Skip to content
Home » News » 2009 News » October 2009

October 2009

  • by

In this issue:


Revised prices for DataFlex

With effect from August 2009 Data Access has revised their licensing policy and pricing. With the proliferation of multiple processors and with immediate effect, DataFlex Linux, Intel Unix and RISC Unix licensing will no longer be issued according to the number of CPUs, to be consistent with Visual DataFlex Web Application Server licensing.

All licence codes will be multi-CPU enabled.


Winner of our competition

June this year marked Unicorn’s 20th anniversary and to mark the occasion we’ve been publishing a different quiz over a series of newsletters. There was only one correct winner, to whom we have sent a bottle of Champagne.

Congratulations William Quinton from Halarose!


Summary of ScanDUC 2009

Another very successful Scandinavian DataFlex User Conference was organised this year by Front-IT in Stockholm, Sweden on 24th-25th September, with pre-conference training on the 23rd.

Unicorn’s Mike Peat gave a well-attended, day-long training course on the Fundamentals of JavaScript programming and also conference presentations on Web 2.0 development and (by special request on the day) the JSON data interchange format.

Other major presentations included a series on various new reporting options from Data Access Europe, covering Dynamic AI integration, Visual Report Writer and VPE for Visual DataFlex, plus two live webinars by Data Access CTO John Tuohy, direct from California, on the future direction of Visual DataFlex and the VDF Studio.  


JavaScript Training from Unicorn

Web Applications are become ever more prevalent in today’s software developments (Ajax, SaaS, Cloud Computing, Web 2.0) and JavaScript is the ubiquitous language for delivering functionality within the web browser, but JavaScript is also an enormously misunderstood language.

JavaScript is often seen as a “trivial” scripting language, or as a bad, or bug-ridden language, but it is none of these things.  Although it is a small and compact language, it is generally stable, consistent and reliable across all major modern web browsers.  It is also an exceptionally powerful language – a fact that is often not apprciated.

Experienced developers frequently experience problems when trying to move from using small snippets of JavaScript to make dynamic web pages, into the realm of using it to produce fully-fledged client-side applications, because many of the strengths and subtleties of the language, as well as some of its pitfalls, are not well understood.

Unicorn have produced a course which examines JavaScript from the ground up, looking at numerous examples that demonstrate how each aspect of the language works, providing the developer with a firm and confident base from which to approach JavaScript projects.

If you are interested in attending one of our JavaScript training courses, or in having tailored training for a group at your company, please contact us.


Diary Dates

October 2009 – DataFlex International Software Developer’s (DISD), Dallas, USA

The DataFlex International Software Developer’s conference starts with free, pre-event training day on the 8th October.On the 9th and 10th October there will be technical sessions and demonstrations by leading Visual DataFlex developers, covering subjects such as, using the latest Visual Dataflex features and updates on what’s happening with the AJAX library and Visual Report Writer.

For more information, visit DISD 2009 Agenda.

November 2009 – Visual DataFlex Special Interest Group (SIG), Huntingdon, UK

The next Visual DataFlex Special Interest Group meeting takes place on the 24th November. This event is a great opportunity to exchange views and ideas with other developers and get up to the minute information about what’s happening with Visual DataFlex. This event will include a free training day on Wednesday, 25th November.

For more information, visit Visual DataFlex SIG UK.

March 2010 – European DataFlex Users Conference (EDUC), Seefeld, Austria

This 2-day conference is held at Seefeld, Tirol in Austria, on the 4th and 5th March 2010. This 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.