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Recent Clarion Content
The CIDC 2017 schedule has been posted. Sessions include:
A preview of Clarion 11
Two H5 sessions
A number of SQL topics including conversions, debugging, profiling, etc.
A call to Code Craftsmanship
Database backup, restore and integrity
Template writing
Home automation and Amazon Echo
Google analytics in desktop apps
and much more, including third party presentations and of course two days of exceptional NetTalk training by CapeSoft.
Check out the full schedule here. https://www.cidc2017.…
CIDC 2017 is on! https://www.cidc2017.com Register by March 31 and save $300 https://www.cidc2017.com/pricing.htm on the conference registration, or $550 https://www.cidc2017.com/pricing.htm on both the conference and the training.
Another good reason to register early - get your room at the Rosen! While there are other hotels nearby, there's nothing quite like staying on site.
See you in Florida!
I suppose it's always dangerous to say something's permanent, especially when talking about technology, but for the foreseeable future I've moved ClarionMag to this site, clarionmag.jira.com.
Why here?
For some years now I've used Atlassian's Confluence content management https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence system to deliver Clarion Magazine. It's a terrific platform - I love it and recommend it to anyone looking for a powerful and easy to use CMS.…
It's hard for me to imagine a Clarion developer who hasn't heard of Russ Eggen. A Clarion user for 30 years, he was both a consultant and an instructor for Topspeed Corporation. He was also a founding member of SoftVelocity when that company formed in 2000. He left SoftVelocity the following year to start his own company, RadFusion Inc.
Russ was a tireless Clarion advocate who helped many Clarion developers improve their skills. He taught numerous classes,…
In Part 1 https://www.clarionmag.com/display/clarion/Creating+a+feature+toggle+library%2C+part+1 Dave Harms introduced the idea of a feature toggle library, and wrote that the starting point for Clarion development should not be the data dictionary. In many cases the data dictionary comes at the very end of the process. But If the data dictionary doesn't come first, what does? There are a lot of different answers to that question, depending on what kind of application you're developing,…
What do you do when a customer requests a change or a new feature in your product that only applies to that one customer? Broadly speaking, you have two options: a feature branch or a feature toggle, and for most situations feature toggles win hands down. But feature toggles can get complex - does the feature toggle apply only at startup, or can it be changed at runtime? Does it apply to everyone or only certain users?…
I've added another Clarion code smell to the list: file aliases. Yes, there are times when you need them, but there's also a good chance they're the wrong answer to the problem you're trying to solve. https://www.clarionmag.com/display/clarion/Avoiding+code+smell%2C+updated+with+selected+new+%28that+is%2C+old%29+fragrances#aliases
He's old. He's grouchy. He's hard of hearing and not wearing his hearing aids. And. For a limited time, he's back.
Rick Smith has started a GoFundMe campaign to help raise $12,000 for a cancer treatment for Russ Eggen that isn't covered by Russ's health insurance. Read more about it and contribute here! https://www.gofundme.com/2apu69r4
You probably don't need any incentive to give Russ a hand, but here are some anyway:
For each qualifying donation Pratik Patel will provide a copy of his CYA IDE tool. CYA exports a TXA of your app every time you build, so it Covers Your App.…
SoftVelocity has released a new H5 AppBroker to go along with the H5 support in the latest Clarion 10 EE release. H5 uses the long-standing AppBroker product combined with Bootstrap to convert standard Clarion apps to web apps. Because Bootstrap is a response web framework, Clarion apps with the H5 treatment can be viewed on mobile as well as desktop devices. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLweTGzUgLC-QedaF6PtQD0vjh5oY2QMvQ More to come....
Does your code give off the sweet fragrance of a rose garden? Perhaps it's closer to the other end of the aromatic spectrum. Check out our updated Clarion-specific list of common code smells.
So you're running Clarion on a solid state drive and performance is terrific. But you've heard those rumors about how it's possible to wear out SSDs with too many writes. Should you worry? Dave Harms crunches the numbers and comes up with a surprising result. Try out the spreadsheet and see how long your SSD will last.
The office will be closed from March 23-31 but I will be checking email periodically. Please allow several days for subscriptions to be processed.
Dave Harms
Publisher
Calling .NET code from Clarion doesn't have to be complicated or nerve-wracking, especially if you're passing and returning integers and/or string data. As Bill Florek shows, all you really need is a third party library for your .NET assembly and an updated LibMaker courtesy of Brahn Patridge.
A first cut of the rebuilt ClarionMag archive http://archive.clarionmag.com/ is online. There's still lots of work to be done, but you can log in, and search for and read articles. Other links do not yet work, and the look and feel is still pretty raw.
