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We are pleased to announce the release of the newest version of AGROBASE Generation II with Microsoft's SQL Server® as the database, as of August 19. This much anticipated version will offer faster processing in the network environment, a more robust database and greater capacity. We will still be supporting and licensing the current Version 18, but for clients with larger data processing needs in a network environment, the new version in Microsoft SQL Server® is our recommended software solution.
Current clients with an AGROBASE Generation II LAN license can upgrade to the SQL Server version. For clients without SQL Server, the upgrade will come with Microsoft's free SQL Server Express. For clients with an existing SQL Server installation, the 2005 or later release is required. Furthermore, you must be using the most recent AGROBASE version 18.4.1 and your research groups (Generation II relational database) must all be updated to that version, before upgrading. The SQL Server version of AGROBASE has a Data Migration Tool to migrate data from AGROBASE version 18.4.1 research groups to new SQL Server database research groups. Any new software licenses purchased under version 18 can be upgraded to the SQL Server version with data migration into a SQL Server database at a future date.
To request this new version, please contact us at support@agronomix.mb.ca, providing your AGROBASE Generation II serial number. Before providing you with a link to download the installation files and the Data Migration Tool, we would like to confirm your current system’s operating environment.
Version 18 of AGROBASE Generation II was released on September 2, 2008. This version allows users to graph their data, whether actual observations from plots or averages after statistical analyses. You can generate point (scatterplot), line, and bar graphs. There are options for graphing several variables at once, such as with stacked bar graphs. You can also choose different colors for traits or variables, save graphs as files, and more. This capability has been requested by a number of our users for some time, so we are pleased to include it in this release. If you use the image display module, we encourage you to use the new multiple-image display capability. You can now view many images at once, and is especially useful for viewing different growth stages of a genotype at once, or varying disease reactions, and so forth. Finally, there are now remote application tables which make it easier to share settings and options among users on a shared network or in a Citrix © environment.
Meanwhile, the development of a version of Generation II using Microsoft’s SQL Server database as a “back-end” database is coming along very well. This will give our users worldwide even more speed, capacity, and robustness for a relational database solution for their research programs. Our IT group is quite pleased with the progress. We expect to release this new version in early 2009, at least initially to our more interested users for any final adaptations or refinements.
We are pleased to announce the release of version 17 on February 26, 2008. This version offers many new enhancements, in response to our growing number of users worldwide. Upon running version 17, users will notice the significant gain in speed – opening experiments, nurseries, trials, and more will take only half as long in most cases. Generation II was optimized for speed already in past releases – but our software development team wanted to do even better!
A major development is a security system that assigns access privileges to five different types of users – from "guest" to administrator. Now, you can assign data editing, deleting, viewing, and more tasks to users and even for different areas of the program. This is ideal for restricting access for summer help, for example, only to data entry. More advanced users would then be allowed to delete traits or experiments. This version comes with a "trend map" by which you can identify spatial trends in an experiment by assigning different colors to different intervals for a trait. So, for example, you could identify lower yielding parts of an experiment with shades of brown and higher yielding areas with darker shades of green. Users who compute GxE analyses will benefit from the automatic storing of means from AMMI analyses. In the breeding module we have enhanced the segregating population development system with a new interface that lets you develop "methods" for generating the next population – this will save time and offer more flexibility as new populations are generated each year. Bar code reading has been further developed in that you can now read data into Generation II much more directly via specialized bar codes that will read data into open tables for experiments or nurseries in a research group.
Furthermore, there is now more flexibility in handling genotypes throughout Generation II. In this release, you can have any genotype appear as a "treatment" (variety, cultivar, hybrid, etc.) or as a parent or a population all at the same time. This will help in accessing and viewing data for any genotype, and simplify some operations for variety testing and breeding.
Those are just some of the improvements. Please see the March 2008 newsletter and click on the link for version 17 to view all the developments.
Version 16 was released on August, 9, 2007. As in our other releases, this version incorporates many suggestions from our users worldwide.
One of the main enhancements is the ability to add "traits" for experiments. This could include experiment management information, such as date of planting, harvesting, any water management of irrigation. Or, the application of any fertilizer, fungicide, and herbicides. This would help to record the "protocol" of any experiment. One can then create a customized report for each experiment with all such information, and even include several digital photos of any stages of the experiment. Another major enhancement in the breeding system is the display of dendograms. A new "combine treatments" tool expedites the renaming of treatment, parent, or population names when the same genotype exists but incorrectly under more than one name.
For a complete list of all the new features and capabilities, see the August 2007 newsletter and click on "Version 16 Features".
