Friday 11 June 2010

Why's my oinsight.ini file not working????



We recently had a support enquiry because the OInsight.ini file (located under C:\Windows) was not being picked up and the developer was therefore unable to change the Application Manager buttons to display the System Editor ++, rather than the old System Editor.

I’d always understood that the OInsight.ini file that OpenInsight used for these settings and others, was the one in the Windows directory. However, from Windows Vista and Windows 7, things are no longer that simple.

As Carl enlightened me, Vista and Windows 7 implement something called virtual file redirection, which means that the ini file the OpenInsight uses is not the one in C:\Windows - when it asks for the file Windows goes and gets it from the Virtual Store instead. It is Microsoft’s way of trying to stop people using ini files - they don't like you using the registry these days either!!

Anyway, the *real* ini file that Windows gives to OpenInsight is stored in your user settings folder something like:

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows\oinsight.ini

If you change that ini file, then everything should be fine and OpenInsight will display the right buttons and your other preferences/settings.

For the more technical and those who want to understand all of this in more detail, the following link will be useful:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/developers/archive/2009/08/04/user-account-control-data-redirection.aspx

7 comments:

  1. When is OI going to get a real IDE. One like Visual Studio. The crap that rev makes is a joke and unsellable to developers that "know better". SRP makes some great products that look good too. Why not hire them to build your IDE and stop messing with the stupid multicolored windows, cause they look retarded.

    Maybe, instead of charging Oracle prices for your software you could make it Oracle class first.

    Martyn you will probably delete this anyway, but download the free trial of Visual Studio 2010, and be honest with yourself the next time you go into OI and have to look at the stupid IDE they came up with. If this shit continues, I'm going to VS.NET and SQL.

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  2. To my Anonymous poster – I am sorry that you were not able to include your name with your posting as this would have made it a lot easier to respond to in context. However, the message is clear and my response, I hope, is just as clear.

    Whilst I think that most OpenInsight developers would like to see a Visual Studio style interface for OpenInsight, I really can’t accept your comments. The IDE is a real IDE, it works, it provides easy access to the tools and people have been using it for a long time. I know that there are plans to update the IDE, but this is a major undertaking and Mike and the team have been working hard to deliver functionality that helps to keep OpenInsight application successful in their market place and enable VARs to continue to meet the demands of their clients – support for new environments, web tools, the list goes on.

    SRP do make some great looking tools and I’ll leave Mike Ruane to consider your request. However, I’d personally prefer to have a modern looking IDE that relies on OI technologies, rather than OLE controls, etc. I guess that Don and his team will pick up on this.

    Your comment about Oracle prices is also an interesting one. I assume that you refer to the cost of OI WORKS. Well, if you don’t want support, you don’t want upgrades for yourself and free upgrades for all of your sites, then why not opt for the NU License. It’s cheap, cheerful and competitive, but I’m still happy to sell OI WORKS as an all inclusive package and one that the vast majority of Revelations professional developers want to keep. Of course, you could also opt for the free Visual Studio and SQL, but keep some cash in the bank for technical help, upgrades and (usually) higher development and support costs and you’ll struggle to get to talk to the senior decision makers, unlike Revelation where Mike is always readily available to any Revelation client.

    Now your last paragraph – Visual Studio 2010. Why would I want to download VS2010 when I have already downloaded 2005, bought over £100.00 worth of books and got ‘not very far, then I downloaded 2008, bought another £150.00 worth of books, spent hours with online tutorials and still did not get very far.

    Agreed, I’m not a professional developer and if I was I might get on better with VS, but with OpenInsight I can do a huge amount, especially with WORKS support. This last couple of weeks is a case in point. I had a contact manager plug-in for MS outlook from Microsoft. After the sixth major problem in as many months I decided to can the plug-in and build my own system in OpenInsight. Remember I’m NOT a developer, but in two short weeks I have a fully working system which is now in use on a daily basis. I’m capturing company info, contact info, opportunity info, these are all interlinked, I have ALF followed screens, a hotlist and I’m interfacing to Google calendar for my schedule. I have some nifty data entry tricks to keep me efficient. No there are no reports at the moment and I need to complete the menus (it’s button driven at the moment) but what do you expect for only two weeks of evenings.

    In short, I can’t do with Oracle or Visual Studio what I can with OpenInsight, or at least without A LOT of hard work and a huge learning curve. OI handles record locking for me, memory management is taken care of, I can work against the database rather than having to mess around with datasets, the multivalues are a dream, I don’t need to fully understand third normal form, I don’t need to worry about Visual Studio remaining compatible with SQL, I don’t need any third party tools (e.g. reporting tools), etc. etc. etc.

    Yes, Visual Studio has some nice features – I just love the ‘try and catch’ and glyph buttons– but give me a tool (OpenInsight) that is easy to use and that enables me to easily do what I need to do without investing countless hours in learning, planning and redesign when I need to change something.

    Cont. . .

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  3. To be honest – I don’t mind OI’s IDE. Anyway, it’s the end application that we all create that is more important AND the ability to enhance that in time with how our customer’s business change and faster than our competition. If you want some real world stories about some clients that tried moving from OpenInsight to other ‘mainstream’ technologies give me a call – Oh and we are not alone, all of the pick vendors have their own stories and there is even one end-user company that managed to sink themselves whilst trying to move from the Pick world to the Relational world.

    I’ll be sorry to see any Revelation Developer swap OpenInsight for Visual Studio or Oracle, but I wish you well if you try.

    Martyn.

    Please note: These are my own person views and they do not necessarily reflect those of Revelation Software, Inc or Revelation Software Limited.

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  4. ...I’m interfacing to Google calendar for my schedule

    Any tips on how to do that.

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  5. Mike Ruane has presented some better ways of interfacing to Google apps at the conferences and road shows, but I’m using a very simple method using an OLE control to render the Google html page. In this context (the calendar) it works great. Even though Google gears bumps with OI (and I’ve not researched why yet), I use the Google calendar whilst online and my iPod when offline. The two then synch when I go back online – so it does exactly what I need.

    I’ve had a few people ask about this, so I’m planning the next lesson in my OI QSG series to cover the use of the OLE control to render web pages.

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  6. I'm interested to know what you changed in the ini file to change the system editor.

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  7. The New system Editor can be selected by specifying number 15 in the correct oinsight.ini file (see above). If you are seeing the old editor, then I suspect that you have number 4 in the list is tool buttons to display. Simply change that 4 to a 15, restart OI and you should see the new button.

    All of the available buttons and the method to add custom buttons are detailed in the OpenInsight built in help system. Run a search for oinsight.ini and checkout the first of the two topics entitled “Customizing the side Tool Bar”.

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