A while back I wrote a blog entry on how D3 FlashBASIC works. 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 other entry – frankly I’m […]
People are always looking for "PDF" or "Excel". 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 to create a PDF file. […]
I wonder how many people and companies have given up on GUI, or maybe they’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’re comfortable with your current solution, then I invite […]
A recent U2 forum discussion titled "PDF printing, LaTeX, Ghostscript, etc." had some notes about printing docs. I thought I’d share some comments for a more general audience. I’m not trying to sell anything or make any specific points, just following a train of thought and inviting you for the ride.
Someone in the U2 forum asked a question the other day and I went to PickWiki.com to see if there was an answer for them. Yes, the answer was there, but I noticed that there were other possible answers to the question which were not there. So in the spirit of the wiki I updated the web page with some […]
A significant update for NebulaXLite has been posted to our website (see download link from product page). Some people might visit the blog here and not the forum, so I’ll provide a couple extra notes here.
Good progress was made today. I now have a working GUI on my old PocketPC, operating on data in QM running locally on the PDA itself. If you don’t read anything else, just know that this can be done for any of you, and by many of you, with or without live or scheduled syncs to main servers. I may […]
I think I have a solution to the problem of getting a GUI to connect into QM running on a PDA. Thankfully it doesn’t involve an in-depth understanding of Win32 process management, nuances of various releases of WinCE or the Compact Framework .NET, and no C++! The bottom line is that it should be a very straightforward process to use […]
A lot of people talk about PDA applications, and almost everyone has some sort of portable intelligent device these days, but there aren’t many in the MV market. I think we can change that.
It’s a common question: "How do I connect something from outside of my MV DBMS to my application software?" I’ve written about all of these points in various forms before but it looks like it’s time for a recap.
I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong with "qualified" users getting to TCL, and I’m a big fan of having well educated users rather than intentionally obscuring the powerful environment we have. However, as soon as someone mentions financial data being tweaked, or any sort of possible violations of referential integrity, I start singin’ a different tune. And since […]
Several years ago I had a product called NebulaManager which had a significant amount of functionality, allowing bi-directional data movement between MV and Microsoft Office. For various reasons it never really got off the ground. Recently I’ve been spending a lot more time with Outlook, the most recent "conquest" being a utility that moves appointments from an MV app into […]
I thought I’d take another shot at this topic of code generation, to define some terms and set the informational base that may help more people to understand and get excited about my other blog entry on this topic.
As much as none of us like the technology roller coaster, it simply "is". I think MV developers sort of miss the big picture when we have discussions about .NET, Java, Flash, Ajax, Ruby, or any other new technology that hits the streets. Please forgive a short but hard-hitting commentary.
This is a quick request for a show of hands as to how many of you have done any work with code generation for clients to MV – or how many of you may be interested in rapid code generation for new MV user interfaces.
Continuing from yesterday’s blog on this topic, here I’ll present my solution to the problem of software protection – and ask if anyone else is interested in using this solution…
There are several schools of thought about how MV developers deploy their software. Here is a summary of a few approaches to the task, and my own new solution.
People occasionally express interest in Excel integration in the various MV forums. Many of you are running the free developer license of NebulaXLite which was created in response to those inquiries. This is a product update with recent info and links – pretty much an ad for anyone who hasn’t seen NebulaXLite recently or ever.
Some of you will recall a recent blog entry where I documented some of my experience upgrading Unidata and Universe. I just finished upgrading QM. Dang, I love it when it’s easy.
For better or worse, there are no standards for MV / Pick dictionary (schema) definitions. Over the years people have created names like AMOUNT, AMT, AMT$, PCT, PERCENT, %PCT, etc. There are funky characters and mis-spellings and inconsistencies even within each individual application. Shall we try to clean some of this up?