It took a little longer than anticipated (I took some genuine time off over the holiday break), but I am very happy to make Drillbridge version 1.5.0 available to download.

A lot of work has gone into this release. For example:

• You can now drill from columns (!)
• Use your own custom mappings to resolve member names (this is a super cool feature I wrote about earlier and it knocks the pants off of Essbase Studio (as far as I know) by allowing you to write in mappings for your own members that might not have children (for example, a YTD member in the Time dimension)
• Streaming output performance enhanced
• Now generates XLSX files with much better output (not everything is treated as a String – if the column type is DATE or TIME or TIMESTAMP, it gets treated and formatted accordingly)
• Now run Drillbridge from Linux!
• All files included that should allow for running on Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, and even Mac OS X
• Java 7 or newer is required! I know this might be an inconvenience but I pretty much had to, and it’s good to get current with Java. Java 1.8/8 should work just fine as well in case you want to go all out

I have done my absolute best to test this version and make sure it doesn’t have any showstopper bugs but there are bound to be issues. There are a few things I know need to be worked on for the inevitable 1.5.1 release. So if you upgrade, please be sure to make backups so you can flip back to 1.3.3 or 1.3.4 or whatever your current version is, in case there’s something broken that you need.

If you have any questions about the new features and how to use them, don’t hesitate to hit up the forums or email. In the coming days I will be adding on to the Drillbridge Wiki with some info about how to set things up in terms of new features. There was recently a lot of spam activity on the wiki that I’m trying to sort out but for now it looks okay.

That all being said, this is the best release of Drillbridge ever and it now contains every feature I originally set out to put in, and then some. There will undoubtedly be some quirks but I look forward to a few point releases to stamp them out. Many or most of the features are from direct user requests, feedback, and ideas, so thanks to everyone.

Happy Drilling.