In Development - SQL Connector

Back in October, Revelation announced that OpenInsight for Web (O4W) is being designed to bind to SQL tables. This has led to the development of a new SQL Connector that will also be included in OpenInsight 9.2.

The SQL Connector is a Base Filing System (BFS), not a Modified Filing System (MFS) that is currently part of the Client/Server Workspace of OpenInsight. In the past SQL data was only accessible to the Form Designer via the C/S Workspace. With the SQL Connector, SQL tables are now seen as native tables to all components of OpenInsight including forms, reports, popups and stored procedures.

Within each of these components, opens, reads, writes, locks, unlocks and selects all work the same.

The SQL Connector works with the SQL statement that is placed in a dataset. This means that you can bind to tables, use views and multi-table SQL selects. The SQL Connector will point at a dataset and it will create OpenInsight F-type fields for each column in the dataset. Developers can add symbolics, including Xlates to other SQL based tables.

The SQL Connector also utilizes ADO record sets which eliminates the need for developers to deploy ODBC connections to client workstations.

Escrow releases on the rise.

Firstly, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2010. 2009 was a tough year for many of us, but all in all it proved to be very successful for Revelation and our VARs and I'm looking forward to some good things coming from Revelation through 2010 - not least O4W and the D3 (TigerLogic) connecter.

However, the difficult trading period continues into the New Year and, whilst most Revelation VARs are coping well with the global recession and looking forward to a profitable 2010, the concerns surrounding the loss of an application author (or support company) remain uppermost in many business leaders minds.

Just today, The Register have highlighted the issue following an announcement by Escrow provider NCC Group that they saw a 150% increase in source code releases during 2009. You can view the full article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/06/recession_escrow_boost/.

Professional escrow services are often expensive to setup and maintain and they do not normally cater for all of the end-users needs. For instance, as an end-user it is great to get the source code for your application but what do you do with it and where do you go to find qualified help.

This is where Revelation’s Business Continuation Service comes into play. Not only does this service cater for the release of source code in the event of a trigger becoming active, but it also caters for providing emergency support services to end-users and brokering new relationships with other Revelation consultants for the future support of the system. In addition, it is also a cost effective solution and one that is much more affordable for smaller organisations and smaller systems.

Please drop me an email or give me a call if you would like to discuss this service in more detail or to review the Business Continuation Service agreement.

9.x Reporting Patch

A patch for OpenInsight 9.1.0 and 9.1.1 has recently been made available to correct a problem with the list command and landscape reports. It resolves an issue that can occur if the definition of the report is too wide for printing in landscape. The patch prevents the list command from going into a loop and crashing the OpenInsight engine on certain landscape reports.

For more information please visit the WORKS download page on http://www.revelation.com/for the patch.

If you are not a Works member please contact your local Revelation representative who will be happy to discuss the WORKS program with you.

9.1 and 9.1.1 reporting patch

A patch for OpenInsight 9.1.0 and 9.1.1 has recently been made available to correct a problem with the list command and landscape reports. It resolves an issue that can occur if the definition of the report is too wide for printing in landscape. The patch prevents the list command from going into a loop and crashing the OpenInsight engine on certain landscape reports.

For more information please visit the works download page for the patch.

If you are not a Works member please contact your local Revelation representative who will be happy to discuss the WORKS program with you.

In Development

Those of you that have attended one of the recent RUG meetings will have seen an early look at O4W - Revelation's new web technology.

Development on O4W is just about complete and Revelation will begin beta testing shortly. The technology is already in use internally and it is running the US eStore, Evaluation Request, and Upgrade Request processes.

In addition the SQL Connector (also previewed at the RUG meetings) continues to be improved and Revelation have also started development on OpenInsight for D3. This connector will allow OpenInsight to be a front end application development tool with the D3 database from TIGER LOGIC.

I will cover these new technologies in more detail early in the New Year.

www.revsoft.co.uk – rebuild

As many of you know, I will be ‘officially’ finishing up on Friday for the seasonal holiday and I do not plan to be back at my desk until Monday 4th January. However, I will be monitoring email throughout this period and I can be reached as usual on my mobile during UK office hours.

However, it will not all be leisure, mince pies and the odd bottle of beer. During the holiday period I am planning on rebuilding the RevSoft UK web site. The look will remain similar, but the content will be greatly changed in order to be more W3C compliant, optimised for the search engines and to be much more standards based.

