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	<title>Neblog</title>
	<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog</link>
	<description>Welcome to the Nebula</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:44:24 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Lonely Shell Variables &#8211; Part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Back in March 2008 I wrote a blog here called Lonely Shell Variables. Today I was fiddling with shell variables in D3 (also called Environment variables) and once again I marvelled at the power and flexibility &#8211; but I&#8217;d bet the number of people who really use this functionality can be counted on a single [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/d3/2010/02/d3shell2.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A view on languages and where I&#8217;m focusing my development</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A respected colleague, Bob Joslyn, asked in CDP if I had yet looked at a new language called Go. As of the moment I saw the question, my answer was no. But I just took a quick look and thought this blog would be a better place to post some thoughts on language, and development [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2010/01/languages-and-dev1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>SQL Server and MV &#8211; Part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In a recent U2 forum thread, difficulties were documented about moving data directly between SQL Server and Unidata. This thread is just like many others there and in other forums. The question is always about issues with direct connections between environments. I posted a blog here in August 2009 where the question was about TAPI [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2010/01/sql-server-and-mv-part-1.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Keys to success &#8230; or rather &#8230; successful keys</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A discussion in the OpenQM forum got me thinking about keys. I&#8217;d like to share some quick and mostly unedited thoughts with you on the topic. I always wonder if I&#8217;ll regret an off-the-cuff posting like this&#8230;
Over the years I&#8217;ve learned the &#8220;prime directive&#8221;, that the ID identifies a record as a unique database entity, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/12/keys1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>BlueFinity: Partner and Competitor</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I just found out that BlueFinity International is hosting a webinar today at 3pm Eastern time to profile Solution Objects, which is an amazing new component of mv.NET. I&#8217;ll invite you to their session, but with tongue firmly in cheek I&#8217;ll ask you not to buy anything from them.
You see, Nebula R&#038;D is a worldwide [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/mv-net/2009/11/bluefinity1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>NebulaXLite self-deactivating?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the last two weeks we&#8217;ve had some reports of permanent keys for NebulaXLite suddenly deactivating. This doesn&#8217;t seem to be affecting developers or trial licenses. It&#8217;s happened on Universe and D3, no reports from other platforms yet. I encourage application developers to check with your end-users to ensure their product is still functioning as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/11/nebulaxlite-deactivating.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>U2.NET &#8211; Where&#8217;s the value?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When IBM purchased a license for mv.NET to re-brand as U2.NET, I thought they were going to offer it as a free value-add benefit to their clients. OK, strip out the cross-platform capability, nail it to U2, and give people a development kit that&#8217;s a generation beyond UO.NET. That seemed like a good business move. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/mv-net/2009/10/u2dotnet1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>To free, or not to free? That is the question.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I needed to get information out of D3 and there is no standard function to get it. After a couple emails with TigerLogic support, I was able to write two lines of code to get what I needed. Wow, that&#8217;s cool. Now should I be a good community citizen and give it away? Should I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/09/free1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>IBM has sold Universe and Unidata (U2) to Rocket Software &#8211; Is it time to look forward or back?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[David Jordan posted some comments to the U2 forum that made me think about how this isn&#8217;t just about IBM and U2 &#8211; this event is yet another loud message to the entire MV community.
Here are selected quotes from David&#8217;s posting:
U2 business has still been growing double digits for many years now.
Any organisation has one [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/09/u2sold1.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Windows and MV DBMS Shutdown</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Most MV environments don&#8217;t need to be shutdown when Windows is taken down. D3 does. I thought I&#8217;d document how I boot and shutdown my MV environments for you. I lead with D3NT but comment on other platforms as well.
D3NT is the only MV DBMS that has a VME &#8220;blob&#8221;. At any given moment, the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/09/mvshutdown1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Diagnosing Connectivity Errors</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When a UniObjects.NET operation fails, how do you know what happened? What about mv.NET? Heck, it doesn&#8217;t matter what tool you use. Sometimes things just stop working. Here are some tips that may help in the detection and recovery process for any MV DBMS or connectivity tools&#8230;
In the U2 forum, the question was asked: &#8220;Is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/09/conn-err1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Sign here please</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I had the pleasure of working with a signature capture device recently. Anyone need to get customer signatures at the Point Of Sale?
The specific device I&#8217;m using is the Topaz Systems 1&#215;5 pad, which is 1 inch high by 5 inches long. The consumer doesn&#8217;t see their signature in this basic device. For that an [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/09/signatures01.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>MV to anything &#8230; sure, why not?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the U2 forum the question was asked &#8220;Has anyone implemented Microsoft TAPI in a Universe application?&#8221; Let&#8217;s call this a FAQ and reword it as &#8220;How do we connect anything to an MV DBMS?&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t matter if you have Universe, jBase, D3, or QM. It doesn&#8217;t matter if you are talking about TAPI, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/08/mv-to-anything.html</link>
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		<title>Blog now supports avatars/gravatars</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A couple Neblog subscribers have avatars registered with Gravatar.com, so wherever they post a comment, on any blog, the same picture displays for them by their comments. I&#8217;ve just updated our pages (through the wonders of Open Source Software hehe) so that comments show a gravatar if it&#8217;s available. Why? Why not? For anyone who [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/blogs/2009/08/avatars1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>What is a &#8220;large&#8221; select list?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A question came up in CDP about what a &#8220;large&#8221; dynamic array is, when used as a select list, and when lists should be processed as dimensioned arrays versus dynamic arrays. The answer can be more complex than one might think.
