December 2006 news:
- Visual DataFlex 12 (Project Horizon) Released!
- Pervasive SQL.8 Support Ends
- Happy Christmas to you all
Visual DataFlex 12 (Project Horizon) Released
What a way to end the year! The much vaunted arrival of Visual DataFlex 12 “Project Horizon”, has been announced and is now available for download. Clients and colleagues with current licence subscriptions will automatically received new codes and CDs.
John Touhy, Data Access Worldwide’s CTO, says, “Version 12 represents the most significant change in the Visual DataFlex development environment in years. We’ve created a brand new Studio. Existing application code remains unchanged, the new Studio will use that code and transform the way you work with it.” Certainly programmers who have already used this new version in earnest have given us very positive feedback.
Seen as a world-class Windows and Web development tool, Visual DataFlex 12 is easy to learn and use, more productive, operationally fast, intelligent and eminently suitable for team development. If you haven’t tried it yet, download an evaluation copy. And there’s more to come! Visual DataFlex Personal will shortly be available for non-commercial use, but more about that in the New Year.
The new Studio (or IDE) provides a cutting-edge development environment for Visual DataFlex, replete with productivity and accuracy-improving technologies that are the equal of any in the market.
The new “CodeSense” facility has been made both pervasive and context sensitive. This means that the Studio can (it is configurable to your preferences) prompt you as you type, providing you with lists of valid options to type next at every point. You can have it complete the line of code for you, or suggest the list of possible choices where there is more than one.
For instance (thanks to John van Houten of DAW for the examples), if you type:
Use[space]
it will prompt you with a list of all the files in your workspace’s MakePath, while if you type:
Procedure Set Value[space]
it will complete the action for you as:
Procedure Set Value Integer iItem String sValue
End_Procedure
because it knows what the argument list for Procedure Set Value has to be.
All of this, once you get used to using it, not only improves the speed and productivity of the developer, but also helps eliminate errors from the code by perpetually offering only valid choices of what to type next. Indeed if you invoke it and are offered no suggestions, then the most obvious conclusion is that what you have just typed is itself invalid.
Code Completion can also be invoked before completing a word, to see the list of possible matching alternatives. It is aware of the classes you are working with and so will only suggest things that are appropriate to that class, again helping to avoid errors.
There are many other important features in Project Horizon and we do not have space to deal with them all here. Go to the Visual DataFlex newsgroup to read more, or download a copy and try them out.
Pervasive.SQL8 Support Ends
Support for Pervasive.SQL v8 will no longer be available from Pervasive Software after 31st December 2006. For a premium charge, however, they will provide telephone support but no fixes or resolutions are guaranteed. If you want to upgrade to the latest version, please call us on 0118 988 8709.
Happy Christmas to you all
It’s been an eventful year for us at Unicorn InterGlobal and we’re looking forward to a few days off with our family and friends, but before we go, we’d like to thank all our clients and colleagues for their support during the year and wish you all a very happy Christmas and an exciting New Year.