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We switched to an Atlassian-hosted site as of March 25, 2017.

Recent Clarion blog entries

CIDC Schedule Posted

David Harms posted on Aug 04, 2017

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.

CIDC 2017 early bird pricing ends March 31

David Harms posted on Mar 25, 2017

CIDC 2017 is on! Register by March 31 and save $300 on the conference registration, or $550 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!

ClarionMag is free, and at a new and (probably) permanent home

David Harms posted on Mar 25, 2017

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 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. But it comes at a price; at the number of subscribers ClarionMag has, a license isn't cheap. It's not an unreasonable cost, especially considering what I've paid over the years in my own development time creating the previous versions of Clarion Magazine. Only it become clear to me in recent years that Clarion Magazine was transitioning from a business to a hobby.

I've thought a lot about why this has happened, and what inside and outside forces have been at play. But perhaps the best explanation is this: it's been a good long run of 18 years, and it's just time.

Only I don't want to let Clarion Magazine go, really.

The best option I could come up with was to move it to a low cost hosted site, where all the software updates are included and I don't have to worry about any maintenance issues at all, not even server certificates.

There is, however, a different price to pay. This site is limited to no more than ten active users. That means that I've had to deactivate almost all subscriber accounts.

The bad news is you can no longer log in, leave comments, save favorites etc.

The good news is you no longer have to log in or pay any kind of subscription fee.

I do expect to post articles from time to time. I still have the urge to write, and I still use Clarion in the majority of my consulting work. But you'll probably see even less about traditional Clarion coding and more about where and how Clarion fits in the larger world of software development. What matters the most to me about Clarion these days isn't its past glories, or the nuances of the language, but how Clarion coding can be done using today's best practices, and perhaps most importantly how we can all preserve the value of our work for the future.

So thank you everyone for all your support over the years, not least in the form of subscriptions. It's been and still is a wonderful learning experience, for which I am always grateful. I hope you'll all continue to enjoy this latest incarnation of Clarion Magazine.

Dave Harms, Publisher

Russ Eggen, 1959-2016

David Harms posted on Dec 31, 2016

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, wrote articles for Clarion publications, and was the author of the book Programming Objects in Clarion. His interests included flying, scuba, prog rock and on rare occasions politics.

I always enjoyed meeting Russ at DevCons, but that hadn't happened for a while. This year I was disheartened to hear that he was battling cancer. As his health deteriorated he had to stop working; a GoFundMe campaign started by Rick Smith raised over $23,000 to defray some of Russ's expenses. Russ's sister Julie was with him in his last days, and expressed gratitude to the Clarion community for their support.

Russ Eggen passed away December 24, 2016 at age 57.

Creating a feature toggle library, part 2

David Harms posted on Nov 19, 2016

In 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, the stage of development, and the scope of the requirement. In Part 2 Dave demonstrates his favorite way to design small- to medium-sized chunks of business logic.

Creating a feature toggle library, part 1

David Harms posted on Oct 14, 2016

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? What if you have more than one feature toggle (and you know you will): could there be groups of features you want to turn on and off? What if your feature is part of a web application? Will it apply system-wide or only to certain URLs? And how do you go about designing something like this? Here's a clue: as with much if not most development, if your first impulse is to open the data dictionary you're doing it wrong.

Are file aliases a code smell?

David Harms posted on Jun 27, 2016

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.

H5 first impressions

David Harms posted on Jun 24, 2016

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.

Help Russ Eggen kick cancer's butt

David Harms posted on Jun 24, 2016

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!

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.
Contribute $100 or more and get:
- A year's worth of ClarionMag for free
- Rick Martin's Format Assignment Alignment Addin
Contribute $500 or more and get ClarionMag free for life!
Contribute $299 or more and Mark Riffery will provide "The Interview" service to your or the business owner of your choice. This is a set of 40-50 tough questions about your business. You answer the questions, Mark answers. You'll gain critical insights and advice about growing your business, specific to your business and your situation.
Contribute $250 or more get 16 hours of free consulting from Mike Gorman, via phone or GoToMeeting and you'll also get a five production user version of the Metabase System with one year of updates.

Update: The campaign has exceeded its target with $13,719 raised as of June 25!

SV releases new H5 AppBroker, videos

David Harms posted on Jun 23, 2016

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. More to come....

