New Look Sprezz!!

As I am sure may of you will have noticed, Sprezzatura have uploaded their new look web site. Whilst more content will be added over the next few weeks, I would urge anyone involved with OpenInsight development to subscribe to their brand new Sprezzatura Tech Blog.

I have moved the Sprezzatura blog link and David’s tech blog to the top of the links on my blog. Please let me know of any other blogs that you find useful with regards to developing with Revelation and I’ll include those in the link list as well.

How to close a Window whose WRITE event sends a CLOSE event to the form?

In this situation the Window will close properly if the user closes through the Write event. However, if the user closes using the "X" at the top right of the window, OpenInsight will prompt "Save Changes?". If the user selects 'Yes', the Close calls Write, which then calls Close again. OpenInsight will debug when Close tries to run twice.

The Solution? Just ask the window if it is closing! Use retstack to see which programs are running, if WINDOW.CLOSE is in the stack, you are already closing. The code is as follows:

0001  declare function retstack
0002  * Pre-write ... Do some stuff ...
0003  Call Forward_Event()
0004  * Post-Write ... Do some stuff ...
0005  stack = retStack()
0006  cmd = "CLOSE.WINDOW"
0007  is_closing = IndexC(stack,cmd,1)
0008  if is_closing else
0009  Call Send_Event(@window, 'CLOSE')
0010  end

OpenInsight running under Windows 7

Whilst it is early days in the Windows 7 release cycle, I was pleased to learn yesterday that Revelation in the USA have already begun testing of OpenInsight 9.x with the forthcoming Universal Driver 4.6 on the current Windows 7 release candidate. These preliminary tests are proving very positive with OpenInsight showing no immediate signs of having any trouble running under the new version of Windows. More will be published to this blog as the testing continues and more information comes my way

Jump to an insert in the new System Editor++

If you have a $Insert in a stored procedure that you are working on in the new System Editor++, you can simply shift and double click the insert to open it in a new system Editor++ tab.

Jump to a script in the Form Designer

If you have a script on a control in the Form Designer, you can simply shift and double click the control to jump straight to the script, rather than having to go via the controls properties window.

JSON

Did you know that from OpenInsight version 9.0.1 you can utilise JSON from within your OpenInsight applications. During the recent RUG in London, Mike showed how easy and fast JSON is within OpenInsight using a round-trip RSS feed example. JSON is becoming more and more popular as a replacement for XML as it is smaller, faster and easier to use. This is yet another check box that you can tick on your sales proposals when asked.

“JSON (pronounced /ˈdʒeɪsɒn/, i.e., "Jason"), short for JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight computer data interchange format. It is a text-based, human-readable format for representing simple data structures and associative arrays (called objects).” (Source – Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON).

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.