Version 15 of AGROBASE Generation II was released on January 8, 2007. Again, the enhancements came from suggestions from our growing number of users around the world, now in over 42 countries. See our new newsletter, with Agronomix News for January 2007, which announced Version 15 and other news items.
For users who take digital photos of varieties or hybrids or even experiments, you can now generate reports for a series of such treatments, or even for a specific plot in an experiment. This enhancement improves the combination of character or numeric data with image data within Generation II and the report generator.
For plant breeding, the main "crosses node" on the research data explorer now permits the addition and handling of traits, similar to parents, populations, and treatments. This will held breeders to keep better track of why some crosses were unsuccessful, or introduce data to help decide which crosses should be confirmed and advanced as populations for further development.
When analyzing non-replicated data, users can now analyze data using the "percent of nearest checks" adjustment. This has an intuitive appeal among breeders, as it takes into account the more immediate fluctuation of data from field trends.
For users with perennial experiments across years, such as in grass breeding or fruit or oil palm breeding, you can now display data using sequential year numbers (1, 2, 3, …) instead of by actual years (2004, 2005, 2006) which will allow more flexibility in data calculations.
There are many more enhancements and some new features.
We are excited to release version 14 of AGROBASE Generation II, as of August 8. The numerous enhancements reflect the suggestions from our users around the world.
A novel, major enhancement is a direct link to GenStat®. Now Generation II users who also have a license for GenStat can analyze data from within Generation II by using GenStat scripts to directly call GenStat®. For the ANOVA and REML GenStat commands, new GenStat procedures have been written by VSN International Ltd, UK, to expedite the storing of means and related statistics automatically in Generation II for currently single-factor experiments or trials. For Generation II users who work with GenStat, this will save a lot of time and provide many new possibilities.
Means for main effects and interactions from multi-factor experiments such as split-plots, split-split-plots, strip plots, and factorials can be stored when analyzed by Generation II. In addition, all stored means may be viewed or reported in location order, which extends the report capabilities.
Importing data back into Generation II via the widely-used Excel® spreadsheets has become considerably easier. Now a special Excel spreadsheet may be created from Generation II for experiments, trials, and nurseries, such that when data is entered in Excel, importing the data back into Generation II is direct and virtually automatic with no import profiles required. Simply identify the Excel spreadsheet, and all the data is seamlessly read back into Generation II. This will save a considerable amount of time for those who routinely use Excel.
A new "progeny analysis" tool will help breeders make selections from the more successful crosses or populations. For example, breeders will be able to view the number of descendants from crosses, populations, or parents across generations, as well as their average value and percentage of occurrence for any given trait. This is will help to monitor progress as response to selection for a trait within a breeding program.
This version further exploits Visual Foxpro 9. Specifically, increased speed when treatments, parents, and populations are loaded much faster. The Visual FoxPro 9 report generator enhances the development and printing of reports.
There are numerous other more minor enhancements – please see the complete release newsletter for version 14.
Agronomix Software, Inc., has collaborated with VSN International in the UK, developers of GenStat, to develop a direct software link...learn more.
Agronomix Software is pleased to announce the release of Version 13, December 2005. This version offers more enhancements and new features as requested by our growing number of users worldwide. Version 13 offers the virtual automation of analysis of data by individual experiments – you can even quickly analyze all your data for the current year or more with only a few keystrokes. A new master trait order interface lets you set the order in which your data columns will appear upon accessing an experiment, trial, nursery, or group of experiments or nurseries. For further information on those and many other new features and capabilities of Version 13 of AGROBASE Generation II, please see Generation II News, December 2005, which was circulated December 2005.
Agronomix Software is pleased to announce the release of Version 12 in July 2005. This version includes major enhancements for the plant breeding module (clonal crops, cytoplasmic male sterility, 19 breeding methods within nurseries, cross prediction, etc.) and a new module which offers a direct USB link between AGROBASE Generation II and PDAs (personal data assistants for recording field data). For more details on these major improvements and all other new features in Version 12, see Generation II News, June 2005, which was circulated in June 2005.
Agronomix Software is pleased to announce the release of version 11 of AGROBASE Generation II, as of January 17, 2005. This version is based on Microsoft’s Visual FoxPro 8.0®, and is supported on Windows 98®, Windows Me®, Windows 2000® Service Pack 2 or later, and Windows XP®. As with all our releases, the new features and enhancements of this version resulted from suggestions from our users worldwide. For more details, see the Generation II News, December 2004, which was circulated in 2004.
