Commuter Routine Generator

Did you know that you can use the WebOI Commuter Routine Generator to create commuter routines for any OpenInsight window that is currently based on Quick Events and Scripts. The use of commuter routines is widely considered to be best practice and that leads to an easier to maintain, faster to operate and more organised application. At the present time the routine can be executed from the WebOI utility in the new IDE or from the System Monitor.

The commuter routine generator includes an option to create ‘case statement stubs’ in the commuter routine for all controls and supported events on the form. You would usually only select those that you want to include, but there might be times when you would want them all. When checking the box, OpenInsight (from version 9.0.1) will not only double check that you really want to create the empty case statement stubs along with your define stubs, but it will also notify you of how many stubs will be created so that you can make a more informed decision.

RCL4.DLL

I am still running into developers reporting issues with OpenInsight being left running in the task manager when OpenInsight is closed. This is mostly on Vista machines, but I thought it worthwhile to include another posting here dedicated to this issue. It will not be any surprise to you that this results in some undesirable behaviour. Revelation therefore jumped on this issue very quickly and the latest RCL4.dll file resolves that issue.

Server failure at our ISP

I am aware of issues associated with several pages on the www.revsoft.co.uk and www.sprezzatura.com web sites, most noticeably with the submission of the forms, etc. This issue has come about following a server failure at our ISP and what I believe to be a less than complete restore of the sites to the new server. This issue has also left me with the inability to post changes and notifications about the issue to the sites themselves.

I apologise for any inconvenience that this might cause and I will be grateful if you could send an email to info@revsoft.co.uk or info@sprezzatura.com should you require an assistance.

OpenInsight running on 64-bit Servers

Did you know that there is no need to wait for 64-bit OpenInsight to begin taking advantage of deploying to 64-bit servers, such as Windows 2008? Whilst not officially supported as formal testing continues, there are already several OpenInsight systems running on 64-bit servers.

Following a support thread with one client recently, I thought that it might be useful to post some useful information on the topic, even though this is in the WORKS forum on the main Revelation web site.

There are primarily two main points to note:

1. To run OpenInsight you will need to ensure that you include the OpenInsight registry settings in the 32-bit virtual (WOW64) registry.
   
2. If you are planning on using OpenInsight’s OEngineServer service (SocketServer, OECGI2), then you must ensure that you install 32-bit Java for OpenInsight to use and not the 64-bit version, otherwise the SocketServer will fail. In the recent case, this meant downgrading Java from version 6 (64-bit) to version 5 (32-bit).

Once correctly configured, OpenInsight (both desktop and web) should run without any problems. However, it is highly advisable to ensure that you are using the Universal Driver 4.5 (Windows) and a late version 8 or 9.x of OpenInsight.

In addition, there is a useful MSDN article entitled 32-bit and 64-bit Application Data in the Registry that you should refer to, as well as searching for ‘32-bit applications 64-bit server’ in the Microsoft resource and please don’t forget to search the Revelation WORKS forum for real world help as well.

NOTE: This posting will be updated as more information is made available to me. Please also use the comments facility in this posting to post your hints tips and experiences with configuring OpenInsight on 64-bit machines. Please remember to include your version of OI.

Drag & Drop – Windows files

Did you know that by using drag & drop and a simple OLE control, you can easily enable a user to drag any file into your application and then display that file from within your OpenInsight application. Obviously the users machine needs to know how to handle the file (you will need Word installed to display a .doc or .docx file), but you can easily allow users to drag a .pdf, MS Word, Notepad, text file, html page, etc. onto a form and display the content. In addition, application files like MS Excel 2003 spreadsheets can be displayed (with edit capabilities) from within your OpenInsight application.

Images can also be dragged into an OpenInsight application and displayed on a form. In this instance a simple bitmap control and edit line is used. Furthermore, with a few lines of code, you can enable your users to drag the contents of an edit table cell from one cell to another or between two edit tables.

I hope to have some demonstrable examples of these techniques shortly, so please let me know if you would more details and I will be glad to set up a meeting or a WebEx meeting online.

List Populator in version 9.0.1

Following suggestions from attendees at the recent RUG in London, Mike and his team have included some of the suggestions into the 9.0.1 release and included others for consideration for a future release. Whoever said that it’s not worth the time to attend these meetings ;)

One such suggestion came whilst Mike was showing how a list can be populated with a simple string in the items list, something that I touched on back in our February 2008 newsletter and a white paper on the subject.

There were two suggestions at the RUG. The first was for the items displayed using the technique to be sorted and the second was for items from the database to be displayed and, above those, items that were added by the developer into the controls items on the property window. Furthermore, Mike has included the option to sort the data in various ways, including descending left (DL), descending right (DR), ascending left (AL) and ascending right (AR).

Both of these customer requests should be included in the 9.0.1 release in a few weeks time.

OpenInsight 9.x Workstation Installation Notes

To roll out an OpenInsight 9.x application to a workstation requires that several libraries and controls be registered by an administrative user. Some of the components will automatically install upon first use if the local user has workstation administrator access. Since many organizations do not provide users local administrator rights to the workstation some manual configuration is required. Read on.

OpenInsight 9.0.1 Due to Be Released

Revelation US recently announced that OpenInsight 9.0.1 is scheduled to be released later this month. This release will include the usual round of bug fixes as well as some really useful new functionality.

Some of the new components are:

• The ability to send a fax from OpenInsight using the standard Windows Fax Server (included in XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008). The new function is RTI_SENDFAX
  
• The ability to send an email using SSL. The new function is RTI_CDOMAIL
  The ability to create macros for use with the CTO_CHILD_FORM and CTO_STANDALONE_FORM. Ten (10) macros can be defined for each User within an Application.
  
• The creation of a task scheduler that can be called as an API or as a GUI. The RTI_TASK_SCHEDULER stores task specific information (including the details needed to connect to an Engine Server) for each application in SYSENV. It also creates and deletes Windows Task Scheduler entries based on the information stored in the task schedule record.
  
• The ability to process system indexing utilizing the Engine Server. RTI_INDEXER_CONFIG is a front end to schedule indexing utilizing the RTI_TASK_SCHEDULER and the Engine Server.
  
• The ability to create code templates in the System Editor++.
  
• EDITTABLE focus cell enhancements that make it easier to navigate through an edit table either on a per form or application basis.
  
• The ability to insert graphics and textual separators within OpenInsight menus. An enhancement over the last few days sees this now supported in Vista as well as Windows 2000 and XP.

64-Bit OpenInsight

I have recently heard a solid rumour that a 64-bit compilation of OpenInsight project has just recently begun. It is still very early days, but if all goes well Revelation will be shooting to include this in version 9.1 which ‘could’ be released in around 12 months time.

With an steadily increasing number of end-users asking for tighter support for 64-bit machines, this is something that every OpenInsight developer will be pleased to hear. At the present time, we do not normally have any issues running on 64-bit servers, so long as the registry settings are configured correctly. However, this release will certainly enable us to tick the 64-bit box on our proposals.

If you are not yet coming up against the 64-bit question, you will no doubt be asked about it sometime very soon. For this reason, now is definitely the time to get your application up to version 9.x and ready for a full 64-bit version of OpenInsight.