Reminder

The 50% off of OI WORKS May offer is coming to an end in a few days time. If you are planning on taking advantage of this large discount offer, then please drop me a line as soon as possible to ensure that you secure your license at the special offer pricing.

A date for your diary

I am pleased to announce the date for the next Revelation User Group meeting for the EMEA region. The venue is yet to be arranged and it will be influenced by the number of people signing up for this event. However the RUG will take place in or around London on the Tuesday 13th July 2010.

As normal, Mike Ruane will be over from the USA and on the agenda this time will be some of the much anticipated 9.2 new features (SQL Connector, O4W, etc.) and Carl Pates will also be talking about ‘The Web Browser Control: Extending Your OpenInsight Forms with embedded HTML’.

I am yet to update the revsoft.co.uk website with a registration page, but please drop me an email should you wish to register for this key RevSoft EMEA event.

More details will be published as they become available.

OI 9.2 Connector - New Licensing Model

Things just keep getting better at Revelation this month. Not only has the cost of new OI WORKS licenses been reduced by a whopping 50% (getting you’re the entire development suite, upgrades including 9.2 and support for 12 months), but a brand new licensing model has been announced for the release of the connectors in OpenInsight 9.2, making the toolset even more attractive to people needing to use D3, U2 or SQL backend databases.

There are three new connectors scheduled for the 9.2 release in a few weeks time. We already have the U2 connector for Universe and Unidata, but the new version will see a connector for TigerLogic’s D3 added to the toolset and another for various flavours of SQL. Please contact me for more details about these connectors.

The new licensing sees the three connectors branded in their own license packs and available in two options. All of the licenses cater for OpenInsight as a front end to one of the three backend databases, but without the ability to use OpenInsight’s Linear Hash database as the back-end. As mentioned at the recent conference, the only linear Hash tables that will operate with the new license file (engine) will be the system tables that OpenInsight itself needs to operate. There will be no ability to create or utilise any other Linear Hash data tables.

The pricing for the new licensing model is therefore set to reflect the loss of the integrated Linear Hash database and to make the OpenInsight toolset very attractive to developers and end-users who wish to use OpenInsight’s GUI, reporting and System Editor tools. The six packages are:

1. OI For D3 (OI only) Network User License – Desktop Edition
   Maximum of 5-users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6
   License cost is £35.00 (GBP) per user plus £7.00 per annum.
   
2. OI for D3 (OI only) Network User License – Server Edition
   Any number of users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6 and O4W
   License cost is £40.00 (GBP) per user plus £8.00 per annum.
   
3. OI For U2 (OI only) Network User License – Desktop Edition
   Maximum of 5-users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6
   License cost is £35.00 (GBP) per user plus £7.00 per annum.
   
4. OI for U2 (OI only) Network User License – Server Edition
   Any number of users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6 and O4W
   License cost is £40.00 (GBP) per user plus £8.00 per annum.
   
5. OI For SQL (OI only) Network User License – Desktop Edition
   Maximum of 5-users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6
   License cost is £35.00 (GBP) per user plus £7.00 per annum.
   
6. OI for SQL (OI only) Network User License – Server Edition
   Any number of users and it includes one Universal Driver 4.6 and O4W
   License cost is £40.00 (GBP) per user plus £8.00 per annum.

Developers and users who wish to make use of both OpenInsight’s Linear Hash database along with one of the above third party databases can do so through the purchase of a normal OpenInsight Network User License. Obviously, the third party database licenses will need to be purchased through your usual D3 (TigerLogic), U2 (Rocket Software) or SQL license provider.

All of the license information contained herein is subject to change prior to the commercial release of OpenInsight 9.2 so please check with your Revelation representative for updated information (as applicable) at the time of the 9.2 release. The prices shown in this posting are in pounds sterling, they are correct at the time of writing (but subject to change without prior notification) and they are valid for sales within the EMEA region only. Again, please refer to your local Revelation representative for local prices as applicable.

RevCon 2010 - Rio, Las Vegas.

Despite the economic pressures, last week saw nearly 100 Revelation users, developers, vendors and resellers arrive in Las Vegas for yet another busy and exciting Revelation conference. I was kept so busy with learning and networking that I never even got to touch my blog, despite my plans to post each evening. However, I did have my camcorder and you can see some of the presenters in my YouTube conference video.

The conference reception was held on Tuesday evening atop the Rio Casino and Hotel and it gave everyone an opportunity to catch up with existing friends from around the Revelation community and to also meet some new friends, not least Erik and Jared, being the two newest members of the Revelation Team at the conference. With gusts of wind reaching over 40mph and being 50 floors up, the reception was a windy one, with spectacular views across the Las Vegas Strip as the sun set.

The conference kicked off for real on the Wednesday, with Mike Ruane’s opening remarks (Video Part One / Video Part Two) following breakfast and punctuated by a keynote from Tom Wilson, President of Database Trends and Applications Magazine and Unisphere Research. Tom spoke about the predicted year ahead in information management and touched on the key trends for the whole IT Industry and their relevance to the MultiValue marketplace in particular. One of the key points from the keynote was that whilst budgets are still being restricted, business still wants more from their IT departments, an area that MultiValue vendors and developers are well placed to exploit.

Revelation Software’s official conference wrap-up contains a mention for all of the technical presentations, but over the next two and a half days attendees were treated to two technical tracks with over 20 presentations ranging from OpenInsight 9.2, the SQL connector and O4W, through to full on technical talks on The Web Browser Control, Interaction with MS Office (a new way), Using MVC concepts, Virtual Server solutions, Trouble Shooting OI Applications and much more.

