The DISD 2005 Agenda

This year’s ’agenda’ is offering a slight change from tradition. In addition to our usual Friday/Saturday format, we are adding an SQL workshop to the lineup for Thursday Feb 10th. Riaz Merchant of Mertech Data and Paul Richmond of McFarland Cascade will be coordinating this hands-on event. There is no additional charge for this session.

Also, for the first time, this year we are bringing in a presenter from outside of the DataFlex Community. Dr. Ido Millet will be joining us from the Penn State Erie, Sam & Irene Black School of Business. Ido is an Associate Professor of MIS, a consultant, and a developer of several software utilities for Crystal Reports that are currently in use by more than 440 companies. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Business and has worked as a developer and systems analyst on many reporting-related projects. For the last 8 years he has been teaching a Management Reporting Systems course. Dr. Millet has answered more than 2,900 questions on the Crystal Reports Tek-Tips forums and is also listed as one of the top 15 experts on the Crystal Reports Experts Exchange forum.

Presenters and topics in the scheduled lineup for this year are:

Stephen Meeley	Product Overview
John Tuohy	Introducing VDF11 VDF11 contains some dramatic changes. A few of these are: · Low level language enhancements (structs and arrays) · Improved database support (multi-segment relationships, non-recnum table support, larger text fields) · Class improvements (a vastly improved edit class, a rich edit class, combos in grids) · Much more powerful server and client web-services · Easier connectivity to other databases John will talk about VDF11, demonstrate the new product and explain how all of these changes will impact developers and their upgrade path strategies.
Chip Casanave	A First look at Dynamic AI A new web based Business Intelligence tool. Dynamic AI enables users to access, select and combine data across system boundaries, using the well-known interface of your standard browser or Microsoft Excel. You intuitively see where to click to drill down from summary levels to details, to select the data you want to include, sort the way you want and, ultimately, make better business decisions.
Stephen Meeley	Database Connectivity - New connectivity features in VDF11
Riaz Merchant	How to resolve blocking and deadlock issues in MS SQL Server For DataFlex developers who are getting into deploying client/server application, a knowledge of how a relational database works is important. Two of the most common programmer related issues (meaning the DBA and the outside consultant will blame you!) are deadlocks and blocking. Using MS SQL Server as an example (most concepts can be applied to other relational databases), you will learn techniques on how to debug these scanrios and tips on how to convincingly blame the DBA and the external consultant for these problems.
Dalton Pulsipher	Messaging between VDF Applications using Microsoft Message Queuing HCSS’s solution to disparate software upgrades in the field.
Ido Millet	Reporting Systems This presentation distills many years of work, consulting, software development, and teaching experience in the area of reporting systems. The result is key insights and techniques that will help you increase the number of excellent reporting ideas and opportunities from any database schema; solve advanced reporting and SQL challenges; and boost your productivity in creating reports. The presentation will also demonstrate powerful software utilities that you may want to adopt.
Dan Levene and Seth Hamblin	Deployment Systems Discuss and demonstrate Anasazi Software’s deployment model and a suite of utilities and support applications to deploy, manage and update the databases and application installations at over 100 customer sites ranging in size from a handful of users to 500 or more users. Also covered will be a menu system that manages multiple executables.
John Tuohy	Advanced XML Techniques This year John will delve a bit more deeply into XML and how it can be used in VDF. In particular he will address two important areas that he has always skipped over in prior XML talks: Namespaces and Schemas As XML usage has advanced the use of Namespaces in XML documents has become a common part of XML data exchange. This can be a very confusing topic, but programmers need to understand it. It will be our goal this year to dispel all confusion. Schemas are used to define the structure of an XML document and have largely replaced the use of DTDs for this function. You may never need to write your own schema, but there is a good chance you will need to read and understand existing schemas. Our goal will be to make schemas understandable. Namespaces and schemas are used extensively with web-services. After we’ve delved into these two advanced XML topics we will revisit web-services to see how you can use this information to design, use and debug web-services. We will also discuss how the upcoming VDF11 addition of structs and arrays fits into the picture (it makes things easier!).
Binu Agrawal	Active X Some slick SQL/Active X classes that really empower the end user to search for and sort data.. This presentation is a logical extension of some of the class work he showed us last year.
Oliver Nelson	New Classes Wil van Antwerpen’s new event model classes, a couple of new classes from OOTBC, a comparison of a REST server vs SOAP or RPC and a URL hiding scheme for WebApp..