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The DISD 2004 Agenda

This year’s agenda continues in the DISD tradition of providing a mix of technical presentations from the DataFlex Development community and the staff of Data Access Worldwide. As always, the material is technical and is directed towards programmers. The goal of the presentations is to show you how to take full advantage of what is currently available and how to be ready for what’s coming.

The big changes in 2003 and 2004 are centered on the integration of windows and web applications. You will see the importance of this reflected in many of the presentations. Web services will represent the culmination of this integration where a single tool is used to create server and client side services – all written in DataFlex.

This year, Stephen Meeley and John Tuohy will be representing Data Access from the USA. We are pleased to have Eddy Kleinjan, Vincent Oorsprong and Ulbe Stellema from Data Access Europe.

Below is the current list of planned presentations. The list does not represent any kind of suggested ordering and, as always, is subject to change.

Product Status Report – Stephen Meeley (Data Access Worldwide)

Stephen will provide a quick recap of the current status of all DAW products. The goal is to quickly bring everyone up to date with the products that surround Visual DataFlex

Visual DataFlex 9.1 – Stephen Meeley (Data Access Worldwide)

Visual DataFlex 9.1 is released and a quick overview of this product is in order. The big change in 9.1 is the integration of the windows and web based development environment. Having windows-applications, web-applications and, shortly, web-services “all there” changes everything. See how.

Electos – Eddy Kleinjan (Data Access Europe)

Eddy Kleinjan is one of the chief architects of Electos, the VDF based web-application that allows you to easily create and maintain websites. Eddy will talk about:

· How to use Electos to create your website

· How Electos can be the foundation for customized web application development using the Developer Edition

· Deploying an Electos-based website

Web Services in Visual DataFlex – John Tuohy (Data Access Worldwide)

You need to know about web services. This presentation will provide you with a technical overview of web-services and it will show you how web services will be implemented and used in Visual DataFlex.

· This will present a technical overview of Web-services and its various components such as Soap, XML, and WSDL and Soap. The focus of this will be from a programmer’s point of view.

· Demonstration on how web-services will be built and used in a VDF windows application (the client).

· Demonstration on how web Services will be built and used in a VDF web application (the server)

This will be the first unveiling of the web-service tools that will be part of the next release of visual DataFlex

Web Application Review – John Tuohy (Data Access Worldwide)

If you have not been working with web-applications, many of the concepts and terms may still be a little fuzzy. It never hurts to have a review. John will present a technical review of the basics of web-applications. This will encompass a review of Visual DataFlex web-application technology and all of other surrounding web application technologies.

Session Management in Web-Applications – Eddy Kleinjan (Data Access Europe)

Almost all web applications must deal with user management. This consists of managing sessions, controlling access via logins, managing security and user access rights, and tracking usage. Eddy will present an overview of these issues and provide technical solutions. He will be showing some of the techniques that he used with Electos. Anyone with an interest in web-applications will want to see this.

Resolving Cryptic Error Messages – Judy Cushing

So your application is not working and it is reporting an error message that just makes no sense at all. We’ve all been there. What do you do? Judy intends to provide some answers. She will provide a comprehensive review of difficult-to-resolve errors in for both windows applications and web applications.

Real World Debugging Techniques – Tony McKay

No conference is really complete without a thorough discussion of debugging. Learning to become a better debugger increases productivity and makes applications more reliable. Tony will discuss a debugging technique where he exports traces at run time where the Trace-On and Trace-Off are controlled by another DataFlex program running at the same time. The info exported is far more than just line numbers. If time permits he will also show a 100% VDF spell-check solution, (no Active X), that is surprisingly simple and offers full programmer control.

Exploring Database Explorer – Vincent Oorsprong (Data Access Europe)

We all use the Database Explorer tool all the time. However, there is a good chance you are not using this tool to its full potential. For the first time ever at a DISD conference we will take a close look at Database Explorer. The presenter, Vincent, is uniquely qualified to lead this session – he built the tool!

WinPrint II – Stephen W. Meeley (Data Access Worldwide)

The next release of Visual DataFlex will include a new release of Winprint. We need to get ready for it. Stephen will give a quick demonstration of Winprint II and then discuss the programming issues involved in building Winprint II reports. This will include upgrade issues (showing how Winprint I and Winprint II reports can exist side by side) and migration issues (showing how to convert Winprint I reports to Winprint II).

Automated Installs & Support – Oliver Nelson

This year Oliver will present the issues of deployment and share some of his solutions. He will discuss automated installations and upgrades for Visual DataFlex applications that use both Client/Server and VDF back-ends. He will also discuss remote installations, building tables (databases) during installation and security issues.

DBI Controls – Binu Agrawal

Binu will provide an overview of DBI controls set and show many working examples.

Creating and Deploying “Extension Interface” Applications – Stephen Meeley (Data Access Worldwide)

An “Extension Interface” application takes an existing application (Windows or Character mode) and extends it so it can be used in another environment, in this case the web. To do this, you do not need to migrate the entire application. Instead, you just take a small part of the application and expose it on the web. This can often be done at a modest cost and yield considerable benefits. Stephen will talk about this technique, present an actual case study and show how this is done.

Visual Prospects – A Visual DataFlex Application - Daniel Pjevac and Marco Kuipers

Every year DISD like to showcase a developer’s application allowing attendees to see what some of our talented programmers are actually doing with Visual DataFlex. This year Daniel and Marco will present Visual Prospects, a VDF program designed to look and feel super easy to use. As the Target group are sales persons it must look attractive and be intuitive. Under the cover all data is in DB2, with some nice embedded SQL and Stored Procedures.

SQL – The language – Riaz Merchant

If the database you are connecting to is SQL based you have the choice of accessing the data using traditional DataFlex methods or by using a direct SQL interface. There are times when this SQL interface can be very useful. Riaz will present an SQL primer with plenty of examples, tricks and tips.

Using the Visual DataFlex Studio – John Tuohy (Data Access Worldwide)

At the “Meet Me In Saint Louis” conference in 2002 an ad hoc discussion of Database Builder was a great success. We plan on doing the same with the Visual DataFlex Studio. We will informally explore, inspect and dissect the Studio. Learn how to get the to get the most out of the latest Visual DataFlex Studio – you might be surprised what you will learn.