Futurex and LinuxWorld South Africa

Futurex and LinuxWorld, Johannesburg, South Africa took place over four full days from the 16th May and provides the region with one of it's major Information Technology events.  This years show not only included software and associated services, but also a large hardware related section under the title of Equip and attracted in excess of 4,000 visitors.

Following an interesting set up period, where we were lucky enough to be moved to a better location the stand was prepared and ready for the show opening on the Tuesday morning.  Given reports that show attendances are dropping in Europe, we have been extremely pleased to be kept busy for the entire four days that the show was open.

Interest in Revelation and OpenInsight in particular was constant throughout the show from people working in the Windows world (Futurex) and also from within the Linux world and who had come primarily for the LinuxWorld Exhibition which also formed the opposite side of the show floor that we were situated on.

One of the most surprising and pleasing findings was that the majority of visitors to the stand said that the most important aspect in choosing an application development toolset, like OpenInsight, was that they wanted tools that enabled them to build systems quickly, easily and cost effectively, with easy application deployment and upgrade facilities - the word Microsoft hardly ever came up.  There a large amount of genuine interest in OpenInsight and which meant that Andrew hardly ever stopped demonstrating the product and he constantly showed people how OpenInsight can address their prime requirements for the South African market.

Furthermore, many of the attendees were using Oracle, SAP and other similar technologies.  They found that if they adopted OpenInsight, they could begin to tap new SME markets that they currently ignore or decline. Revelation look forward to helping these development houses to exploit these new markets over the coming months and years.

All in all, working with Sedick from WS&A and the team at Stage 7, we believe that we had a good show and we are looking forward to welcoming some new clients to the Revelation community over the coming months and to the next show in South Africa - watch this space.

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Update on CTO

Following the EMEA CTO launch in London the product continues to be enhanced at a pace.  Development work continues in two key areas being functionality and support for auto-conversion of legacy Pick based systems. 

One such key development has been the ability to use the toolset to quickly and easily convert systems to run within the OpenInsight environment as a window within the GUI application.  This provides users with one convenient application entry point and the ability to be working in a character window.  In addition users can run a look-up (? from any relevant prompt) to bring up a GUI look-up table from which the user can make their selection and which is promptly returned to the character window and the record is read displaying their data as appropriate.

This now means that MultiValue developers and users can both reduce their application's cost of ownership through OpenInsight favourable runtime licenses and also benefit from truly hybrid systems easing the migration process to the full GUI environment - something that both developers, budget holders and users will without doubt be pleased about.

For more information about CTO or to arrange a local or web demonstration please contact Martyn on mp@revsoft.co.uk or review the online demo (the conversion process only without the hybrid examples at the present time) by clicking here.

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Revelation World Conference

We are pleased to announce that Revelation Software's 2007 World Users Conference will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA.  This venue will take us right back to the birthplace of Revelation Software and if it follows recent conferences it will be the biggest Revelation event of 2007.  The Conference will take place from 30th January through to 2nd February 2007 and it will be held at the Seattle Westin.

www.revelationconference.com will provide you with more details as they become available, however this will once again be the perfect time to meet the whole Revelation team and leading Revelation developers from around the world.  You will also get to network and share development techniques with attendees, and hear about innovations from some of the best names in the Revelation community.

So book the dates in your diaries and we'll have a big mug of coffee waiting for you on the 30th January 2007.

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Universal Driver Heavy

The Revelation Universal Driver Heavy (UDH) is currently in the final stages of beta testing and we hope to be announcing its full release shortly.  The UDH may well be the single most important product we have released yet to safeguard your Revelation data and it will almost certainly be a must-have for those of you running mission critical 24x7x365 systems. 

The UDH is client/server software that is designed for use on Windows-based platforms.  The UDH permits real-time mirroring of Linear Hash data with the ability to take full point in time backups, rather than open file backups that might change between a regular backup beginning and ending.  The product is designed to handle intensive Revelation applications that need to scale up and have high availability. 

A copy of the latest UDH product flyer is available by clicking here or please contact sales@revsoft.co.uk for more information.

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ARev32

Following the success of the Character to OpenInsight project Revelation are currently developing a product that is currently known simply as ARev32.  As the name suggests this will be a 32-Bit version of ARev built on the company's OpenEngine Server Technology.  ARev32 will provide developers and users with the ability to run existing ARev and RevG applications within OpenInsight and in the Windows 32-bit environment. 

