Version 4.02 in full

29 changes, five days after 4.01. Two features reach into territory SQL DATA LENS did not cover before — an AI model inside the SQL editor, and a .gof global export you can read with no server connection at all — alongside the largest single round of “stop freezing the window” fixes since 4.00.

One thing to know before you update. A newly opened SQL editor no longer collects IRIS/Caché execution statistics by default — the chart button in the editor toolbar, or Tools > Settings > InterSystems IRIS / Caché > SQL editor, turns it back on, per editor or as the default for editors you open afterwards. If you had already switched it on, that choice is kept.

AI Assistant

• NEW The SQL editor gets an AI Assistant that generates SQL from a plain-language description, explains a statement, or explains an execution plan — three actions in a new AI menu between Tools and Window: Generate SQL from description…, Explain statement, Explain execution plan. All three act on the active SQL editor. On InterSystems IRIS/Caché they add real depth — maps, Master Map scans, bitmap vs. standard indexes, TuneTable state — to what a general-purpose model already knows about SQL; on other databases they work with whatever the schema offers.

  Bring your own API key: configure at least one provider under Tools > Settings > AI Assistant, choosing between ANTHROPIC, OPENAI, AZURE_OPENAI and CUSTOM — CUSTOM covers any other OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a self-hosted one such as Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, or an Azure OpenAI deployment in your own tenant. The key is stored the same way a connection password is (Windows DPAPI) — never in plain text, never exported with a connection file.

  Sending anything beyond your own typed text needs an explicit opt-in on the connection itself, under the connection’s new AI tab — off by default everywhere, including after an update and for an imported connection profile. A second checkbox on the same tab, also off by default, includes SQL literal values; without it, a value like WHERE last_name = 'Müller' is rewritten to WHERE last_name = ? before anything is sent. No row data, no table or global contents, and no connection credentials — password, JDBC URL, hostname, user name — are ever sent, under any setting. Nothing is sent to Data Prudentia either: the feature talks directly, over your own network connection, to the provider you configured.

  Before the first request on a connection in a session, a preview dialog shows the complete text about to be sent, with OK/Cancel; it stays reachable afterwards from Show What Was Sent…, and a setting can require it on every request rather than just the first. A generated SQL suggestion is inserted as a marked block at the cursor and is never executed automatically.

  Available in the paid editions and in the verified trial; not part of the Free Edition, which shows a message naming the edition you need rather than hiding the menu entries. Details on AI Assistant.

Global Browser

• NEW Open an InterSystems .gof global export (block format) directly in the Global Browser — no server connection needed. File > Open .gof File… reads a %GOF export (OutputFormat 7 of %Library.Global, or the Management Portal’s Export Globals with “block format”) straight from disk and shows it like a live global. The header displays the format version, export time and namespace; the globals table on the left lists every global in the file with its node and byte counts; the subscript tree expands level by level, so an export of several gigabytes with millions of nodes stays navigable. The value panel shows a node as text, as a hex dump, or as decoded $LIST elements, and says explicitly when a value cannot be decoded yet. Filter the global list by name, jump straight to a node with Go to ^Global(1,"x"), and export or copy a selection as ZWRITE text or CSV. A file that is not a valid .gof export, or one that is damaged, is refused with a message naming the rule and the byte offset of the problem — nothing is guessed. Available in the paid editions; the menu entry is disabled in the Free Edition and says why. See Global Browser.
• NEW Right-click a row in a query result against IRIS/Caché and jump straight to the Global node that stores it. Show in Global Browser opens the Global Browser with the real subscript values of that row already filled in, not just the Global name — a simple numeric key as well as a composite one; select several rows for a pick list. Only offered when the row’s table can be resolved unambiguously (not for joins or views) and uses ordinary, non-custom storage.

