imploding
  • 2410 New release can be activated with expired license
  • 2416 Locale is not correctly identified in autofind
  • 2417 Manual activation email xml is truncated to approx 1'500 bytes
  • 2441 Negative item counter after removing row from result table
  • 2468 Defining manual split strategy does not clear 'mismatch' information from autofind
  • 2491 Activation through proxy does not work with NTLM
  • 2497 Search in a file without dates can raise an NullPointerException using Date/Time Filter
  • 2510 NPE related to empty date/time on search tab
  • 2516 AssertionFailedException when loading view that uses non existing profile
  • 2523 Editing a profile used in ongoing search or tail must not be allowed
  • 2544 Re-activation with new license is not possible
  • 2550 Misleading result when searching in binary file
  • 2552 Problem when displaying preferences -> Result Options on Linux
  • 2561 Changing the path of a data source resets its encoding
  • 2562 Unacceptable long time needed to display log entry details

New in Retrospective 3.1.0 Build 2146 (Nov 2, 2013)

  • New features:
  • Encryption of passwords
  • New options available in the preferences dialog
  • Definition of date/time format to be used in filter criteria
  • Font chooser for the results table
  • Default visibility of individual columns in result table
  • Definition of tail starting offset
  • Ignore warning for tail (monitoring) on zip files
  • Result table
  • Start new search based on path of a result entry through context menu
  • Multiple selection of table rows for deleting and copying
  • Context menu item to copy the path of selected result entry
  • History of local result filters
  • Sortable and filterable log level column
  • Pause scrolling while search is in progress
  • Access file without use of a profile
  • Enhanced window explode strategy
  • Sorting by file type in the "Add Data Source(s)" dialog
  • Existing view names are proposed when saving view
  • Navigate to profiles from host manager
  • Main bugs fixed:
  • Subject
  • 1492 Explode problem: tabs not exploding onto second monitor in multi-monitor setups
  • 2251 Umlauts are wrongly represented in result table
  • 2270 HPUX tail not working for customer
  • 2318 HP-UX Search not working
  • 2285 Exception thrown when closing a tab with a running tail
  • 2288 Unable to access network paths and mapped drives on windows
  • 2297 navigation to last row in result table is not correct
  • 2341 Refresh all in profile tree selection dialog does not work
  • 2344 Host cannot be added without testing connection
  • 2374 Error on configuration autofind on empty files
  • 2125 HTML response from proxy is not rendered when trying to update software
  • 2254 Improve look of search/tail panel on Linux
  • 2173 position and size of profile selection tree dialog shall be changable
  • 2183 Misleading path does not exist message
  • 2220 Check box on welcome page is not visible
  • 2264 Selection of filtered entry is not maintained
  • 2273 Data sources dialog: Directory and file tables are not initialized when changing host
  • 2315 Data sources dialog: Directory and file tables are not initialized when changing drive letter
  • 2278 Facilitate file selection in the "Add Data Source(s)" dialog
  • 2282 Sorting files in the "Add Data Source(s)" dialog causes files to be un-checked
  • 2286 Two result rows are selected after de-selecting local filter button
  • 2291 Certain log levels are not shown in result table
  • 2311 Unexpected closing Retro on Linux
  • 2313 Invalid date in search panel is not adequately marked
  • 2314 Concatenated search criteria string is almost not readable
  • 2319 Drop down buttons in file selector not visible enough
  • 2332 Date time filter recognition problem
  • 2337 Last search filter is truncated on Ubuntu
  • 2340 New profiles are not alphabetically ordered in profile tree selection dialog
  • 2349 When an empty profile is selected the start button should be shown disabled
  • 2351 Name for new bookmark shall be prompted from the user
  • 2353 Dragging a file onto Retrospective must not automatically create a permanent profile
  • 2360 When removing row from result view, it's still shown in detail panel
  • 2362 host detail panel is not cleared when importing configuration
  • 2363 User must be told that importing hosts and profiles overwrites existing definitions
  • 2368 Default host description is not refreshed after changing the user
  • 2369 Cause of the problem is not clearly shown when testing connection to proxy server