As you probably know the archive.clarionmag.com http://archive.clarionmag.com/ site has been offline for several months now. It broke badly when we moved the site to a new server. My initial efforts to get the archive back online were unsuccessful and eventually I realized that a proper fix was going to take a lot more work.
When I first wrote what is now the archive site I began with Castle Monorail, a Ruby on Rails-inspired framework for .NET web development.…
So what really is going on with the archive site, and is there a change in subscriptions coming?
Do you test your code primarily by running the app that contains the code? If so, you may be a professional debuggerer. Scott Nimrod may be a .NET guy, but this question and others in his recent blog post https://bizmonger.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/are-you-a-professional-debuggerer/ make it sound like he's talking directly to the Clarion community.
What's the alternative? For starters, get your code out of embed points, which is the very worst place it could be.…
We've had difficulties with the archive.clarionmag.com site since moving to this new server, and it's becoming clear that the long term solution is to upgrade the site software (built with an early release of ASP.NET MVC) to the currently available tooling. This work has begun. Thanks again for your patience.
Bob Z's Friday sessions bookended the last day of the conference, and included Q & A and the future of Clarion. This is a recreation of a report I created shortly after the conference, the final draft of which was lost in a server crash a few days later.
Recent WinDev Content
WinDev-US, Cowboy Computing Systems, Next Age Consulting, Fabrice Harari, and SoftDesign Consulting/WxTraining.net are organizing a training conference to be held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee at the Edgewater Hotel and Convention Center August 28-31, 2013 with an optional two-day Fundamentals Bootcamp beginning on August 26 http://www.windev-us.com/WXUS_WEB/us/wxdc2013.awp
DevRoadmaps publisher Dave Harms explains the reason for the current publishing hiatus.
The 2012 WxDevCon is now under way in Nashville, TN. Andy Stapleton has posted some pics.
I thought I'd be back on track with the closing instalments of WinDev in an Hour a Day but Hurricane Sandy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy has caused headaches, not for DevRoadmaps but for a consulting client. I hope to resume WDIAHAD next week.
Dave Harms takes a look at WinDev's ability to create components for multiple platforms, and comes across a few configuration options that hint at build automation and customized code generation.
Dave Harms explores component creation and discovers a tools collection he didn't know existed.
There's something fitting about covering time management and business rules in the same post...
WinDev's integrated source code management makes it easier for teams to collaborate on projects. And not just teams - if you're a lone developer you have a lot to gain by using SCM.
The project dashboard provides a lot of different ways to track the health of your project; you can change how WinDev evaluates the patient's vital signs. And then there's SCM, which also plays into project status tracking.
There's lots of useful stuff in the project dashboard, not least of which is the option to enable source code management.
Dave Harms solves his object-passing problem with help from Peter Holemans and offers up a short argument for why passing "self" to another object should be a rare occurrence. He also touches on constants, reference assignments, interfaces and multiple inheritance.
Our WinDev In An Hour A Day series is taking a break so we can get caught up on other content and hopefully get the site software updated (there are lots of cool new features in the update, so stay tuned!)
WinDev lets you return whatever you like from a procedure or method; you don't have to declare the return type ahead of time. In fact you can return varying data types from the same method.
Dave Harms makes some headway testing method overloading (and discovers an unexpected bonus) but gets stalled by two tests that, for no apparent reason, won't run.
What do you do when a unit test can't give you all the information you need? You write to the system log and view the results with DbgView. Dave Harms muddles his way through to calling the Windows API in WinDev.
Dave's tour of WinDev's OO capabilities brings up some questions about method parameters, which leads to setting up some unit tests...
Yes, WinDev has OO capabilities. Here's why you should care (if you don't already), plus a first look at how to declare a class.
Dave Harms dabbles in chart creation, messes up his environment, and wonders why menus aren't searchable.
Sending a file or an email between two computers doesn't sound all that complicated, but there's a lot to consider especially if you want the UI to remain responsive while the transfer is happening. WinDev has a number of example apps demonstrating how to do FTP and email.
The tutorial may be a little thin on the subject of socket communication, but there's a nice little client/server chat application that's worth a closer look.
Recent Other Content
Today Johan van Zyl relayed a Node.js offer email in comp.lang.clarion. This is a promotional offer which is designed to get you signed up on a $29/month plan at Learnable.com. The first month is just $9 and you get the Node.js course and ebook. I haven't had any experience with Learnable yet, and it's probably well worth the $$$, but do note that you can cancel any time if you just want to drop the $9.
I've gone ahead and signed up for the $9 offer. I've done some work with Node.…
Are you doomed if you're not already developing for the web and/or mobile devices? Possibly. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Lee White points out a recent blog post savaging MySQL for various flaws http://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else. The comments are also interesting reading.
