The word “major” in the upcoming releases of CUBA and Studio is well deserved. It is the most important release for the last 3 years, based on thorough analysis of the community feedback on the forum, conferences and Java User Groups. However, it comes with even more changes!
New API, features and stack upgrade
CUBA 7 introduces present-day concepts in software development: new event-based API, URL routing and visual components for Generic UI; a new way of data binding via lightweight data containers instead of hardly extensible datasources; underlying technology upgrade including Java 10+ support and a bunch of other improvements.
CUBA Studio integrated into IntelliJ IDEA
Probably the biggest and the most awaited change! Now you don't need to switch between the Studio and IDE all the time - everything you need is always at hand, including Intuitive navigation, smart prompts, and code completion. This move also enables us to support not only Java and Groovy, but also other JVM languages, primarily Kotlin.
Dashboards, Maps, and the New BPM
The Marketplace is growing rapidly with add-ons requested or contributed by the community, like LDAP, Data Import or WebDAV. Just recently we have published Dashboards, and in the upcoming months, we are looking forward to introducing the new BPM and Maps add-ons, which will be a major upgrade vs the existing ones.
No more “10 entities limit”
We are making the licensing rules clearer. The limit of 10 entities for the Studio will be removed - meaning that you will be able to develop or migrate projects of any size for free. The commercial version of the Studio still remains. It focuses on extra development comfort with visual designers for entities, screens, menus, and other platform elements, while in the free version all this should be coded in the usual way.
Premium Add-ons are going Open-Source
The licensing rules will be also changed towards the premium add-ons, which are currently bundled into the commercial subscription. Since the new CUBA Studio goes live, these add-ons will be separated from the commercial Studio subscription. So, for CUBA 7+ Reporting, BPM, FTS, and Charts will become free and open source!
To have a deeper look into changes read the official release notes.