I have some analytical software running on the site and this shall be consulted when deciding what goes and what stays. There have been a number of areas that our VARs had requested, but which get few or no hits. In addition, much of the developers area content is now readily available in the OI help files (error codes), the WORKS CD and elsewhere. On the flip side, some areas gain a lot of hits and could benefit from being more concise or informative.

This posting is therefore to ask any of you that want specific areas of the site to stay, to make your requests know to me over the next few days. There will obviously be an opportunity to add back content at a later date, but I’d like to include anything that you need in the first draft if at all possible.

Thanks,
M.

Did you know - Background Gradients.

Back in March, I wrote about the new background gradient feature for OpenInsight forms. These enable you to instantly change the look and feel of your OpenInsight application by setting window gradients for the background colour and style of a window, or set a default that runs throughout your application.

These gradients can be set programmatically using the GRADIENTSTYLE and BACKCOLOR properties of a window. In addition, they can be set in the Form Designer by opening the Windows Properties dialog and clicking on the Gradient button located on the right hand side of the dialog box.

However, since that first report, the features has been enhanced to include a drop down list of available Gradient Types on the Gradient Definition dialog box. The list of available types has been extended and now includes: "None", "Vertical", "Horizontal", "Ellipse", "Pyramid" and "Mountain".

When a type other than "None" is selected, the "Grade To Color..." button is enabled. Clicking the button will display the Choosecolor dialog box. Once the Grade to Colour is set, click the OK button. The settings will be stored on the OpenInsight form.

SRP Editor Update, Version 2.3.3

Those of you who use SRP’s System Editor will be interested to know that a new version has recently been released. This new version addresses a small issue where a variable is not assigned under certain conditions – namely, when attempting to close a record with unsaved changes, whilst the ‘Window -> Close All’ menu option was selected.

More details, a hot tip for the SRP Editor and a link to the download can be found by clicking here.

From the desk of Bill Caisley

When you create an RDK deployment it creates a row called %RUN% in the SYSUPGRADE table which contains $RDKMODULEINSTALL from SYSPROG. This program has changed from version to version and the source that is issued with an upgrade is NOT the Source for the live Object but merely an example if you wish to create your own custom RDKMODULEINSTALL.

What happens if you run an RDKInstall is that the object from %RUN% is copied into SYSOBJ and then it is run. A problem can occur if an RDKInstall fails because of an OI version change that will leave the incorrect version of $RDKMODULEINSTALL in SYSOBJ.

You will have to copy a ‘clean’ $RDKMODULEINSTALL into your working copy of OI so that any future RDK deployments contain the correct version in %RUN%.

OpenInsight version 9.1.1 released!!

Overnight Revelation released the latest version of the OpenInsight application development suite – Version 9.1.1. For those of you who decline to install the first major release, waiting for the first patch, then now is the time to take a look at 9.1 and what it has to offer for developers and users.

The new version is available from the WORKS area on http://www.revelation.com/ and it should be noted that it can only be applied to a pre-installed version 9.1 installation. As usual, you will require an authorisation key form Revelation using the form linked from the 9.1.1 download page.

Some of the enhancements in 9.1.1 include a new .NET version of IDX_SETS to address some performance issues whilst running ARev32 or CTO applications. In addition, RWREPORT has been fixed to display when printing to the screen.

Other enhancements sees the ability to use a key value for from fields added into the Database Manager’s Add Relation Index window. Using DELETE from TCL whilst defining a specific key will now delete that entity, rather than the last active list and the Command Stack can now be user based.

There have been three key enhancements to the System Editor ++, including the addition of an option to search inherited applications, a cancel option for users running a global find and replace search and an issue with Cascaded/Tiled stored procedure code windows no redrawing correctly has been resolved.

A Savewarn message has been added into the Table Builder’s Calculated Column Edit window and a list handling error when adding and removing QuickDexes and RightDexes has been resolved.

OIPI.NET/OIPI sees three issues resolved. Creating files using LIST or RUN_REPORT will now preview, CSV files can now be created and ADDTABLE message results are now justified. On the subject of reporting, the Banded Report Writer sees a fix to the Calc button, which was not working.

Within the Client Server Workspace, Options buttons have been added to the XO_CHILD and DS_CHILD windows, so that users no longer have to remember to double-click to see the window’s options.

The RDK sees one fix that now allows Buildexe to default to designation and data paths.

Finally, scrollbars have been added to the DotNetExplorer window EditTables and a missing program within RTI_GetNetworkUserName has been added back into the system.

It is nice to see that a few of these fixes came from client requests at the recent RUG meetings and I hope that you all find the 9.x releases more enjoyable to work with and, more importantly, help to make you more productive.