Release Notes 1.8.0

What's new in OpenMRS 1.8

Release date: 20 June 2011

We asked you for suggestions on how to improve the performance of OpenMRS in real world implementations.  After collecting a lot of feedback, we're proud to announce version 1.8, which is less focused on new functionality, and more focused on making existing functionality faster and more efficient. More importantly, we used this release cycle to integrate consistent mechanisms to evaluate the performance of the core application. From now on, we will be able to make sure that new versions of the code get faster, not slower, through continuous benchmarking.

It is highly recommended to upgrade all of your modules to their latest versions to maximize the benefits this release has to offer. You may also visit Performance Tuning for information on how best to tune your installation of OpenMRS for best performance.

Performance improvements

• The Patient Dashboard and a number of other pages simply load faster.
• Search results are returned in a shorter time (e.g., when searching for patients, encounters, concepts, etc.).
• The cohort builder has been sped up.
• The data exports feature has been improved to consume less memory and attain better speed.
• More performance-focused work has been done in modules that are commonly used across most implementations. Feel free to browse the OpenMRS Module Repository to check for any new versions and upgrade.

New features

• Features from the Program Location Module has been incorporated into the core OpenMRS application.
• Improved workflow when adding a new program and state.
• Improve workflow when ending a program with a terminal state.
• Added complex obs BinaryDataHandler to core.
• A list of currently logged in users.
• Ability to archive HL7 to file system instead of moving it to file system.
• Ability to view schema of a published form.

Data Model Changes

• Adding language column to concept_derived table
• Removing the foreign key from users.user_id to person.person_id if it still exists
• Modify the error_details column of hl7_in_error to hold stacktraces
• Validates Program Workflow States for possible configuration problems and reports warnings
• Make person_name.person_id not NULLable
• Add location_id column to patient_program table
• Remove the now unused default_charge column
• Setting the global property 'patient.identifierRegex' to an empty string
• Setting the global property 'patient.identifierSuffix' to an empty string
• Adding index to form.published column
• Adding index to form.retired column
• Adding multi column index on form.published and form.retired columns
• Rename neighborhood_cell column to address3 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename township_division column to address4 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename subregion column to address5 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename region column to address6 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename neighborhood_cell column to address3 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename township_division column to address4 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename subregion column to address5 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Rename region column to address6 and increase the size to 255 characters
• Increasing length of address fields in person_address and location to 255
• Add 'weight' column to concept_word table
• Adding index to concept_word.weight column
• Insert a row into the schedule_task_config table for the ConceptIndexUpdateTask
• Setting the value of 'start_on_startup' to trigger off conceptIndexUpdateTask on startup
• Removing concept that are concept derived and the datatype
• Removing concept derived tables
• Removing 'View Encounters' privilege from Anonymous user
• Removing 'View Observations' privilege from Anonymous user

The new data model diagram can be viewed from the OpenMRS Data Model page.

Resolved issues

Click here to expand all 189 issues resolved in OpenMRS 1.8.

Contributors

A huge thanks to the 49 people who contributed code for the release of OpenMRS 1.8:

Also, special thanks to the following people who contributed in many other ways to support and shape the release of OpenMRS 1.8:

Bundled Modules

This module is bundled with OpenMRS 1.8.0 and is marked as a core module. It can be upgraded, but can not be removed:

These modules are bundled with OpenMRS 1.8.0. They will be started automatically and can be removed if desired.

Download

• Download OpenMRS 1.8.0 from Sourceforge.
• OpenMRS 1.8.0 represents revision 20843

End Of Life (EOL) announcement