O4W 'Run First' Option

Did you know, that you can enhance an O4W Report with the "Run First" option?

The O4W Report tool, in addition to all the flexibility it normally provides the user when generating a report, also allows you to specify a statement to "run first" before any other sort/selection is performed. This can be any R/List command that generates an active list, for example the report designer could pre-select data for particular users, or a particular month, or activate a previously saved list, before the O4W Report runs any user-entered selection criteria. READ ON.

Article first published in the January 2011 edition of the Revelation Software Newsletter.

The final page of the final chapter is complete and the book is now closed.

For those of you that have been following my OpenInsight Quick Start Guide series of videos, the last few videos have just been completed and they are either now uploading to my YouTube Channel or rendering for then uploading. Once uploaded, I will add them to the main OI QSG playlist and also link to them from our web site.

The last few videos look at using Query By Form (QBF) within our Patient Entry window, creating reports and making them available to our users, making use of Index Lookups in OpenInsight and finally we wrap up the application. I’ve not covered wrapping up with the RDK as that is a big subject in its own right and people often choose different deployment methods to meet their own needs. I’ll therefore leave that for the official training.

I hope that you find the series useful and I will be beginning work on the O4W QSG series very, very soon.

New Graphs for OI 9.2.1

As you will no doubt know OpenInsight 9.2.1 is in the final stages of beta testing and it is scheduled for release in early February 2011. Revelation also intends to release the new Universal Driver 4.7 at the same time.

Following the 9.2.1 release, Revelation will be working on the implementation of Data Encryption at Rest (DER) within the OpenInsight database environment. Whilst this has been discussed at length over recent months internally, please use the suggestions database for any requirements that you have for DER within your solutions.

Back to the 9.2.1 release – A number of the beta testers have asked if Revelation can provide a broader library of graphs for use with the O4W Dashboard. In response to that request, Revelation we will be including a new library of Google charts in addition to the existing jqPlot library. The new charts are as follows:

- 3D Pie - Gauge - GeoMap - Intensity Map
- Area Chart - SparkLine - Table - Line
- Scatter - Bar - Pie - Stacked Line
- Stacked Bar - Horizontal Bar - Horizontal Stacked Bar

OpenInsight Final Beta Released

Those of you participating in the current OpenInsight beta program should have received an email from Mike over the weekend about the release of what we hope will be the final beta release before the commercial release, hopefully on the 1st February 2011.

I’d like to personally thank everyone that has been working with the current beta software and who has reported issues, recommendations and suggestions during this period. As Mike says, your help enables the developers at Revelation to make OpenInsight a better product.

The toolset has now moved well, well beyond any catch-up phase, with the version 9.x series being mostly lead by new functionality required by our OpenInsight developers and their end users. For this reason, shortly after the commercial release I plan another round of talking to Revelation clients in the EMEA region about new functionality, tools, etc. that are needed in future versions and which will help you (and Revelation) to be more successful during 2011.

If you have any requests prior to this, then please drop me an email or, if you are a WORKS member, post them to the suggestions database on revelation.com.

REVELATION USERS CONFERENCE 2011

Mark your calendars! The Revelation Users' Conference will be returning to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference dates are Tuesday, October 4th - Friday, October 7th, 2011.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and everyone reader of my blog and to all of the Revelation clients who have helped to make 2010 a very prosperous year. I look forward to working with you through 2011 and hopefully we’ll make 2011 a mutually happy, prosperous and profitable year.

The UK office will be closed from lunchtime on Christmas Eve until Wednesday 29th December and then we shall be running a skeleton (assuming not too many mince pies have been eaten) staff until Tuesday 4th January. For this reason, I will be very grateful if any EMEA region support issues could be submitted only using the support@revsoft.co.uk email address and any sales questions emailed to mp@revsoft.co.uk. Although I am booked off until the 4th January, I will be monitoring my email periodically during the break.

I hope that you and your families have a great festive and New Year holiday.

Long Record Keys and the UD4.6

Back in June of last year, I wrote a blog posting about the release of the Universal Driver 4.6. Within that announcement, was a note about a change in the way that long record keys were to be handled. However, some more information has come to my attention and this posting is therefore to provide that extra information.

We were recently approached by a client who had upgraded to the Universal Driver 4.6 and who subsequently ran a long key check against their database. This check reported a number of long keys, but a subsequent attempt to remove them from the system using the removal utility failed. As an example, the error message received when trying to delete the bad records was “Unable to delete “M*15607”, FS100, M*15607”. And the actual key was M*15607 15608 15607 15608 etc…. It exceeded 552 characters.

The reason for this failure is down to the removal utility being run under the UD4.6 is bound by the imposed maximum key length. The Linear Hash Service will also have been generating application event logs on the server’s event log when it attempts to read or delete a long key.

As per the installation guide for the Universal Drive 4.6, the system should have been checked for long record keys ‘prior’ to the installation of the Universal Driver 4.6. The installation of the utility is covered in its own installation guide (Network Driver Update for Large Keys) which is included, along with the file, within the Universal Driver installation zip file.