Mark Riffey recently mentioned Telerik's Icenium http://www.icenium.com/, a cloud-based development tool for both iOS and Android development that leverages JavaScript and HTML5. There's a desktop IDE for Windows developers and a browser-based UI for other platforms. Your code lives in the cloud (Rackspace, reportedly). Apps are distributed through their respective app stores.
Icenium uses Telerik's Kendo UI,…
Lee White points out this blog post on creating your own network attached storage (NAS) box http://stevestreza.com/2012/09/30/freenas-build/. Steve Streza (technology, design, and bacon lover) explains how he went about creating an 11 terabyte storage server based on the FreeNAS operating system (a variant of FreeBSD). The blog post contains detailed instructions and a parts list with a total cost of materials of just under $1500.…
While running VS 2012 today I finally hit the wall on that ridiculous all capitals main menu, which surely has to rank with Microsoft Bob as one of Redmond's worst UI moments.
Happily, I found this post by Richard Banks http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-visual-studio-2012-all.html on how to restore sanity (i.e. mixed case) to the main menu.
In case that post goes offline,…
Dennis Evans points out this free book from RedGate on backing up and restoring SQL Server databases http://www.red-gate.com/products/dba/sql-backup/entrypage/sql-server-backup-restore?utm_source=simpletalk&utm_medium=email-main&utm_content=dbateam_shawnebook-20120709&utm_campaign=sqlbackup. Yes, this 391 page PDF includes information on RedGate's own SQL Backup Pro http://www.red-gate.…
Microsoft has announced BUILD 2012 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Vector/Announcing-BUILD-2012, its annual developer conference which this year will be held at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington from Oct 20 to Nov 2. Registration opens August 8 http://www.buildwindows.com/. You can view the 2011 presentations at Channel 9 http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011.
Unfortunately the chosen date is a direct conflict with DevConnections in Las Vegas http://www.devconnections.…
Mark Riffey brought Mighty Moose to my attention, which led me to a few other products that similarly compile your .NET code while you type, and run any affected unit tests so you get immediate feedback on how your changes affect your code base. This is pretty cool stuff.
I've put up a couple of quick pages on Microsoft's Reactive Extensions (Rx) and Paul Betts' ReactiveUI, two libraries that are generating a lot of interest in the .NET world.
Michael Dettmer has posted some information on the CodeCharge web development tool, which he points out has a lot of features that make it similar to Clarion and WinDev. Generated code can be in ASP.NET (C#), ASP, PHP, Java Servlets, JSP, ColdFusion or Perl.
While looking at ways to manage database changes that happen as a result of application upgrades, Dave Harms comes across SQL Server's snapshot capabilities. There are some issues to be aware of, but if you need to roll back a database change, snapshots can help you do it in a hurry.
Our focus at DevRoadmaps is on two RAD tools, Clarion and WinDev. But there are lots of RAD tools out there, and we're always happy to learn more. After a question from a reader about CodeCharge, we've gone ahead and created a new page listing the available RAD tools. There are just a few entries - help us add more!
Visual Studio 11 Beta http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd831853%28v=vs.110%29.aspx can be downloaded at no charge. Major changes in Visual Studio 11 include:
Support for Windows 8 Metro-style apps
Language changes for Visual Basic, C#,…
Back in January there was a newsgroup discussion about whether WHERE IN or WHERE EXISTS is a better choice when using a subquery. And that brings up a few other questions, like the role of the cache in testing and the danger of using NOT in WHERE clauses.
Developers who use RAD tools like Clarion and WinDev do so because they believe those tools offer a very real advantage over traditional hand-coder development tools. But are those advantages as great as they seem? David Harms looks at when and why RAD is a help and a hindrance.
We've set up a page for third party SQL database admin tools https://www.devroadmaps.com/display/sql/Database+administration+tools. Products currently listed include Navicat, SQLMaestro, EMS SQL Management Studio and SQL Delta. We're looking for more recommendations!
DevRoadmaps contains a growing number of pages for MS SQL users. These include: a links page; notes on SQL Server 2012, SQL Server admin tools, how to insert a record with a predefined identity record, and the tuning advisor,
Check out these jQuery book recommendations.
A couple of links to Monty Widenius arguing for MariaDB over MySQL and explaining when and where you need to license either of these SQL servers.
The CIDC 2017 schedule has been posted. Sessions include:
- A preview of Clarion 11
- Two H5 sessions
- A number of SQL topics including conversions, debugging, profiling, etc.
- A call to Code Craftsmanship
- Database backup, restore and integrity
- Template writing
- Home automation and Amazon Echo
- Google analytics in desktop apps
and much more, including third party presentations and of course two days of exceptional NetTalk training by CapeSoft.
Check out the full schedule here. If you haven't registered, this month is your last chance get a discount on registration fee.