Retrospective 6.4 - Mastering the formatting and export of result data

Text Markers

Up to now, Retrospective automatically marked the following data in the result detail view with different colors:

• Search criteria

• Highlighting terms

• Custom fields

• Local filters

Sometimes it was too much of a good thing and overly marked sections were not helpful to get a clear overview immediately. With the newly introduced markers, you’re granted full control over the marking process.

1. The markers’ default state (enabled/disabled) can be defined on the "Result Options > Formatting" preferences page.

   

2. Markers can be individually switched on and off by using toggle buttons located on the tool bar or the result detail view.

   

3. When result data is exported to web pages, you decide which markers you want to have applied. To do so, simply press on the related toggle buttons shown in the dialog.

JSON Formatting

Standalone, flat JSON arrays

A new preference option on the "Result Options > Formatting" preferences page lets you define if Retrospective should format standalone, flat JSON arrays. These arrays contain nothing but primitives and/or nulls, for example [1], ["10","20"] or [null]. Such data structures are recognized by Retrospective as presumably JSON, even if they’re not related to this syntax. It therefore makes sense to deactivate this option in most cases.

The option can be contextually overwritten as follows.

• Through a toggle button located on the tool bar of the result detail view.

• Through a checkbox found on a dialog when exporting result data to Excel or HTML.

JSON Timestamps

By default, the original timestamp is excluded (removed) from the "Data" column because we also display the "Date/Time" column. This makes sense for standard log files where the timestamp appears in front of other data. When monitoring Docker or Kubernetes containers, the timestamp is often found inside a JSON structure in a separate attribute. In such cases, removing the original timestamp from the "Data" column does not make much sense but it may rather confuse the user. Therefore, when Retrospective can assume, that the log entry timestamp is contained in a JSON attribute, it will now be shown without alteration in the "Data" column.

Exporting result data to web pages (*.html)

It has been possible to export log data to text, CSV, Excel or JSON files for a long time. It's actually strange that we didn't think of this earlier, a program of this quality should have been able to export result data to HTML files as well. Now we have put our backs into it and implemented a feature that is well worth seeing.

Once you have collected log data and tailored it to your needs, you can now export it to one or several HTML files. These are web pages that can be viewed in your favorite web browser. The function is triggered by selecting a drop-down menu on the result table toolbar or through the new "Result Data" submenu within the main menu.

Prior to actually starting the data export, Retrospective displays a dialog that lets you define many options, including specific formatting rules for JSON or XML content.

Feild Detection

The detection of new name/value pattern fields is always performed during Autofind. The fields discovered in this process are stored temporarily and proposed for selection for the definition of custom columns. However, these fields disappear when Retrospective is closed and won’t be available when the program is reopened.

Therefore, we provide a new option on the "Field Detection" preferences page. This new option determines whether vanished fields should be detected again before a field selection dialog is displayed.

Ongoing Maintenance

As always, we invested much time and thought in improving the quality of our software. We updated the underlying Eclipse Target Platform together with different libraries and fixed some annoying bugs. For further details, please consult the Retrospective 6.4.0 release notes.