David Jordan posted some comments to the U2 forum that made me think about how this isn’t just about IBM and U2 – this event is yet another loud message to the entire MV community.
Most MV environments don’t need to be shutdown when Windows is taken down. D3 does. I thought I’d document how I boot and shutdown my MV environments for you. I lead with D3NT but comment on other platforms as well.
When a UniObjects.NET operation fails, how do you know what happened? What about mv.NET? Heck, it doesn’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…
I had the pleasure of working with a signature capture device recently. Anyone need to get customer signatures at the Point Of Sale?
In the U2 forum the question was asked “Has anyone implemented Microsoft TAPI in a Universe application?” Let’s call this a FAQ and reword it as “How do we connect anything to an MV DBMS?” It doesn’t matter if you have Universe, jBase, D3, or QM. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about TAPI, scanners, weight scales, IM/chat, GPS, […]
A question came up in CDP about what a “large” 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.
I’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 – the bare essentials. What would you like to see?
After posting a Part 2 to my original notes on Vista and Windows 7 I didn’t think it was possible to get enough material for a Part 3. Hey, I’m no stranger to being wrong and I’ll be happy to admit it. But our “Vista Fan” colleague still cannot face the thought of being completely wrong on so many fronts, […]
This seems to be a frequent topic in MV forums so I’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.
Please don’t beat me. I confess. I’ve been doing extensive Excel development without NebulaXLite. But… there’s a good reason.
My last blog on Vista was judged "TG’s usual anti Vista rant and a couple of wild links to disappointed mugs" by one of our colleagues. So I decided to look a little deeper at the links about Vista that I provided. Holy cow, it’s worse than I thought.
I wrote a few blogs on what’s available for GUI development with the JACXX model, but I’m curious what tools you folks are using – especially tools that are less common in the MV space but well-known outside of this space. I’d also like to share thoughts about a new GUI tools project that I’ve just been thinking about.
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 […]
There is a minor "Windows vs *nix" debate going on in the U2 forum this week. I don’t really want to enter the debate. To me it’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 high priorities for them. I […]
I’ve never been too fond of a development concept that’s alternately called wireframing, prototyping, or mockups … until now. This blog entry digresses from my usual fare. It’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.
This is a sort of follow-up (a 3 pager) to my recent blog "Still on a fence about GUI?" 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’t yet realize that almost all of the popular options are pretty much […]
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 […]
There’s a webinar on April 22 about Vista and Windows 7, and "the horrible tragedy that could happen when running Windows XP". I can’t laugh hard enough when I see Vista lovers saying XP is a tragedy, even though it’s been the dominant Windows workstation platform for eight years and people are still trying hard to hold onto it. Like […]
In this blog entry from 2007 I documented a new offering called NebulaXChange. As NebulaXLite creates rich spreadsheets from BASIC, NebulaXChange is intended to work on the opposite side, with Excel reaching into MV. After well over a year and a great deal of heartache NebulaXChange lives!