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July 2009

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Win a bottle of bubbly!

June this year marked Unicorn’s 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion we are publishing a different quiz over a series of newsletters. For each quiz, the first three entrants to send us the correct answers will each win a bottle of champagne. That’s all there is to it, it’s just for fun and you may be a winner.

Just answer the following questions: 

  1. Who was the target of death threats after writing the Satanic Verses?
  2. What was the highest grossing film based on a DC comic book caped crusader, prior to The Dark Knight (2008)?
  3. Which famous four had their convictions quashed and were freed from prison in October 1989?
  4. In which hit American TV show did the characters Elaine Benes and George Costanza appear?
  5. Which Australian Prime Minister cried on national TV in March 1989 after admitting marital infidelity?

When you’ve got the answers, send them to us, with COMPETITION in the subject line.

Dynamic AI V6.3 is released

This version of Dynamic AI delivers:

Automated Intelligence (AI)

This version of Dynamic AI incorporates Automated Intelligence, allowing you to produce the reports you want, in flexible, intuitive dashboards. Instead of having to manage with predefined reports that usually don’t contain all of the information that you need, now you can easily define exactly what you need.

The interactive dashboard uses simple drag and drop functionality and allows you to quickly perform actions such as showing and hiding information, as well as expanding and repositioning data. Most useful though is the ability to combine reports to create new reports, simply by dragging and dropping one report on top of another.

By clicking on report values such as customers and employees names you can drill up, creating a new AI dashboard specific for that value. Similarly, you can drill down, investigating the details that make up the totals and sub-totals in your reports.

Application Integration

A great new feature that allows developers to integrate Dynamic AI reports within applications and web-portals, providing convenient access to reports for end-users, rather than them having to access Dynamic AI as a standalone application.

Application Integration is available in the Desktop Edition, Runtime Edition, Server Edition and the Enterprise Edition.

Runtime Edition of Dynamic AI

This is a special end user edition of Dynamic AI that allows users to run predefined reports from within their applications. Users are not permitted to modify the reports from within the Runtime Edition, but must upgrade to the Server Edition.

Visual DataFlex 2009/15.0 now available

Data Access have released the most advanced version of Visual DataFlex to date. The objectives of this release are to help developers to build applications more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

Highlights of Visual DataFlex 2009 are:

AJAX Library support for Web applications

This is the first revision of Visual DataFlex that officially incorporates and supports the AJAX Library, helping developers to build web applications that include more features and which are easier to use. The AJAX Library can be quickly added to existing Visual DataFlex Web applications and its classes drastically reduce development time for developers.

Studio and runtime enhancements

The Studio has a range of enhancements including, design time anchor support, easier text selection in Code Explorer and faster loading and running of applications in the Studio. Runtime enhancements include, new Array functions and improved icon resource handling.

New and improved classes

A number of new classes and improvements to existing classes have been implemented. New classes include Hyperlink, Scrolling Container and Splitter Container.

Library enhancements

Improvements to encourage the development and use of Visual Dataflex libraries both within and across development teams have been implemented.

Also, free with Visual DataFlex 2009 is the new Electos 4.0 Content Management System. A new ’Stand Alone’ version allows you to install Electos (with the Visual DataFlex Web Application Server) without the entire Visual DataFlex toolset.

To try out the latest version of Visual DataFlex for yourself, download Visual DataFlex 2009. 

Mertech announces enhancements to Flex2SQL drivers

The enhancements relate to embedded SQL and are valid for all four drivers (MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL). The enhancements are:

Increased speed when fetching multiple rows

Rows are still passed to the DataFlex application one at a time, but in the background the driver will now fetch a default of ten rows at a time. An optional, extra argument has been added to the command SQL_EXECUTE_STMT, allowing the developer to determine how many rows to fetch at a time.

Improved performance when using embedded SQL

Mertech have rewritten code to provide significant performance gains when using embedded SQL and binding into variables.

To take advantage of the first enhancement, a new driver is needed. To make use of the second enhancement, recompile your application with the latest mertech.inc file.

For more information, go to http://mertechdata.com/home/.

Diary Dates

Data Access Netherlands will be hosting the Scandinavian DataFlex Users Conference (SCANDUC) at the Radisson SAS Strand Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden, on the 24th and 25th September 2009. There will be an extra training day on the 23rd September.

The DataFlex International Software Developer’s (DISD) Conference takes place in Dallas, on the 9th and 10th October 2009, with a pre-event training day on the 8th October. A packed agenda for this event, includes technical sessions and demonstrations by leading Visual DataFlex developers.

The European DataFlex Users Conference (EDUC) is a 2-day conference, at Seefeld, Tirol in Austria, on the 4th and 5th March 2010. The event is also being referred to as SKIDUC, to reflect both the season and the location of the conference. The event will deliver technical lectures about Data Access products, including programming tips and tricks.