Designer release notes 2025

Our Designer development team works using quarterly releases. Scroll down to see the Designer quarterly releases from this year.

Note: Since the Q2 2023 release, Apteco desktop software requires a minimum of the .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later to be installed.

Note: Please see Notes for administrators for steps to be completed before applying a quarterly upgrade to your Apteco software.

Designer Q1 2025 software release

New features and improvements

Query support for extended text fields (up to 32,000 characters)

FastStats now supports storing and querying text data up to 32,000 characters, which is a significant increase from the previous 255-character limit. This improves data handling and also enables more comprehensive text analysis.

Key enhancements:

  • Increased text storage capacity

    FastStats text fields can now store up to 32,767 bytes.

    • For ASCII systems, this corresponds to 32,767 characters

    • For UTF8 systems, characters may consume between 1 & 4 bytes

  • Text block size increased

    To support extended text fields and improve text field compression, the text block size has been increased from 32,760 bytes to 1MB. As a result:

    • We’ve removed the configuration option for virtual text block size and compression type from the FastStats Configurator

    • We’ve applied overrides in the FastStats Service and Designer Virtual Package

    • We’ve removed the configuration option in Designer and set it to 1MB

  • Improved performance for text variable processing

    Extended text blocks improve compression ratios and reduce I/O operations, leading to better performance, particularly on file systems with high latency. Testing has shown reduced compressed text .dat file sizes and fewer I/O calls.

  • User interface and build process updates

    • AutoDiscovery has been modified to automatically detect extended text fields

    • The Standard and Enhanced Build Processes have been updated to support extended text fields

Support for DuckDB data provider and file types

This release introduces support for the DuckDB data provider in Designer. This allows you to browse tables, use the <top> placeholder, choose tables/views, and run custom queries on a DuckDB database.

In addition to the native DuckDB functionality, this update also enables support for reading the following file types directly via custom queries:

  • JSON

  • JSON.gz

  • Parquet

For more detail, see Reading Parquet and JSON files with DuckDB and DuckDB’s documentation.

Generate partial index improvements

We’ve introduced the ability to generate partial indexes in parallel, offering a significant reduction in generation time for large systems. You can now generate up to ten partial indexes simultaneously, alongside the existing sequential option.

Key updates:

  • Added UI to support generating multiple partial indexes at once

  • Up to ten partial indexes can now be generated in parallel, greatly reducing generation time on large systems

  • Partial Indexes help speed up multi-table queries and optimise system performance

Support environment variables in FastStats scripts

You can now use environment variables in the post-load action ‘Run Script’ in Designer. This makes it easier to set up duplicate systems by allowing scripts to use parameterised values rather than fixed ones.

New UInt join key type

The Enhanced Build process in FastStats Designer now supports a 32-bit UInt (unsigned integer) join key type. This is useful for systems with keys between 2.1 billion and 4.2 billion, allowing you to use efficient non-hashable join logic. This expands on the existing Int64 and GUID join key types and allows parent tables to support larger datasets.

Option to hide sensitive data in build logs

Build logs in Designer now have an option to hide sensitive data, such as environment variable values and full directory paths. This option is enabled by default for Apteco Cloud servers, improving security by preventing exposure of sensitive information.

Option to delete .dat files during the sort process

Designer now includes an option to delete .dat files during the sort phase of the build process. This can free up significant temporary disk space during the build on large systems, particularly once the merge processing has started.

However, if the build is using a delta strategy and an error occurs, then a full rebuild is required as the deleted .dat files are no longer be available.

Query engine improvements

Removal of legacy 'admin' pages from FastStats Web Service

The legacy 'admin' pages, including FileUpload.aspx, have been removed from the FastStats Web Service. This improves security and reduces maintenance of outdated functionality.

Default number of FastStats backups reduced to 3

The default number of backups for new systems in the FastStats Service has changed from 10 to 3. This reduces storage usage and minimises the need for administrators to adjust the setting when creating new systems.

Optimised distributed processing for cached cubes

Distributed processing now efficiently detects and utilises cached cube objects, improving query performance. If a cube is already cached, it will no longer be sliced, allowing the system to retrieve the cached version for faster results.

Additionally, a new currentTime parameter has been added to requests. This provides a reference time for slicing queries and cubes, reducing reliance on the todayAt parameter and improving consistency.

Faster directory listing in FastStats and PeopleStage on high-latency systems

FastStats and PeopleStage now scan files in parallel when retrieving a directory listing, significantly reducing load times. This improvement is especially beneficial for systems with a large number of files stored on high-latency network drives.

Bug fixes

  • We’ve fixed a bug that caused a crash when creating a Dynamic Virtual Variable while Global Filters are applied. Previously, this left behind invalid .val and .dat files that could cause the service to crash on start-up.

  • Running a post-load action from the command line now correctly finds and executes actions located within groups.

  • The standard build process no longer creates invalid $ftoSORTED$ files with NUL characters when Use Optimised Temporary Sort Files is unchecked.

  • We've improved the efficiency of retrieving large job results from the FastStats Web Service. Previously, the full compressed results were repeatedly retrieved and decompressed for each chunk request, causing high resource usage. Now, retrieval is optimised to reduce unnecessary processing and improve performance.

  • The Preview Categories query in Combine Categories post load actions now correctly applies environment variables, preventing errors when resolving table names.

  • Environment variables are now correctly applied to the 'Answers' query in Dynamic Database Data Sources.

  • When copying a lookup table in Designer, array field names now retain their original references and do not revert when added to the Relationships page. This prevents unintended renaming issues across copies.