Before I continue, I&#8217;d like to state why I chose to publish this here instead [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/d3/2009/08/d3selectlist1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>XML to/from MV &#8211; Part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work lately with XML data. I&#8217;m just importing from XML to MV right now but exporting MV to XML can be the same thing in reverse. Here is part 1 of a multipart discussion on the topic.
When asked &#8220;what is the most efficient way of building outbound XML docs [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/mv-net/2009/07/xmlmv1.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Caché Tutorials</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m writing a small series of tutorials for Pick developer/admins to get familiar with the Caché environment. The first one explains how to telnet in, create an account, create a file, edit/compile/run a program &#8211; the bare essentials. What would you like to see?
Small expansions and explanations are provided along the way but it&#8217;s very [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/cache/2009/07/tutorials01.html</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Vista Part 3 &#8230; Never thought it would go so far</title>
		<description><![CDATA[After posting a Part 2 to my original notes on Vista and Windows 7 I didn&#8217;t think it was possible to get enough material for a Part 3. Hey, I&#8217;m no stranger to being wrong and I&#8217;ll be happy to admit it. But our &#8220;Vista Fan&#8221; colleague still cannot face the thought of being completely [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/07/vista3.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Solutions for Excel, CSV, Leading Zeros, and related problems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This seems to be a frequent topic in MV forums so I&#8217;m posting notes here. In short, people want to use CSV to import product IDs or other text data into Excel. Sure, you can do it.
I&#8217;ve worked with Excel for many years and have written several interfaces between MV and Excel including NebulaXLite, NebulAnalysis, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/07/excel-csv1.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>I&#8217;m not using NebulaXLite? Traitor!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Please don&#8217;t beat me. I confess. I&#8217;ve been doing extensive Excel development without NebulaXLite. But&#8230; there&#8217;s a good reason.
The &#8220;Lite&#8221; in NebulaXLite is there quite intentionally. We fully acknowledge that this product fits for a wide range of projects but it has specific limitations compared to something more &#8220;heavy&#8221;. I try to use NebulaXLite wherever [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/06/not-using-nebulaxlite.html</link>
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		<title>More Vista notes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My last blog on Vista was judged &#34;TG&#8217;s usual anti Vista rant and a couple of wild links to disappointed mugs&#34; by one of our colleagues. So I decided to look a little deeper at the links about Vista that I provided. Holy cow, it&#8217;s worse than I thought.

Prelude
I started writing this the day after [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/06/vista2.html</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Meet the new blog, same as the old blog</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I hope you have &#8220;Won&#8217;t Get Fooled Again&#8221; from The Who in your head. This blog has had a major makeover and there&#8217;s more to come. I hope you like it.
We upgrade our operating systems, databases, and everything else &#8211; it was time to update this blog to the latest release, and to give it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/blogs/2009/06/blog-2-8.html</link>
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		<title>So what are You using for MV GUI?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I wrote a few blogs on what&#8217;s available for GUI development with the JACXX model, but I&#8217;m curious what tools you folks are using &#8211; especially tools that are less common in the MV space but well-known outside of this space. I&#8217;d also like to share thoughts about a new GUI tools project that I&#8217;ve [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/06/guichoices3.html</link>
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		<title>D3 FlashBASIC Part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A while back I wrote a blog entry on how D3 FlashBASIC works.&#160;That blog/article was recently re-published in International Spectrum magazine. Yay! In the QM forum a question came up as to how D3 caches BASIC object code. I thought the little I knew about the topic would serve as a supplemental update to that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/d3/2009/06/d3flash2.html</link>
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		<title>Diagnosing Windows Woes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There is a minor &#34;Windows vs *nix&#34; debate going on in the U2 forum this week. I don&#8217;t really want to enter the debate. To me it&#8217;s important that people just have good information for making their decisions, that they know what resources are available to help them get around issues that they say are [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/06/winwoes1.html</link>
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		<title>Balsamiq Mockups</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve never been too fond of a development concept that&#8217;s alternately called wireframing, prototyping, or mockups &#8230; until now. This blog entry digresses from my usual fare. It&#8217;s a chatty testimonial for some software that I think is kinda cool, and I think it will be of great use to anyone who develops GUI screens. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/05/balsamiq1.html</link>
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		<title>About this blog, taking a brief step back</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I want to make sure that the content in this blog is helpful, accurate, and in some respect entertaining. This entry sums up my overall goals. Comment would be greatly appreciated.

My blogs are rarely planned and edited down &#34;formula&#34; white papers, like what I&#8217;d write for a magazine article. I usually take a central concept [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/general/2009/05/stepback1.html</link>
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		<title>Web GUI tools &#8211; Not as different as they seem</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a sort of follow-up (a 3 pager) to my recent blog &#34;Still on a fence about GUI?&#34; I think there are roughly two groups of people who are still on the fence: those who have tried various options and understand their differences, and those who don&#8217;t yet realize that almost all of the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/2009/05/guichoices2.html</link>
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		<title>HowTo get PDF from MV &#8230; again</title>
		<description><![CDATA[People are always looking for &#34;PDF&#34; or &#34;Excel&#34;. But what do they really want? This blog entry is essentially a copy of a recent posting I made to comp.databases.pick (with new material added at bottom). I reproduced it here because the exact same question came up a day later in the jBase forum about how [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/05/pdf2.html</link>
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		<title>Still on a fence about GUI?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I wonder how many people and companies have given up on GUI, or maybe they&#8217;re permanently on the fence and looking for some way to jump off without getting hurt. This is just a frank discussion that might help some people in this situation. If you already have a GUI or you&#8217;re comfortable with your [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://nebula-rnd.com/blog/tech/mv/2009/05/guichoices1.html</link>
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