Server Navigator

• NEW A search box above the Server Navigator tree finds connections as you type — by connection name, group name, host or user, case-insensitive. Matching groups expand automatically and collapse back to how they were once you clear the box; a search with no matches shows a quiet “No matching connections” message instead of an empty tree. The search never connects to a server; it only looks at what is already known locally. Ctrl+F jumps into the box, Esc clears it, and Arrow Down/Enter jump to (or open) the first match.
• NEW The Server Navigator’s connection details are now a sortable, copyable properties grid instead of a plain text block — host, port, namespace/database, user, driver, product version, read-only marking and whether the current connection is encrypted (TLS with certificate verification, plain text, or a local connection with no network involved). Selecting a connection that is not currently open shows its configured settings and “not connected” instead of an empty panel or a stale leftover — without opening a connection just to show this. Whenever the details come from an already open connection, a “Stand hh:mm:ss” timestamp shows when they were last read, with a Refresh button to update them on demand. Switch to a SQL editor tab and the panel follows that editor’s own connection instead.
• FIX Expanding the Namespaces (Catalogs) node of a connection no longer freezes the window while the server answers — the node shows “loading…” and fills in as soon as the list arrives. The same goes for the Namespaces panel that opens on double-click and for its schema details. Noticeable on slow links and on Azure SQL Database, where the list of databases is read from the server.
• FIX Clicking the “loading…” placeholder in the Server Navigator while a Tables/Views node is still expanding no longer shows an error and no longer breaks selection for the rest of the session. The placeholder is now correctly ignored, just like clicking empty space.
• FIX Loading the table details of a namespace no longer ends in an error dialog when the connection changes while the load is still running — because you switched the namespace, reconnected, or disconnected somewhere else in the meantime. The tables loaded so far keep their details, and the run simply stops.

Class Viewer and the Data tab

• NEW The class view for IRIS/Caché now shows methods, properties and parameters with their signatures and descriptions, not just the bare member names. On older servers that do not support this yet, the class view keeps working exactly as before.
• NEW The Filter field in the table browser’s Data tab remembers the filters you last used on that table and offers them again as a dropdown — newest first, duplicates collapsed — so a filter you typed before is one click away, even after restarting SQL DATA LENS.

SQL editor

• CHG A newly opened SQL editor no longer collects IRIS/Caché execution statistics by default — the chart button in the editor toolbar, or Tools > Settings > InterSystems IRIS / Caché > SQL editor, turns it back on, per editor or as the new default for editors you open afterwards. If you had already switched it on, that choice is kept.

Connections, passwords and security

• FIX The “never save the password” default (Settings > Connections) is now honored when a connection comes from an ODBC data source or from importing a local Caché server registration. Its password is used for the current session only and never written to config.json, same as with any other new connection.
• FIX Security: a connection created before version 4.01 could still carry a leftover user name, password or encryption setting on its Properties tab, left there by an older version and never cleaned up — now removed automatically the next time SQL DATA LENS loads your connections. If a connection to a server without TLS relied on a leftover setting to skip encryption, it now uses the driver’s own default instead; choose encryption explicitly on the TLS tab if you need a specific setting. The Properties tab itself now saves the changes you make there instead of quietly discarding them.
• FIX A TLS-encrypted connection to InterSystems IRIS/Caché set up with the TLS Configuration Assistant now keeps working after restarting SQL DATA LENS — the assistant’s “SSL configuration file” setting is now saved permanently instead of only for the current session. If it cannot be saved (for example because the user configuration file is not writable), the assistant now tells you so instead of failing silently on the next restart.

Reliability: long operations and dropped connections

Fifteen of this release’s fixes share one cause: an operation that talks to the server used to block the whole window while it waited, and a connection the server had quietly dropped — after a long idle time, a restarted server or a lost network — used to be discovered only when the next action on it failed outright.

