It's almost December. Time to release a new version of Blaise!
This version includes the second version of Manipula, which is now production-ready, the first version of CATI, Multi-mode support, User-defined special attributes, and a few smaller additions. Furthermore, we have worked on performance enhancements, improved the iOS and Android apps, and solved many issues that were reported by our users.
Mark Pierzchala visited Team Blaise at their Statistics Netherlands office. This visit was made the second week in November. Pierzchala owns the company MMP Survey Services, LLC based in the United States. During his visit, he learned about some new features in Blaise 5 including mode-specific language features, dynamic attributes, CATI, the use of mobile devices, and layout. These features will be highlighted in the upcoming Institutes' Guide due out in early 2016. Pierzchala will also help present these and other Blaise 5 capabilities in October 2016 at the next International Blaise Users Conference, IBUC 2016.
October 12-14, 2015, we gave a Blaise 5 training to FOD Economics in Brussels. A total of 7 participants spent three days learning about all the new possibilities in Blaise 5. The course was given in English, as some participants spoke Dutch and others spoke French. They were happy that they were able to see the possibilities for layout in Blaise 5 and all agreed that they learned a lot these days.
On our end we also took home some notes and suggestions to make the course even better for the next time.
If you want to know more about this course in particular or other future courses in general, please email
As of today Windows 10 has been released by Microsoft. We are testing Blaise 5 in this new version of Windows and we are hoping to ensure full Windows 10 support within weeks. Our goal is to fully support Windows 10 in our November release, 5.0.4.
Besides Windows 10, we have been testing building the Blaise 5 solution in the newly released Visual Studio 2015 with .Net framework 4.6 for a couple of weeks now. With the migration to Windows 10 we will start using Visual Studio 2015 and the new .Net framework, which means Blaise 5 will not run on Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 and below anymore.
Today we are proud to announce our Blaise 5.0.3 release which includes the long-awaited first version of Manipula, server-side events, shortcuts, printing, monitoring, and a few smaller additions. In addition to these new features, we have worked on performance enhancements and have solved many issues that were reported by our users.
Last week we gave a Blaise 5 Training for international users at Statistics Netherlands. The goal was to get acquainted with the new features of Blaise 5 with a main focus on the layout. There were 10 participants from all over Europe, who reported that they thought the course was interesting and that they learned a lot. They also offered some suggestions for improvements here and there, which we've taken into account to make the course even better for next time.
If you want to know more about this course in particular or other future courses in general, please email
Gaining deeper understanding