EMEA Road Show 2006

An Invitation to join Revelation's 2006 Road show
OpenInsight Version 8.0 and ARev32

Revelation Software EMEA will be once again welcoming Mike Ruane to London as part of the global Revelation road show schedule.  The road show will take place at the Novotel West London Hotel and Conference Centre on the 20th September 2006 and we will be starting the session at 10:00, running through until around 12:30.

This event will provide you with a unique opportunity to catch up on current initiatives at Revelation Software and a wonderful venue to voice your needs directly to Mike Ruane, Revelation’s President and CEO.  Items that will be covered include:

OpenInsight 8.0 Demo	ARev32 Project update	Universal Driver Heavy
Marketing Initiatives	Character to OpenInsight	Plus a Q & A session

Places on this road show event will be limited, so for more details, or to reserve your place today (if you have not already reserved your place and had acknowledgement of your reservation), please email Martyn on  2006roadshow@revsoft.co.uk as soon as possible.

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New Products - Including UDH

September sees the introduction of two brand new products and a welcome change to a license that has been around for several years.

• Universal Driver Heavy (UDH)
  After undergoing more than a year of development, testing, testing and even more testing, the long awaited Universal Driver Heavy is now available for sale.  This is the latest network product to be released and while this product provides all of the benefits of the other Universal Drivers it also provides any OpenInsight or Advanced Revelation 3.12 based system with a safety net. 
  
  The safety net that Universal Driver Heavy will provide to business includes the ability to take real 'point-in-time' backups on Windows based networks and in doing so remove those frequent worries about using open file backup software or the need for expensive and complex mirror technologies.  In addition, the product enables a hardware failure to be overcome extremely quickly and cause minimal inconvenience to users and the business workflow.  Plus we have included a management module to enable user locks to be managed and alert settings to be configured so that you are always aware of any system errors as they occur.
  
  The Universal Driver Heavy brings to the Revelation community a new and heightened level of reliability to their applications.  Please click here to find out more about the Universal Driver Heavy, or drop an email to mp@revsoft.co.uk should you be interested in pricing of this new product.
   

• 50-User Server Deployment Pack for OI32
  Revelation recently released the 10-user Server Deployment Pack (SDP) to make deploying systems to smaller organisations even more affordable.  September sees Revelation address the very same question for our medium sized organisations through the release of a 50-user OpenInsight Server Deployment Pack. 
  
  With no annual charges (like all runtime systems up to 250-users licensed with standard SDPs) this provides our medium sized system users with even greater value for money.  For pricing details please contact Martyn by email on mp@revsoft.co.uk.
   

• Web Deployment Pack
  The web Deployment Pack (WDP) has been around for a while now and is the favoured license for all of our web customers who opt to deploy using OICGI, persistent OECGI or any other method of making Linear Hash available over the web.
   
  From the 1st September the WDP is bundled with a 250-user Enterprise A license.  When used with OECGI2, for instance, this can enable you to deploy web based systems with up to 250 concurrent sessions being handled at any one time, plus the ability to queue any additional web requests, resulting in the ability to handle 1000's of users depending on your application and configuration.
  
  Please contact Martyn on mp@revsoft.co.uk should you wish to obtain pricing for the new Web Deployment Pack or if you wish to discuss your web licensing needs and OECGI2.

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Conference 2007

Revelation Software's 2007 conference is now well into the planning stages and looming fast.  We will shortly be taking delivery of the conference brochures and these will be hitting the desks of all of our WORKS subscribers in the very near future.  If you are not a WORKS subscriber and you are considering joining us in Seattle, USA at the end of January please contact us by email (info@revsoft.co.uk) and we will add you to the conference brochure mailing list (subject to brochure availability).

For more information about the conference that will be running from the 30th January 2007 through to the 2nd February 2007 at the Seattle Westin in Seattle, Washington, please be sure to visit the dedicated conference web site at www.revelationconference.com.
 

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A Change in the Delivery of User Bumps

As of the 1st October 2006, Revelation will no longer be providing "Bump" or "SDP" upgrades via floppy disk.  Few new computer systems are being sold with floppy drives, and the disk creation technology is also being phased out. 

For the last few years we have run a system whereby regular purchasers of user bumps have received the end-user license electronically and this has proved to be both cost effective for both Revelation and the VAR, as well as fast and efficient.  In addition, all bumps supplied this way are uniquely identified and automatically registered to the VAR and end-user saving the user having to register their products with us. 