The first full day was rounded off with dinner in the conference centre and an evening performance from Penn & Teller. Whilst some insight into some of the tricks was provided, they still left you baffled and wanting more. The second day concluded with a very busy Vendor Fair providing vendors and attendees with the perfect forum to meet and discuss just about anything, plus an opportunity to win a Netbook ( Revelation Software, Inc. ) and an iPod ( TigerLogic (D3) ), both winners were drawn at the conference close.

Friday, the final day, saw two O4W presentations from Bob Catalano and Bryan Shumsky back to back - two of the biggest draws across the whole event. However, Clay Borne from CLB IT and Andrew McAuley from Sprezzatura (presenting at the same time as the O4W talks) still had a good attendance at their presentations looking at ‘Web Applications Using Abobe Flex and OI’ and ‘Troubleshooting OI Applications – the Logging Approach’, respectively. Bryan’s talk (video coming soon) was especially well received with a visual explanation of Web2.0 followed by clear examples of using the O4W APIs.

The whole event was then closed by Mike Ruane (Video Part One /Video Part Two) with a suggestion of 64-bit OpenInsight and a return to Las Vegas during 2011 for more of the same – watch http://www.revelation.com/ during mid 2011 for more details.

Finally, I would personally like to thank Mike, Nancy and the whole Revelation team for hosting a great event and also a very big thank you to all of the speakers who gave up their time to plan, write and deliver some of the best and most informative presentations yet. I look forward to see your all (and a few more new faces) for the next Revelation Conference at the Rio in Las Vegas sometime in late 2011.

Click here for the RevCon 2010 Video PlayList featuring all of the videos noted in this posting.

May '10 Special Offer - 50% off WORKS.

Time has finally caught up with me and today is the last day that I will be in the UK office for a week, as next week I’ll be flying out to Las Vegas for the Revelation Conference.

I say that time has caught up with me as I’ll be coming back to the May Special offer – a whopping 50% off of new OI WORKS subscription purchases (I confirmed my first new client WORKS purchase on the offer overnight :) ) for the duration of May 2010 – and I am still only half way through producing the OpenInsight Quick Start guide video tutorial series. However, two more lessons have been completed and published this week and I have more planned following the conference, so that makes 12 lessons published thus far.

So, if you are an OpenInsight developer who is still not on the WORKS program or if you are still considering whether to adopt OpenInsight as another tool in your arsenal of application development tools, then now is the perfect time to pull down the OpenInsight evaluation, run through my tutorials and get ready to take advantage of the WORKS offer over the next 5 weeks.

I’ll be back in Blighty a week Monday.
M.

OERun - Did you know . . .

That OERun is an executable that provides command line access to the OpenEngine. OERun utilises the OpenEngineServer technology and for this reason the OpenEngineServer needs to be running to access OERUN.

Syntax:

OERUN -a <appname> -u <username> -p <password> -c <commandString>
{-l <location of OpenEngine>}
{-e <engineserverURL>}
{-n <engineserverPort>}
{-r <routineName>}
{-s <engineName>}
{-f <startupFlags>}
{-d <shutdownFlags>}

For Example:
The following example will execute the GET_SYSINFO command within SYSPROG and return the results to the command line.

OERUN -a SYSPROG -u SYSPROG -c GET_SYSINFO -e LOCALHOST -n 8088 -r GET_SYSINFO -f 65 -d 1

Support for Vista

Just in case anyone is sleeping, Microsoft have finally dropped support for the Vista operating systems, support for XP continues for a short time.

The No SQL movement.

Computer World UK have published a rather interesting article for all of us operating in the none SQL world. The full article can be accessed from the link above and it might be useful when talking to management and prospects about your OpenInsight based systems.

Also, a few of you have recently contacted me with regards to the video tutorials. It is good to hear that some of you are finding them useful and I do have plans for more. The first set of lessons were pretty much planned before I started and I’m now planning the next few lessons around building myself a new OpenInsight application :).

Once this short month is over and the conference is behind me, I’ll get back into producing the next lessons.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

M.

OpenInsight 9.2 beta

The OpenInsight 9.2 beta software was officially released over the weekend. You should have received an email about the released direct from RevUS yesterday (Monday 5th April) if you are a WORKS member and you had previously registered an interest in being included on the beta program.

I have been impressed with the 9.2 Alpha that I have been working with for a few weeks and I am looking forward to a successful beta cycle for this new version of OpenInsight.

Thank you to everyone who will be taking the time to run through the new version, it’s new features and to report any issues through the beta bug tracker on revelation.com.

Last Day for Hotel Room Block!

Revelation USA have just sent out the following email about booking rooms for the conference. It is included here for anyone not on their mailing list.

As you are probably already aware, our 2010 User’s Conference begins on Tuesday, April 27th, just over four weeks from today.

However, the ability to book a room in our block at the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino, the venue for the Conference, expires today. Booking a room in our block ensures a good price for you, the attendee, and it actually lowers the cost of the conference for us, because the Hotel knows it has customers for those nights, and they lower their charges to us.

Today is the last day that this block of rooms is being reserved for us. If you are thinking about attending the Conference, and even if you haven’t signed up for the conference, I urge you to contact the hotel and reserve a room. You can cancel if you decide not to attend, but you will have a guaranteed room if you do attend the conference.

Let me add that these are not your typical Las Vegas hotel rooms – the Rio is an All Suite hotel, and the rooms are great. You won’t be disappointed by them, and by staying in the same hotel where the conference is being held you’ll save a lot of time and cab fare getting around Las Vegas.

You can reserve rooms by calling 1-888-746-6955 and asking for the Revelation Software room block.

Thanks – we hope to see you at the show, where you’ll learn more than you would have imagined about what OpenInsight and Revelation Software can do for you.