New in Retrospective 3.0.0 Build 2145 (Aug 28, 2013)

  • Ability for searching and tailing logs on servers running various OS
  • Improved support for accessing logs on servers running Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS Fedora, Suse and FreeBSD
  • Shell specific optimizations (check and use of different shells: bash, csh, tcsh, ksh, dash)
  • Retrospective is extensively unit and integration tested for accessing logs
  • Maximum result data size limit increased from 20 to 1000MB
  • Simplified User interface and redesigned icons for better usability
  • Faster log file format auto-detection
  • Simplified customization of profiles
  • For this major release, the evaluation period starts from scratch
  • State of the art installation of Retrospecive on Mac
  • Welcome screen has been improved
  • Refined search/tail definition panel for standard use but feature-rich for exigent users (simple/advanced mode)
  • Remote search/Tail gets stopped and proper warning is provided when no line split applies for certain amount of data
  • General improvements of host manager look and feel
  • Host compatibility information available in hosts manager upon successful connection test
  • The search/tail result table has been completely redesigned and offers the following features now
  • Memory limit for individual result tables can be specified in the properties dialog
  • Result data that exceeds the memory limit does no longer stop the search/tail process, the oldest rows are removed from the table instead
  • Result data that exceeds the memory limit may alternatively be stored on disk (swapping in and out)
  • Limit of data to be stored on disk can be defined in the properties dialog
  • Sophisticated scroll bars let you smoothly scroll within the in-memory area and the on-disk area
  • Content of selected row can be copied to clip board
  • Individual table rows can be deleted
  • The result table detail view can be collapsed and expanded
  • Ongoing connection attempt to misconfigured proxy server can be canceled by the user
  • Removed features:
  • Column split on data sources cannot be used anymore, it is not compatible with the concept of representing data from multiple sources in a single result table

New in Retrospective 2.2.0 Build 1582 (Mar 14, 2013)

  • Encoding support:
  • As of release 2.2, Retrospective supports over 300 encoding formats. No matter how exotic your log files are, Retrospective will read them without a problem. Encoding is detected automatically when adding a source file, and it can be changed manually in configuration wizard.
  • Profiles cloning:
  • To make logs management even easier, Retrospective now can clone your user profiles, to save your precious time when configuring data sources.
  • When you open a new search tab, the very recent user profile is selected automatically, so it can be searched right away.
  • From A to Z:
  • You can sort data in all tables by whichever column is convenient for you.
  • Test connection:
  • We added the test connection option in remote host details. This way you can do basic connection troubleshooting directly in Retrospective.
  • Home:
  • When adding source files, you will find a home icon, helping to navigate to your home directory - works for local computer as well as remote hosts.
  • Export search results:
  • When exporting search results set, the default name of the file comprises the tab’s name along with the timestamp for your convenience.

New in Retrospective 2.1.4 Build 1224 (Jan 8, 2013)

  • Restrospective 2.1.4 introduces a few usability enhancements as well as new features which influence user experience.
  • Now you can conveniently open the Profiles tab from the Search tab to configure selected profile.
  • Since the Data column carries the most important information, it is resized automatically when changing the application window size, to get the most out of the displayed application area
  • The newest Retrospective enables importing hosts definitions from SSH and Putty configuration files stored in user/.ssh folder
  • Now, when hiding a column, Retrospective remembers its size and restores it exactly as it was before
  • 2.1.4 also improves SSH connections’ performance and addresses file permissions issues and time frame optimization.