With a targeted release of the first quarter 2007, this brand new product will help to extend the life of any ARev-based application that will not run on Microsoft's Vista release of Windows that is expected sometime during early 2007.  If you are specifically interested in this product please contact us via email using sales@revsoft.co.uk and Martyn will ensure that you receive more information as it is made available.

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From the Technical Desk

Web application security tips

We are seeing more and more traditional desktop applications being web enabled and many new people looking at OpenInsight for fully featured database driven web solutions.  While this has been mentioned previously we thought that it was worth mentioning the OWASP web site and it's invaluable documentation regarding web application security issues and solutions.  It also includes an amusing application called WebGoat that it worth checking out if you are or plan to dabble with web development.

The documentation is very comprehensive and consists of around 300 pages.  Our advice to anyone building web based applications is to at least take a look at the Top Ten list.  The URL for the OWASP web site is http://www.owasp.org/index.html.

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Locating Linear Hash data tables for easier deployment

While all of the seasoned OpenInsight developers will have their own methods for locating Linear Hash tables there is a little known and undocumented feature to help those people new to OpenInsight or using the product for the first time.

It is very easy to add tables to your database and update the image by simply browsing to the directory “C:\Revsoft\Oinsight\Appdata” to add them all. However if you now move your system to say Z:\OI the tables will not attach. If you then try and add them you will be told that they exist in  C:\etc… The best way to do it would be to ensure that Appdata is in the same directory as your Oinsight.exe and type “Appdata” in the Directory edit box. This will ensure that the tables will attach from the correct location, no matter where you move your system.

If you do an (RDK) full system deploy then all databases will be in place. When the RDK is used to deploy an Application it will create a table called SYSUPGRADE in the directory where you are pointing the deployment to. This table contains a record/row called %%PROCESS%%. If you attach this table after the RDK has run and edit this row you will see where the tables (Defaults to the \DATA directory) and the OS files will be deployed to. You will also see the name of the application. If the application does not exist when you run the RDKINSTALL, it will create the App as new before doing the deployment.

As a developer, the client databases may be in different paths and folders to your development system.  OpenInsight defaults to creating and deploying into a folder called DATA.  As a developer you have the option to then edit the %%PROCESS%% record and change the path from \DATA to whatever you require at the target system before passing the deployment to the client and running the RDKINSTALL.

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Edit Table Borders - Borders

We have recently had some support contacts with regard to the new style Edit Table in OpenInsight 7.2.1 version. This issue effects the formatting being thrown out when developed on a machine running classic theme as opposed to a user using an XP theme. 

If an Edit Table is created with fixed column widths designed to neatly sit within the Edit Table frame in classic mode it will render differently in an XP Theme window and show a horizontal scroll bar, indicating that there are additional columns to be viewed within the control.  The most obvious solution to this is to use an automatically sizing column that will self size to suit.  This works fine, until you have a window that maximises on the screen and has anchored controls which has the potential for a very wide or very narrow column depending on which of the numerous screen resolutions that are now in use.

It should be understood that when an Edit Table is rendered on a machine running in the old "Classic" mode it uses a single pixel border, while the same edit table running in a Windows XP theme mode will use a two pixel border.  This then results in the column width alignment being thrown off and the horizontal slide bar being produced.

If you wish to have a two pixel border at design time you will need to set the "ClientEdge" extended style which is what most Win32 controls use.  This is not currently exposed in the form designer, but it can be set using the Raw Style Bits editor as shown below:

The only control that should get affected in this way is the Edit Table control - other windows controls use the ClientEdge setting by default so you shouldn't have to worry about those.  It is also advisable to test each of your screens using both the Classic and Theme options before finalising and deploying any forms to your users - XP Themes look wonderful from a users point of view but they do provide developers with yet another thing to think about.
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Latest Version Checker

*The Universal Driver is the new preferred driver for all ARev and OpenInsight based systems.  Please check the web site at http://www.revsoft.co.uk/universal_driver.htm for more details about this product and how it can benefit your system.

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We are always pleased to hear from existing, expired and potentially new Revelation developers and end-users alike.  You can contact us in many ways:

Post 45 St Mary's Road Ealing London W5 5RG United Kingdom Email info@revsoft.co.uk sales@revsoft.co.uk Telephone +44 (0) 20 8912 1000 Fax +44 (0) 20 8912 1001

Click here for a map of our location  or use the MultiMap locator below for any other UK Postcode.

You can also find directions to our offices on our web site.

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