For many years Pick developers have relied on a trick to extract the last value element from a multi-valued attribute. I don’t have access to internal F-correlative code to explain why it really works but I can provide an explanation based on observations, along with a couple variations of the trick to explore how it behaves. I welcome corrections from […]
If you’re a .NET developer and interested in Facebook development, the FBGraph.NET SDK is definitely going to be of value. Keep an eye on the project for when it gets published. Here are today’s notes
I’ll start this new blog category with a blunt statement. I really dislike Facebook. It’s a wildly popular website/platform/application, but it’s very poor quality software. That said, I plan to write applications that integrate with Facebook (and other sites like Twitter, Google apps, etc) so I’ll document in this section my thoughts and experiences with coding into the platform.
One of our colleagues just announced she’s moving from MV to .NET. I haven’t written a blog entry for a while here so I thought I’d share some random thoughts on the topic.
We’ve been informed that Permanent activations for NebulaXLite have suddenly de-activated at a couple sites. This same situation occurred about four months ago. The working theory is that a Windows Update replaces some key OS files that are used as “supposedly” consistent markers. The fastest solution to the problem is simply to generate a new request so that we can […]
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 – but I’d bet the number of people who really use this functionality can be counted on a single hand. Today, in an unusually […]
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 in general.
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 and Universe and my answer […]
A discussion in the OpenQM forum got me thinking about keys. I’d like to share some quick and mostly unedited thoughts with you on the topic. I always wonder if I’ll regret an off-the-cuff posting like this…
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’ll invite you to their session, but with tongue firmly in cheek I’ll ask you not to buy anything from them.
Over the last two weeks we’ve had some reports of permanent keys for NebulaXLite suddenly deactivating. This doesn’t seem to be affecting developers or trial licenses. It’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 expected.
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’s a generation beyond UO.NET. That seemed like a good business move. I later found out that […]
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’s cool. Now should I be a good community citizen and give it away? Should I give anything away? In this […]
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 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’ve just updated our pages (through the wonders of Open Source Software hehe) so that comments show a gravatar if it’s available. Why? Why not? For anyone who doesn’t have a gravatar, we’ll […]
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.