We will now handle all orders for user count increases electronically.  Please contact Martyn via email (mp@revsoft.co.uk ) or by telephone (+44 (0) 20 8912 1003) if you have any questions or concerns with regard to this new delivery mechanism.

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OpenInsight For Linux (OIL)

OpenInsight for Linux version 7.2 (OIL) was named a finalist at the recent Linux World show in San Francisco for the category of Best Application Development Platform or Tool.  We have also been admitted into the Red Hat Ready Partner Program.  This means that we've been certified to run on various distributions from Red Hat.  Click here for a full report.

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 From the Technical Desk

Compiler Enhancements
The release of 7.2.1 brought with it a number of enhancements to the compiler which, whilst not majorly significant in and of themselves, serve to make life easier for the serious developer. This article documents these changes.

Precompiling
The introduction of the CTO provided the much needed excuse to enhance the compiler with precompiling technology. Put simply this allows the developer to stipulate that a program (or programs) be run before the main compiler is run. This allows the developer to make changes to the program before it is compiled. As a simple example of what could be achieved, the developer could write a program that translated French words into their English equivalent before compiling. To invoke a precompiler just add the name of the program(s) to be run to the SYSENV row CFG_PRECOMPILERS. If using multiple precompilers then they should be @Vm delimited.

If you wish to invoke a specific precompiler for a specific program you may use the new #PRAGMA directive. For example:

      #PRAGMA PRECOMPILE PROGRAMNAME

The precompiler should be written to accept two parameters. The first is the source code itself and the second is the name of the routine being compiled.

Displaying comments
If you wish to display comments during compilation you can use the COMMENT pragma which has the
syntax:

      #PRAGMA COMMENTS Comments here along with replaceable placeholders

The replaceable place holders are:

	%ID% The name of the current routine
	%L% The current line number
	%TD% The time and date

Saving expanded code
If you wish to save off the final result of all of the precompilation options you may use the OUTPUT pragma. This directs OpenInsight to save the ultimate program that will be compiled into the specified file and row. The syntax is:

      #PRAGMA OUTPUT FileName RowId

Ensuring comments remain in Outputted Code
By default the system removes the text of comments before submitting the program to the compiler. This makes compilation slightly faster as the compiler does not have to process comment strings. This means that your saved OUTPUT code won't contain comments. To ensure the comments remain you use the COMMENTCOLLAPSE pragma. This has a value of ON or OFF. The default setting is ON. To ensure comments remain use OFF:

      #PRAGMA COMMENTCOLLAPSE ON|OFF

Squeezing the last ounce of performance from a routine
When programs are compiled a linemark is inserted between each line to assist in debugging. This means that a 1,000 line program will have 1,000 linemark opcodes. If performance is critical then these may be removed using the LMCOLLAPSE pragma. This takes an ON or an OFF argument and the syntax is:

      #PRAGMA LMCOLLAPSE ON|OFF

This is especially useful when $Inserting large blocks of code. When debugging this would stop at each line of the $Insert. Using LMCOLLAPSE would allow the programmer to step over the $Insert with one keystroke. For example:

      /// Turn on linemark collapse for inserted code
      #pragma lmcollapse on
      $insert sysprocs, fserrors_100
      $insert syserrors_1000
      /// Turn off the $insert limemark collapse
      #pragma lmcollapse off

Ensuring Repository Tracking
The compiler has been enhanced to keep track of the "Uses" relationship when a subroutine or function is called. Historically this only happens when the DECLARE statement is used. Now the act of CALLing a routine ensures that it is tracked. If you wish to link in other entities to ensure complete deployment using the RDK or checkout you can now tell the compiler that this routine uses specific entities. For example, say your program modifies an on screen image and you wish to ensure that that bitmap is deployed. You may now use the $USES compiler predirective to ensure that this is tracked in the repository.

This has the syntax:

      $USES EntityID

where entity ID can have one of the following three forms:

	APPLICATION_ID*TYPE*CLASS*ENTITYID where APPLICATION_ID is the application name
	@APPID*TYPE*CLASS*ENTITYID where the literal @APPID will be replaced with @AppId<1>
	TYPE*CLASS*ENTITYID where @AppId<1> will be put on the beginning for you.

For example:

      $USES @APPID*IMAGE*BMP*STOP_SIGN

Multiline Concatenation/Nested inserts
Two longstanding compiler bugs have been fixed. It is now possible to nest inserts without messing up line counts. In addition you may now have multiple lines concatenated into a single line to improve program legibility.

For example:

      a1 = "Arg1, |
      Arg2, |
      Arg3, |
      Arg4"

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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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