What does your code smell like?

David Harms posted on Jun 21, 2016

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.

Should you worry about compiling on a solid state drive?

David Harms posted on Jun 10, 2016

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.

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ClarionMag subscription rate change, archive site update

David Harms posted on Jan 23, 2016

We've lowered the Clarion Magazine subscription rate to $29/year and have extended all active subscriptions on a pro-rated basis retroactive to Oct 1 2015. We're still working hard on the archive site rewrite and hope to have that back on line soon, and will be back to publishing on this site once that's done. Details to follow.

News from Thin@

David Harms posted on Jan 23, 2016

Our third party section has some news from the good folks at Thin@:

CIDC day one summary

David Harms posted on Oct 02, 2015

Finally, some DevCon news! Why has it taken so long? Dunno, DevCons are always busy times and this one seems even busier than usual. Maybe I've been spending too much time at the fabulous buffet, or perhaps it's the quarter mile walks to and from the the conference rooms (this is a BIG resort).

This is just the first teaser. I'll have a few more summaries this week, then more detailed reports next week.

Node.js course and ebook for $9

David Harms posted on Apr 09, 2014

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.js but I'd definitely like to learn more. If you haven't played with it yet, I suggest you take a look. From the Nodejs.org web site:

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

There are lots of cool things you can do with Node.js - I've mainly experimented with it in conjunction with DocPad to create lightweight web sites.

Here's the offer text:

In just a few years, Node.js has become the go-to technology for building scalable apps for thousands of companies.

Today, save $120 on our epic Node.js Bundle!

Now just $9 - https://learnable.com/to/4JrBJloI

With this Node.js bundle, you'll learn to use JavaScript to build fast, scalable web apps.

You'll get...

COURSE: Node.js: An Introduction — Our brand new course will get you up to speed with the basics in no time.

EBOOK: Jump Start Node.js — Learn to develop a working Node.js application, from start to finish!

Learnable membership — One month's access to Learnable, including two (additional) free SitePoint book downloads. Membership renews at $29/month or cancel any time and keep all your downloads.
This very special early bird offer won't last, so be quick!

Demand for developers with Node.js skills is growing quickly. Stay ahead of the curve and SAVE $120 today!

https://learnable.com/to/4JrBJloI

Happy learning!
SitePoint

Back home, more DevCon coverage to come

David Harms posted on Sept 30, 2013

Last week was just jammed. It started off with two days of excellent NetTalk training, followed by three days of awesome DevCon presentations that ran to almost twelve hours on Wednesday and Thursday and about ten hours on Friday. Throw in some post-conference mini golf, a 5:45 a.m. wake-up for my morning flight, a lengthy (and unrelated to Clarion) meeting at a local community club barely an hour after my plane landed, an early morning sports practice for my daughter the next day, and by Sunday afternoon I was about as tired as I've felt in the last five years. I crashed for a couple of hours.

And of course there's a lot of work to catch up on after a week away. But I still have a bunch of notes from DevCon, and once I get those posted I'll write up some of my conclusions. Among other things I had a lot of interesting conversations with ClarionMag and DevRoadmaps subscribers, and I've learned a thing or two. I've started implementing some changes that I think will make ClarionMag folk happy.

Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!

CIDC training under way

David Harms posted on Sept 23, 2013

CIDC training is under way. I'm taking notes on the NetTalk session.

ClarionLive show notes for August 2 2013

David Harms posted on Aug 06, 2013

Mike Hanson begins refactoring John Hickey's TimeSavers templates. Lots of great info here for template writers.

Web? Mobile? Doom?

David Harms posted on May 30, 2013

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.

jQuery recommended reading

David Harms posted on May 03, 2012

Check out these jQuery book recommendations.

CodeCharge for web development

David Harms posted on May 10, 2012

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.

Is RAD really as good as it seems?

David Harms posted on May 03, 2012

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.

RAD tool listing

David Harms posted on May 07, 2012

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!

Reactive Extensions and ReactiveUI - a new way to think about events and UI

David Harms posted on May 30, 2012

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.

Continuous compiling/testing

David Harms posted on Jun 06, 2012

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.

SQL Server subqueries - where in vs where exists

David Harms posted on May 03, 2012

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.

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