|
The VDF Special Interest Group provides a regular forum for Visual DataFlex interest in the UK. It covers Windows and web application development with Visual DataFlex and anything related to it.
|
Visual DataFlex
VDF is one of the most effective database application development systems you can find.
|
|
|
EDUC 2008
Visual DataFlex is in use around the world, and a whole "conference circuit" has grown up for VDF developers over the years. The main conference is held roughly every 18 months in the United States, often but not always in Data Access’s home city of Miami. For us in Europe, we have the European DataFlex User Conference, or EDUC for short, held this year in Copenhagen in early June.
Our two attendees reported that it was well organised, with Copenhagen being a beautiful city, especially on the warm and sunny days of early June.
Much of the conference content is made available as PowerPoint Presentations, so those who could not attend can nevertheless get some flavour of what went on. This newsletter will give you short cuts to those that are available, along with some comments from our attendees.
Overall Impressions
Leaving aside the question of the latest - VDF 2008 - release, which was covered in depth at , and which has been reported in previous newsletters relating to, the UK VDF SIG, two themes appeared to dominate - Visual Appearance and the Web.
Appearance
Ever since Windows first appeared, it has given the opportunity to create elaborate visual effects. Sometimes these come to dominate, and what looks best doesn’t necessarily work the best, but there is no denying that if you ignore aesthetics you are at a disadvantage. Data Access - and some independent developers, such as UK VDF Sig members - have put a lot of effort into making the new Codejock visual display classes easy to work with in the VDF application development process. The current state of the art in this respect is now VDF 2008 of course. More on this below
The Web
A message we have been putting over for a while, but the Web is slowly becoming "the new windows". Data Access have had a project running for some time now, developing an AJAX framework to provide interactive applications running in a web page, and there is a new Version of the AJAX Framework available for VDF 2008 users.
Click on the blue/underlined links to download any of the material.
|
 The Opening Presentation The Opening Presentation was, as always, given by Chip Casanave, President of Data Access Worldwide. These quoted statistics, taken from the presentation and relating to US developers, look interesting:-
- 94% of VDF Developers are actively using VDF Studio 12.1 or 2008
46% are developing on or deploying Web Application Server
- Among larger customers, 46% intend to implement BI to compliment current applications
- Among smaller customers, 25% intend to implement BI to compliment current applications
- 46% want more information about BI products
So, if you are not using VDF 12.1 or greater, looks like it is time to move up, Web deployment is becoming mainstream, and interest in Business Intelligence is growing.
Back to top
|
|
Appearance
Two major presentations on the importance of visual appearance
- The buying process can be a beauty contest (beauty is equated with functionality)
This is a very good examination of the visual requirements of applications, implementation issues and has some really stunning "new look" VDF application screen shots.
The VDF SIG Codejock UK Project
A group of UK VDF Sig members members working with Martin Pincott from Asckey Data Services have had their own project to extend Codejock support to cover more of the available Codejock classes. This presentation shows a lot of the actual code, and for more on the subject, and access to source code, see here.
Back to top
|
Infrastructure Topics
Citrix
VDF is now supported under Citrix. Emil Stojanov, technical director at Quantaris BV, is a very experienced software developer who deploys relatively large and complex systems on Citrix. Emil gave a very useful presentation on configuring Citrix, accompanied by some sample Application code
Express Connectivity -
Visual Dataflex recognises the low cost "Express Database" concept with reduced start up costs. This presentation provides comparisons of the available Express database versions, and covers the latest version of the connectivity kits. A example application is provided.
Back to top
|
| Web and Web related/Using topics
AJAX - Interactive Web Applications
The AJAX VDF library is covered in this presentation. This is an ongooing and ambitious project by Data Access to provide us with the means of easy development of rich and interactive Web applications that can rival Windows desktop apps for user friendliness and interactive features. View details and example screen shots of the Ajax project and download the actual VDF AJAX Library v1.2
Mobile Devices
A presentation from Asckey Data Services, this covers developing VDF applications to handle Mobile Devices - PDAs, Smartphones etc using Web Services to talk into the existing application logic.
Web Application Development
A complex Web Development was presented by Front-IT which handles switching between multiple databases, and incorporates AJAX, and web services technology.
For an insight as to just how complex situations can be that VDF can handle, this takes some beating! The PowerPoint contains a lot of well explained VDF source code.
Electos
A presentation covering the new v3.1 release of Electos, this is noteworthy for highlighting the potential of using freely available third party template designs for an Electos site, something we have a current interest in - watch this space!.
Back to top
|
 Business Intelligence
No presentation available, so:-
Carsten Sørensen, CEO of Cintac (DAI’s author), presented the latest features in the latest version of Cintac’s Dynamic AI business intelligence tool.
With the growing number of DataFlex developers adopting Client/Server technology, adopting Dynamic AI for management reporting on business information is rapidly growing, as well.
This latest version allows for more rapid deployment and start-up, and also offers an exciting new feature - full support of Dynamic AI on your iPhone!
The Next version of Dynamic AI
Our reporter was very impressed by what is coming in the next version of DAI, so, remembering we have no timescales for release as yet:-
- More intuitive interfaces/use of data and reports
- Automated Intelligence
- Now when you open a table, it automatically creates summary reports on various columns as well, and pulls in the descriptions for the IDs where it can. You can then remove tables and reports to get a dashboard
- Can drag and drop one of these automatic reports onto another to modify that report to break down the results by the first report e.g. dragging a breakdown by gender report on top of a breakdown by annual income report will add 2 extra columns in the breakdown by annual income report - "M" and "F"!
Very impressive!
Eddy Kleinjan and Nick Nickijuluw from Data Access Europe commented
- Data Access is very serious about DAI
- Working on embedding DAI into VDF
Comment:- We have for a long time regarded Dynamic AI as the pick of the bunch as a Business Intelligence system ideally matched to VDF usage - though it can scale up to very big databases/user numbers (just like VDF!). It looks like there is a lot more yet to come with Dynamic AI! See our Dynamic AI Site for more details of course, including free Personal Edition Download
Back to top
|
The EDUC Web Site
If you wish to catch up on the notes on all the presentations, including those for which there is no accompanying detailed PowerPoint file, see here.
It is always difficult to report on on live demos, such as those delivered by John Tuohy on VDF 2008 and on Vista Deployment, for example, but these particular topics wrere largely covered by our VDF SIG meeting in March, so if you haven’t already seen that, look here.
Back to top
|
|
The Last Word
One very pertinent comment from our reporter
Talking about VDF 2008 and Vista:- John Tuohy explained that we should only run VDF 2008 or later on Vista, and strongly recommended that we move to VDF 2008 anyway. When I asked why, he just said "Just trust me, you need to move!"
Vista does present some big changes in deployment, and VDF 2008 gives us big opportunities for producing better applications on any WIndows version (and with AJAX, for web applications also), so I don’t think we have to suspect any ulterior motives here.
VDF 2008 is one of those big jumps, arriving at, and responding to, a time when the "runtime environment" is changing. An essential new version release for bullet proofing the future.
Back to top
|
|
| |
 Asckey Data Services Ltd is a UK Channel partner for Data Access Worldwide, authors of Visual DataFlex. We provide Visual DataFlex,
Electos and Dynamic AI sales and support in the UK Church End Farm
Warboys Road, Pidley,
Cambs PE28 3DA
|
|
|
VDF e-News June 2008