• FIX A licensing component that cannot be loaded no longer takes the whole start with it. If the file is missing or has been quarantined by virus protection, SQL DATA LENS says so, continues in the Free Edition and still restores your workspace and favorites — instead of coming up half started.
• FIX The update check now finds its helper program reliably, including when SQL DATA LENS is started from PowerShell or in an environment that hardens how Windows looks up external programs. Before, the check could silently do nothing in that situation.
• FIX Opening the activation wizard (Help > Manage License…) now uses the same reliable way of finding its helper program as the update check. If the helper program is missing, SQL DATA LENS now says so clearly in the log instead of just reporting a generic start failure.
• FIX Saving an ER diagram no longer freezes the window while it checks the connection, and it now recognizes a connection the server has quietly dropped instead of only noticing once the save itself fails. If saving still cannot succeed, you get a clear message that the diagram was not saved and should be tried again — your diagram edits stay open and are not lost.
• FIX Long operations no longer freeze the window. Testing a connection, loading the details of a table, scanning a folder for the Query Cloud, or collecting a support bundle now put up a progress window after about a second, keep SQL DATA LENS drawing and responding while they run, and offer a Cancel button that really hands the window back to you — even when a database driver is still waiting and will not return. A connection test that nobody cancels gives up on its own instead of freezing the program. This was most visible with a Microsoft Entra sign-in that opens a browser window; while such a window is up, typing does nothing in the main window either, so a moment of typing cannot land on state the running operation is still changing.
• FIX If the Notepad’s saved notes file could not be read after all (removed or made inaccessible right after SQL DATA LENS found it), the “loading” progress indicator no longer stays stuck — it is cleared like any other failed load.
• FIX A table’s detail tabs keep working after a long idle time. Loading column metadata, constraints, triggers, a column description or committing edited grid rows now notices a connection the server has quietly dropped and reconnects instead of failing on a connection that only looks alive. The window also stays responsive while any of this runs.
• FIX Saving a trigger in a table’s detail tabs no longer freezes the window while it runs the CREATE TRIGGER statement. If the connection was quietly dropped in the meantime, you now get a clear message instead of the save silently failing.
• FIX Canceling a long operation — loading a table’s detail tabs, testing a connection, or creating a support bundle — now really stops it from showing up. Before, a canceled operation could still fill in with data a moment later, even though you had already told it to stop.
• FIX The table and view actions no longer freeze the window while they talk to the server: generating a CREATE, INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE or DROP-with-dependencies script, exporting tables, and — on IRIS and Caché — “Create mapped table” and “Edit table description”. They also pick up a connection the server dropped quietly after a long idle time instead of failing on it.
• FIX Stored procedure scripting actions (CALL, DROP, and the SELECT variants with date/numeric/length checks) no longer freeze the window while they talk to the server — the same fix already applied to table and view actions. All of these background actions now also show a wait cursor while they run, and — if the server takes a while to answer — a small progress window with a Cancel button.
• FIX Sending a script to a new SQL editor window opens the new connection in the background, with the same wait cursor, progress window and Cancel button as the other actions — instead of a window that stopped responding until the server answered or the login timed out. This covers every “New Query Editor Window” action on tables, views and stored procedures. If the connection cannot be opened, you get a clear message instead of an empty editor window.

Azure SQL

• FIX On an Azure SQL Database connection, the Server Navigator now shows the databases you can reach instead of only “master”. Leave “Database Name” empty on the Azure tab and Catalogs lists every database on the logical server your sign-in can see; open one and SQL DATA LENS connects to it in the background, reusing the sign-in you already made — a Microsoft Entra browser sign-in is not repeated. Name a database on the Azure tab and you get exactly that one. Tables, Views, Procedures and Indexes open normally; expanding used to fail with a database-switch error (SQL Server error 40508). An Azure SQL Managed Instance lists its databases as before, and Microsoft Fabric shows its single warehouse or database. Existing connections benefit automatically, without editing or reopening them.

Other changes

• CHG The application log now also captures diagnostic messages from the docking framework, the file export/import engine, and Query Cloud’s SQL federation — previously discarded silently. Helpful for support when a window layout, an export, or a federated query behaves unexpectedly.
• CHG Toolbar buttons across the app now show a helpful tooltip explaining what they do, not just repeating their label — the SQL editor, Server Navigator, Global Browser, Performance Scanner, Management views, Data Pumper, Query Cloud, Driver Manager, DB Diagrams, TLS Assistant and AI Assistant toolbars, plus the Settings and connection dialogs.