New in Retrospective 2.1.3 Build 1107 (Nov 16, 2012)

  • Major improvements in 2.1.3 are:
  • Host management panel
  • Proxy settings
  • Change the status bar to a custom component
  • Possibility to change path of a source from context menu
  • We also managed to add the following features:
  • Terminate program upon user confirmation only
  • Large Data Limit notification on the yellow message bar
  • New menu structure
  • Tab renaming/close through pop-up (context) menu
  • Profile rename/delete through pop-up (context) menu
  • Source duplicate function
  • Possibility to pin a tab
  • Column split: Possibility to select proposals from information pop-up
  • Grouping regex occurrences in configuration window:
  • More than 40 bug-fixes.

New in Retrospective 2.1.2 Build 838 (Oct 5, 2012)

  • Support for SSH keys
  • Possibility to un/hide columns on the results table
  • Simple progress indication. The following indicators have been added to the lower part of a search tab:
  • overall progress bar
  • amount of time spent
  • amount of data processed over total data included in the profile (in KB, MB, GB, TB)
  • number of sources (files, tables, etc.) that were searched/tailed over successfully
  • number of sources (files, tables, etc.) over which the search/tail failed
  • Autofind check box added to the "Add File" window
  • Progress indication for autofind configuration. A progress bar over the sources table has been added to indicate the status of autofind process. The user can cancel the autofind and the selected profile will remain in the state as before autofind was invoked
  • Change of labels from "Save desktop" to "Save view"
  • Possibility to rename search and tail tab on right click

New in Retrospective 2.1.1 Build 837 (Sep 6, 2012)

  • the filter panel has been restructured (spacing, components' alignment adjusted)
  • the search/tail button has been moved
  • the redundant ‘show/hide filters’ button on the left side of the statistics has been removed.
  • the filter panel now folds automatically on tail start and hides on tail finish
  • a result toolbar was added
  • buttons for pause scroll, clear results (in tail) were moved to the result toolbar and replaced by icons
  • background of result entries is highlighted in the Log level highlight mode (activated by the button on the result toolbar). So now it's not necessary to configure the column split to enable the log level highlighting - everything works automatically by analyzing the content of the entry.
  • Highlighting support for java util logging has been added according to the user's Locale
  • there are now two modes of local search in the results table

New in Retrospective 2.1.0 Build 778 (Aug 23, 2012)

  • Tail:
  • Clear Results: you can now clear existing results. Being able to clear existing results is useful when you have a mass of results at the beginning which are not really relevant to what you are really looking for, but you don’t want to stop/start the tail in case you miss something
  • Pause Scrolling during tailing: This will help tremendously with the need to pause/resume fast moving tails to briefly see what results you are getting. Pausing the scrolling does not stop the tailing, but just allows one to take a look at one part of the results before returning to the tail which is always following the last entry written to a file. Of course, when the scroll is paused the tail continues in the background so no results are lost.
  • The management of tail entries and how tail is done has been significantly improved with the result that more files can be tailed simultaneously per tab with less resulting load.
  • Search:
  • It is now possible to specify a search parameter which matches all given strings (logical AND) or alternatively which matches any of the searched for strings (logical OR). This will help with those customers who have to search across different machines using global keys and then who need to add local keys (e.g machine thread/ID) to that search to find additional log entries which don’t contain the global key. First search for the global key and then copy/paste the additional Search Parameter into an additional text box and then select “Matches any(OR)”
  • General:
  • A profile is now immediately selected after creating one using the Welcome Screen’s “start new tail/search"
  • It is now possible to drag columns around to “customise” your view of results.
  • We have implemented a “pretty print” for xml elements in the detailed data display.
  • In the results Data Display, entries can now be alternatively sorted other than the default of ascending time order) for search only by clicking on either Date/Time(for reverse time order sort), Host or Path
  • The Host load management has been improved to allow for slower servers and this will result in less SSH timeouts.
  • The shortcut for explode has been changed to CTRL-E (to avoid conflict with existing Mac functionality)
  • It is now possible to apply a filter/wildcard in the “manual file selection” in the file selector during configuration.