Post authored by Gareth Bowen, Medic’s Chief Architect.
Medic Mobile is thrilled to announce the release of the next major version of the Community Health Application Framework: 3.0.0. We’re particularly excited about this release as it greatly improves much of the critical infrastructure that runs the software. While it may seem like little has changed on the surface, 3.0 improves performance, makes it easier to upgrade in future, and reduces hosting costs.
Powerful database upgrade
The stack now runs on the latest and greatest version of CouchDB (v2.2) which is a major upgrade and supports clustering for better performance on large projects and more efficient replication.
Flexible infrastructure
We have implemented a containerization infrastructure using Docker. This means you can safely install multiple small projects on the same server which will lead to significant savings in hosting costs. Docker also helps with local and self hosting.
Fast and reliable upgrades
In previous versions of the software, upgrading was handled by the Gardener and Dashboard tools. These had fundamental issues with installs failing if the user disconnected from the internet during installation. Furthermore, it was only possible to upgrade to the latest release which isn’t always ideal.
These tools were replaced with Horticulturalist which can reliably upgrade to any release. This new tool can even do much of the upgrade work before taking the application offline which can significantly reduce downtime during an upgrade.
Better performance
Better replication
Replication of documents to and from the server has been improved to be faster, use less data, and be more reliable.
Fewer document changes
The document processing service Sentinel now records its progress in a separate database rather than updating the document which means the phone only downloads updated documents when something important changes.
Smaller application size
Configuration has been separated from the main application to reduce the size of the software for non-administrators.
And much more
Overall, we resolved over 100 issues in this release so there are many more improvements behind the scenes. For a complete list of changes and upgrading instructions, check out the release notes.
We hope you’re as excited about version 3.0 as we are, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback. If you’re a current Medic partner, your project manager will be in touch to schedule your upgrade.
Looking ahead
We’re hard at work on the next versions with features in the pipeline for SMS spam protection, muting people and places, performance improvements, and much more. For more information, keep an eye on the product roadmap.