Improvements

• Multiple users can simultaneously access V12 databases over a Local-Area Network. See Multi-user Access.
• On Win32, MS Access databases, MS FoxPro files, MS Excel workbooks and MS SQL Server data sources can be used as templates to create new V12 databases and as sources of data to import records from. See Script the Database Creation and Import Data with mImport.
• Text files can be easily imported from FileMaker Pro, MS Access and MS Excel thanks to the new mImport file method and its TextQualifier property. (mImportFile is still supported for the purpose of backward compatibility. However, it will be progressively phased out). See Import Data with mImport.
• Lists and property lists can be easily imported into V12 databases with the mImport method. One can easily convert a project that has become hard to manage with Lingo lists to one that takes advantage of V12-DBE. Also, it makes it possible to import XML documents into V12 databases (through Macromedia's XML parser). See Import Data with mImport.
• Support of Japanese sort order (Yomigana and Shift-JIS sorting standards).
• Partial Selections: mSelect optionally returns a limited number of records in the selection. This is convenient when users can express queries that match very large numbers of records. See Partial Selections in Step 5: Implementing the User Interface.
• mFind allows the setting of the current record within the selection based on a value (as opposed to mGo, which requires a record number). mFind in Step 5: Implementing the User Interface.
• mGetUnique retrieves unique values of the field that determines the selection's order. It is convenient to populate a pop-up menu or a scrolling list with all the possible search values on a given field. See Read Unique Values of a Field in Step 5: Implementing the User Interface.
• mOrderBy can now properly sort on any field, whether indexed or not. See Sort a Selection (mOrderBy) in Step 5: Implementing the User Interface.
• Addition of a new database property (FlushToDisk) and method (mFlushToDisk). This allows the disk cache to be automatically flushed (or written) to disk after a write operation. This allows you to ensure that any write operation is correctly saved to the database in the case of a power failure or crash. See FlushToDisk.
• V12 databases created with versions 2.x and 3.x are fully compatible with each other. Databases created with V12-DBE version 2.x can be used as is with V12-DBE version 3.x.
• Table, field and index identifiers must begin with an alphabetic character and must be followed by up to 31 alphanumeric characters. Unlike former versions of V12-DBE they cannot contain spaces or punctuation marks.
• Fixed problems concerning: attempts to use a Read/Write database on a locked media, a variety of importing issues and a conflict with Adobe Type Manager.
• Memory management has also been improved