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What Was New in GRANTA MI 1.1?

GRANTA MI 1.1 was released in early 2006. This page details the advances in that release.

You can also read information on the latest GRANTA MI release.

GRANTA MI 1.1 archive information

Granta is committed to maintaining GRANTA MI's position as the leading enterprise system for materials information management through regular update releases. These deliver new features and performance improvements, while keeping pace with changing systems requirements. MDMC guidance ensures the best fit to the needs of industry. Such regular maintenance means that your materials information system stays up-to-date, with no need to invest in-house IT resources to upgrade it.

The latest version is GRANTA MI 1.1. Key themes of this release are:

• Significant speed-ups in data searching, access, and analysis, particularly for large numbers of users.
  
  
• Improved user experience and reporting based on user feedback. GRANTA MI is easier than ever to use for key tasks such as comparing materials.
  
  
• Better integration with third party tools such as the computer-aided engineering systems used by design engineers.
  
  
• Improved searching.
  
  
• More control over data.
  
  
• Extended and refined reference databases.

Major enhancements

The following summarizes some of the key improvements for each component of the GRANTA MI system (for more information on these components, see the system details).

Enhancements to:

• MI:Server
• MI:Viewer
• MI:Lab (MI:Toolbox)
• MI:Admin
• Data
• MI:API

MI:Server

Architectural upgrades provide a more modular and scalable solution to materials data management. MI:Server, MI:Viewer, and SQL Server can each be installed on separate computers, if required, to provide higher performance and more simultaneous users.

A direct result is that the system is significantly faster, offering order-of-magnitude speedups over previous versions on some key tasks.

Administration of the system has been simplified and the roles of database and systems administrators separated, an arrangement that reflects the real situation for many customers.

MI:Viewer

A series of datasheet display improvements, based on user feedback, mean an improved end-user experience with less clutter, more relevant information, and fewer mouse clicks to achieve goals.

Authors have greater control over custom datasheet displays.

Selection by property has been clarified with the introduction of simple and advanced selection pages.

Search algorithm improvements include:

• better numerical searching
• searching for terms including punctuation is more likely to find relevant results
• it is much easier to compare search results in tables or graphs, or to export them

A series of report improvements include a facility to create reuseable templates for freuqently needed reports. These improvements save and improve the user experience.

Preparing data for export to ANSYS Workbench

Data can now be exported to ANSYS Workbench 6.0 from the MaterialUniverse, CAMPUS, MMPDS, and ESDU databases, including non-linear (stress-strain) and temperature-dependant data. Design engineers using ANSYS software can now use up-to-date materials property data within their familiar computer aided engineering environment.

MI: Admin

Improvements to the schema tool deliver better version information, improved control over display features, and report templates.

It is now quicker to apply access control settings.

MI:Lab (now renamed MI:Toolbox)

A new bulk data importer facilitates the import of large amounts of data from Excel or CSV files.

Users now have control over automatic link creation and improved linking. This feature records and reports relationships between records in the database.

Data

The following databases have been upgraded:

MI:API

A new application programming interface (API) is easier to use and faster when reading and writing data from and to the database.