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March 2010

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In this Issue:

  • Highlights From EDUC 2010 in Seefeld
  • Visual Report Writer Discounts Still Available
  • Book Your JavaScript Fundamentals Training Today
  • Diary Dates

Highlights From EDUC 2010 in Seefeld

We are still trying to sober Mike up after his visit to EDUC 2010 in Seefeld, Austria at the beginning of March. So far he has muttered about very fast floodlit night skiing, strange Germanic variants of curling in the dark, late-night jam sessions with the “DataFlex Players” band and night-time walks in the snowy Alpine woods… in fact we are not entirely sure he was awake during the daytime at all! (He must have been some of the time, as he gave a well attended two-day JavaScript training course prior to the conference, as well as a presentation during the conference itself.)

The conference was a resounding success with plenty of interesting and relevant presentations about the latest developments in Visual DataFlex, Electos, the AJAX framework, Dynamic AI and the Codejock Library to name but a few. In addition, the were some terrific presentations on how to get the most out of the tools and demonstrations of what can be achieved.

There were generally two main strands to the agenda, which was in English, but with a parallel German track where possible: Web-based applications and application development on the one hand, and a wide range of reporting solutions on the other, with old standards such as Crystal Reports and Dynamc AI being joined by presentations on the VPE (Virtual Print Library) for Visual DataFlex, List and Label and the new Data Access Visual Report Writer.

Exceptions to these trends were Data Access CTO John Tuohy’s presentations, focussing on the VDF Studio and, for the future, the new VDF Grid class; Data Access CEO Chip Casanave’s exposition of how to achieve SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in Electos and Martin Pincott, Peter Bragg and Ian Smith’s demonstrations of the Codejock Active-X library of visual controls for VDF.

All this was washed down by large quantities of good Austrian beer and excellent entertainment. You can see some of the pictures on the EDUC 2010 site. A very successful and enjoyable conference was concluded by the choice of the next EDUC venue, which was closely contested between Bali (an Australian suggestion, to be combined with their annual Corroboree event), Iceland (Front IT) and Spain (Moose Software), with Spain winning by a narrow margin, the proposed location being close to Vigo in Galicia.

If you weren’t fortunate enough to attend EDUC this year, we hope to see you at the next EDUC conference in Spain.

Visual Report Writer Discounts Still Available

Data Access are releasing the Developer Edition of their new reporting tool, Visual Report Writer, this month. For a limited time only the following special introductory discounts are available for Visual Report Writer purchases:

  • March – 40% discount
  • April – 30% discount

Main features of Visual Report Writer include:

  • A visual report designer, with wizards and ’drag and drop’ functionality, to help you create precise, professional reports.
  • Visual Report Writer works with a wide variety of ODBC data sources including Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Pervasive SQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Access, the DataFlex embedded database and more.
  • A range of output options, for example, reports can be viewed on screen, printed and exported to PDF.
  • Easy integration of reports into your Visual DataFlex Windows applications, with the help of a wizard.
  • Royalty-free deployment of reports integrated with your Visual DataFlex Windows applications.
  • The ability to lock your reports, so no one else can modify them.

Learn more about Visual Report Writer.

Book Your JavaScript Fundamentals Training Today

Our JavaScript Fundamentals training course is designed to provide you with a thorough and in depth understanding of Javascript and the Document Object Model (DOM). This instructor led course helps you to explore JavaScript with the help of examples, building the knowledge and confidence you require to use JavaScript in a real world environment. We can tailor the course to suit your needs, providing anything from a simple two day overview to a longer more detailed course where the delegates are required to complete all of the exercises.

JavaScript and the DOM are the basic technologies used in building advanced web applications. Although you can use Visual DataFlex to generate great Web applications without an in depth knowledge of JavaScript or the DOM, you do need to understand these subjects before you can fully extend your applications to meet the needs of complex, real world requirements.

  • Structure and syntax, data types, operators, expressions, variables, objects, arrays and functions, conditional execution, loops and exception handling.
  • More advanced aspects such as anonymous functions (lambdas), namespaces, modules and closures.
  • JavaScript in the Web Browser.
  • The DOM (Document Object Model) for both HTML and XML and how to work with it in JavaScript.
  • CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) API, browser incompatibilities and what to do about them.
  • The browser event model and event listeners.
  • The XMLHttpRequest object which forms the basis for Ajax-style web applications.

You will be given examples relevant to the training material to install, which you can use to follow along with the course and/or for later study.

Diary Dates

VDF Special Interest Group (SIG) – United Kingdom

This event takes place on the 17th June 2010, and will cover the latest developments and points of interest in the VDF community.