However, if this step is missed out and it is run after the installation of the Universal Driver and it results in long record keys being found, the following steps can be followed to correct the issue:

1) Ensure that everyone is logged out of the system (all OpenInsight applications).
2) Locate and rename the REVPARAM file/s to something other than REVPARAM.
3) Change the chosen driver back to the 4.5 driver using netdrv.exe, or the previously used driver if you are coming up from an older one.
4) Start the application/s and run the utility to report and remove all of the long keys.
5) Change the chosen diver back to the 4.6 driver using netdrv.exe.
6) Rename your name changed REVPARAM file/s back to REVPARAM.

These steps should allow you to access the application through a single user maintenance mode without using the 4.6 service. The utility can be installed into OpenInsight version 7.x and 8.x systems and it is included in OpenInsight from version 9.1.

Installing OpenInsight into Citrix and Terminal Server Environments.

From time to time I receive requests from VARs and end-users on Revelation’s recommended configuration on Citrix, Terminal Server and similar environments. Until now, there was no real recommended advice on where the various OpenInsight components should be installed and people were left to find what works best for them, their application, their environment and the users.

During my many conversations with people, I have learned that a configuration that works well for one client needed a rethink and modification for another. Putting together a recommendation for OpenInsight was therefore always going to be a tough call and Revelation would run the risk of documenting one configuration that people would follow to the letter and find that it was not the right, or even the best, solution for them, their application or their users.

However, following a typical ‘why does it work that way’ conversion about running OpenInsight and Citrix, I discussed the possibility of having a recommendation white paper with Jared (Revelation’s chief networking professional in the New Jersey office), along with the necessary this is a starting point only caveats.

I am please to announce that overnight Jared has released a white paper on the ‘Best Practices for Deploying OpenInsight on Terminal Services and Citrix Environments’.

This guide is Revelation’s best practice advice and it provides people with a welcome starting point when deploying OpenInsight based systems to these environments that are becoming more and more popular. The paper has been put together from Jared’s experience of working with OpenInsight 9.x on Terminal Services and Citrix and you can read the full article on the RevUS web site at http://tinyurl.com/2346d96.

Finally, I’d like to extend my thanks to Jared for taking the time to put together this hugely useful document.

Removing Phantom Indexes

Whilst working on resolving a phantom index issue, John Godfrey from Carys Computing came across a useful little trick for removing the rogue index.

Faced with an unwanted phantom index on a table in his application, John turned to the database manager and diving into the Utilities -> Indexes menu, he ran the option to remove the phantom index. However, nothing happened, the phantom index remained.

John then tried to add the index so that he could then remove it. As expected, OpenInsight duly reported that the new index could not be added as one already existed – the phantom index.

John notes that, at this point, you can turn to the help system in OpenInsight. This points you towards the System Editor, in which you can change field 6 from a 1 to a 0, to indicate that no BTree index is active.

However, John has found a neat, quick resolution to the phantom index issue and one that he asked me to share with everyone through my blog. He states:

“To the errant field add an XRef Index. This magically makes the Index editable and removable. So go back in and remove the XRef and BTree Indexes as required.”

I would like to thank John for this contribution and I will welcome any more tricks like this that anyone comes across and who would like to share with my readers.

O4W and older browsers.

OpenInsight for the Web (O4W) is fast becoming, if not already is, Revelation’s leading web development tool. This is no surprise when you see just how easy it is to create Web 2.0 compliant browser based systems against OpenInsight’s own Linear Hash data, TigerLogic’s D3 data, Rocket Software’s U2 data and also SQL data stores – the latter 3 via the built in dedicated data connectors.

However, being fully Web 2.0 compliant does come at a small cost. O4W uses advanced web technologies to deliver an interactive and dynamic web experience. To fully benefit from this, users and developers should use the most current versions of their web browser. At the time of writing this blog posting, these versions include; Chrome 3, Firefox 3, IE8, Opera 9 and Safari 3.

However, that is not the be all and end all. Developers and users may chose to use older versions of their web browser, but at the risk of reduced functionality. Developers who choose to support these older browsers should undertake their own careful testing of any plug-ins and functionality that their web solutions may rely upon. Minimally acceptable browser versions currently include Chrome 1+, Firefox 2+, IE6+, Opera 9+ and Safari 3+.

As a default, users accessing an O4W based system with an older browser will be presented with a message that their browser is unsupported. They can continue, but the message remains at the top of the O4W forms as a reminder that something might not work totally as expected. This can be seen if you run the Online O4W demo in an older browser or with IE8 running in compatibility mode.

The good new though, is that the javascript to create and display this message is stored in the O4W configuration record and this functionality will be updateable via the O4W Maintenance/Config Records screen in version 1.1 and later.

However, for the moment (version 1.0) developers can disable or modify the message by editing the appropriate CFG_O4W record in the O4WCONFIG table and clearing out or changing field 45 as appropriate. This can be either ‘CFG_O4W’ globally, or *CFG_O4W for a specific application.

Updating this will be easier from O4W version 1.1 (to be included in OpenInsight 9.2.1). From version 1.1, O4W will have an updatable field via the DB Management, O4W Maintenance, configuration Records, Browsers Tab.

Partial content c/o http://www.revelation.com/ discussion forum.