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July 2010

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In this Issue:

Visual Report Writer Released

Data Access Worldwide have announced the release of Visual Report Writer, their new tool for producing reports.

Visual Report Writer is designed to be used by all levels of users from software developers to end-users and works with a wide variety of data sources including Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Pervasive SQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Access, the DataFlex embedded database and more. A number of national languages are supported including: English (US or UK), Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian.

Here are just a few of the benefits of using Visual Report Writer:

  • reports can be created quickly by users of all levels, with the help of wizards that assist with tasks such as, selecting the correct data for your report and grouping, filtering, sorting and totalling that data
  • changing reports is as quick and easy as creating them in the first place, with a range of formatting options and the ability to drag and drop things where you want them
  • reports can be viewed on-screen or printed, with the option to export reports to PDF, giving you flexibility in how you distribute information
  • your carefully constructed reports can be kept safe with a lock facility – ensuring no one can make changes to your work

Get Ready For the New VDF 2010/16.0 Grid Control

With the VDF 16.0 Release Candidate now available, and the final production release just around the corner, it’s a good time for a recap of the two webinars that Data Access produced to help developers get to grips with the new grid control. We summarised the first webinar a couple of months ago, which is worth watching if you haven’t already done so (go to the prerecorded Grid Orientation webinar).

With the new grid control being such a strong focus of VDF 2010/16.0, these webinars provide an opportunity to find out what you need to know quickly and easily. To help you make up your mind whether it’s worth your time, here’s a summary of the second webinar.

The Grid Orientation Part 2 webinar, presented by John Tuohy, CTO of Data Access Worldwide, starts with a brief summary of what was covered in the first Grid Orientation webinar, it then goes on to cover the new grid control in more depth, by showing different examples of grids and then explaining how to build them.

The first grid that John shows is a simple grid for loading customer data, for example, name, number. After explaining how to create the grid he adds buttons, such as a Clear All button, to illustrate how you can work with the data in the grid. Next, John moves on to Data Aware grids, illustrating how you can control how data is loaded into these types of grids and how to take advantage of the underlying data dictionary.

At this point there is a question and answer session, before moving on to detailed slides about the underlying workings of the grids and considerations for working with Data Aware grids.

Finally, John discusses header-Detail grids (to illustrate a classic Order Entry type form) and answers questions in this area. He highlights key areas of the new grid functionality to ’watch out for’, because they work in a different way to the functionality in previous releases of VDF.

As always, another great webinar from John Tuohy, making the subject relevant and interesting.

To watch the webinar, go to the prerecorded Grid Orientation Part 2 Webinar.

Improve Your Web Applications With the New AJAX Library 2.2

The latest version of Visual DataFlex AJAX Library has been released and is designed to work with Visual DataFlex 2010/16.0. The AJAX Library enables developers to develop great looking, fully functional web applications. It includes both the foundation for building AJAX (or Web 2.0 applications), and a sample application to which developers can refer for examples.

Benefits of the new Ajax Library include:

  • better looking applications resulting from updated themes which have new icons, buttons and other small improvements
  • improvements to expressions, with the AJAX Library now supporting binding a field to an expression
  • a fast new API for making VdfCall’s to the server within a single line of code
  • improvements to calls to the server with data bound server calls
  • an easier way to load Data Dictionary labels onto the page, using runtime labels
  • better support for complex DDO structures and constraints
  • enhancements to error tracing with a new details section that can show additional information about errors

Read more information about the AJAX Library 2.2.

Diary Dates

Scandinavian DataFlex User Conference (ScanDUC) 2010 – Helsingør (Elsinore), Denmark

This event takes place on the 23th and 24th September 2010, with a training day on the the 22nd September, in the beautiful city of Helsingør, situated just beside the sea and only 2 km from Sweden.

The Conference will be hosted at the Hotel Marienlyst, 4-star-rated property, which has the beach located on its doorstep, and is just a short stroll to the forest, the marina, Kronborg Castle and the medieval centre of Elsinore, which offers shopping and cafés.

The agenda, registration and pricing for the conference have yet to b confirmed, and we will keep you informed as this information is released.

For those of you who missed out on the skiing opportunities of EDUC this year, perhaps an indian Summer in Denmark could be just what you need.

Synergy 2011 – Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

The Synergy Conference takes place on the 30th March and 1st April 2011, with two training days on the 28th and 29th March.

This opportunity for meeting with the Data Access development team comes only every two years, and is well worth attending. The event itself will have a space-theme to add to the fun.