Adobe Flex for MV GUI
I’ve been looking at Adobe Flex. I think you may be interested.
Improving your error handling
I started thinking about the sorts of error messages that I report to vendors on an almost daily basis. It reminded me of when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons – a thief character to be exact.
Thoughts on MV and PDF
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.
Intro to PickWiki
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 […]
Notes on NebulaXLite
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.
PDA GUI for MV – Success
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 […]
PDA GUI for MV Follow-up
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 […]
PDA GUI for MV
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.
Connecting with MV
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.
Should end-users have access to TCL?
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 […]
More MV integration with Microsoft Outlook
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 […]
Code generation and architectures – for MV developers
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.
The Technology Roller Coaster
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.
CodeSmith, .netTiers, code generation, etc
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.
Software Protection for MV applications – Part 2
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…
Software Protection for MV applications – Part 1
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.
NebulaXLite Introduction
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.
QM upgrade – too easy
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.
Let’s clean up our dictionaries
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?
Single code base, multiple MV DBMS platforms
Did you know you can use a single code base for multiple incompatible MV DBMS platforms? Most developers only care about coding to a single platform but many of us support many platforms. Those who do support multiple platforms have their own preferred way of maintaining their code.