Presentations

Official EDUC 2012 opening!

Exciting things are happening in the world of technology and at Data Access Worldwide. In his welcome message, Chip will talk about the direction of the company and its product family, and how we can all grow together in the future.

Version 17.0 is a big release that contains many developer requested enhancements and new features. For developers whose Visual DataFlex applications have grown into very large, sophisticated systems, the additions simply make life easier for them and help them produce better and better looking solutions. For people who are new to Visual DataFlex, 17.0 gives extra help to get started and efficiently create great looking applications. Version 17.0 is an important milestone for building Windows applications, in this presentation John explains why and how the changes will impact developers and their applications.

Visual Report Writer is a relatively young product from Data Access Worldwide. Version 2.0 is by far the largest update for the product, containing lots of new big features, especially for the Visual DataFlex developer. Vincent will explain the new features and will illustrate why they are interesting and particularly suited for Visual DataFlex developers.

Several powerful new Table and Data Dictionary features have been added to Visual DataFlex 2012/17.0. John will provide an overview of these new features and discuss how and, more importantly, when to use them. Particular attention will be paid to how these features can be integrated into your existing applications.

Visual Data Pump is a new product that is recently released. It’s a simple, straightforward way to benefit the power of SQL, without having to completely migrate your data from the venerable embedded DataFlex database. Nick will show Visual Data Pump in operation, and explain when it is beneficial and effective to use this new tool.

At Synergy 2011 there was a remarkable presentation by Dan Levene, CTO at Anasazi Software. Anasazi’s success prevents Dan from providing this presentation at EDUC 2012, but we’re pleased to have Emil Stojanov willing to deliver it. When Emil saw Dan’s presentation at Synergy, he immediately recognized the power and practical benefits of being able to install COM components, without having to deal with registry issues. Having applied the Anasazi techniques to his company’s applications, Emil will share them and his experience in this presentation.

Do you have an application that consists of hundreds of programs that is used by many users? You will want to know how your application is used exactly. Which programs are used the most, which ones are used less – or perhaps even not at all? Pepe Guimarães describes an application that is deployed on more than 600 sites that provides answers to all these questions.

Mertech DocuMentor analyzes your DataFlex application source and generates a detailed report. It contains both a high-level architectural overview of the application as well as details down to the source level. And generating information directly from source ensures that the information is always accurate. You can benefit from this form of automatic software documentation in many ways, Riaz will present how.

Presenter/moderator: John Tuohy
WebApp AJAX Development Team: John van Houten & Harm Wibier

Data Access Worldwide will change the way web applications are developed in the future. A New Web Application Framework has been designed with ultimate developer productivity and great looking, highly functional, standards-based web applications as its goals. John Tuohy will introduce the New Web Application Framework showing what it provides and how it works. Following the introduction, John van Houten and Harm Wibier, the framework’s lead designers, will join John Tuohy for a panel discussion about the framework’s features and implementation including further demonstration. Questions from the audience will be taken if time allows.

Don’t miss it!

Mertech Flex2Crystal enables users of Crystal Reports to adopt newest versions of Crystal Reports (version 2008 and onwards) without changing their report design and with minimal changes to their code. The presentation will show users how easy it is to migrate to Crystal 2011, with only the “search and replace” needed to switch from old to new version of Crystal. And Riaz will discuss support for new features in Crystal Reports 2011.

Some applications are very prone to changes. Especially if changes are often dictated by change of law, compliance with new official formats, needed new features, improvements and bugs, applications are constantly updated. If those updates have to be rolled-out to a large user-base, things get interesting. How to create an update mechanism that can securely update all components, be it an update of Visual DataFlex or COM libraries. And safely have the user choose “Yes, install this update”.

Visual Report Writer version 2.0 offers a special feature for developers, called “ELF”. It stands for Extended Library Function, which means that a developer can now create his own DLL, or COM control and make the functionality available in Visual Report Writer. Given the right C- or VB programming skills, the sky is now the limit!

The new version of Electos offers a long awaited feature: the ability to grant authors access only to specific parts of a website. Another new feature is the option to maintain certain parts of the website that support Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is one of the first things one needs to get into for building a successful site. Therefore, Roel will give a first introduction into the secrets of SEO.

How many find-loops have you programmed in your life? Remembering index numbers, seeding record buffers, sorting in arrays because of inefficient indexes – and what else? No more of that: TableQuery is here! Finding a record will never be the same again. Be prepared for a 30 minutes, life-changing experience.

Among the many big changes in version 17.0 is an overhaul of how fonts are used in Visual DataFlex Windows applications. The goal of these changes is to allow developers to create applications that look great everywhere - any Windows platform and any screen display resolution. John will explain the techniques for how this is done including information about how fonts work in Windows, how they are used in Visual DataFlex and how the latest font enhancements can be applied to your applications.

Once upon a time, there were four inseparable friends who saw the need to unleash the powers of Codejock for Visual DataFlex. One of them - Peter Bragg (also known as d’Artagnan) volunteered to share his memoires about one particular quest, being the delivery of Codejock Chart & Graphs in Visual DataFlex applications. And he has help from Portos (also known as David Knowles). This one’s for All!

More and more software developers realize that the time has come to offer a higher level of information to customers. Management Information and Business Intelligence are no longer the realm of highly specialized experts, but are a must-have in each software application environment. Dynamic AI, the business intelligence tool from Cintac that is published by Data Access Worldwide. Eddy will show the latest version and features and also will showcase the diversity of implementations for which customers chose Dynamic AI.

At Synergy 2011, John gave a talk about the psychology of the UI, where he argued that basic principles of cognitive psychology can be applied to improve the user interface of any device, including your applications. This was well received and will be presented one more time here at EDUC. As one attendee commented after his presentation, "this talk had nothing to do specifically with writing applications but ended up having everything to do with writing applications.

We see you Again!
But where? At the end of the conference, we will vote for the next EDUC location. Have you always wanted to organize an EDUC and do you believe that you can prepare an interesting EDUC 2014, that will attract and satisfy many DataFlex developers? Come forward and identify yourself as one of the candidates- here’s your chance!