C7 AppGen Released To Third Party Developers

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Posted Tuesday, October 21, 2008 by Dave Harms   

It's been a long, long wait. And for a small group of Clarion developers, at least, that wait is now over. SoftVelocity today released C7 with the Application Generator to third party vendors for compatibility testing.

Why hasn't AppGen gone out to all beta program participants? Releasing the AppGen to third party vendors ahead of time has two benefits. First, this testing may reveal problems that would prevent other Clarion developers who use third party products from compiling their apps; besides the possibility of bugs, the C7 compiler is stricter than the C6 compiler and some not-quite-legal-but-works-fine-in-C6 code may need to be tweaked. Second, getting the third party issues dealt with up front means less trouble later distinguishing C7 issues from third party issues. On the whole, letting the third party folks kick C7 around should shorten the overall beta period and make for a more productive beta period for C7 developers.

I should have a First Look up tomorrow (Wednesday) so I'll save most of my comments for that article. And really I haven't had a chance to do much except open a few apps and find my way around the new AppGen. I have managed to crash the IDE a few times, as have other developers, which isn't a big surprise. This is after all the first time anyone outside SV has played with this product, and we're bound to stress it in ways the SV developers never will. I do expect to see fairly quick progress on reported bugs, based on my experience with the initial IDE beta.

I've certainly been able to open an app, have it convert, use the window designer, add embed code (via embed points and the embeditor), compile and run, so I know the AppGen works, and does most (nearly all) of the things I need it to do. And it's fast. In one test I repeatedly added a new global variable to the School app, regenerated and recompiled. C6 took 17 seconds; C7 took just 10 seconds.

The AppGen overall looks familiar, if modernized. Some things have shifted place; some other things are slightly easier to get to. There's a whole lot that's new, including solutions containing multiple APPs (and PRJs), the color-coded embeditor, code folding, support for multiple versions of Clarion (which needs some work but looks promising; more on that in the First Look), a real source code editor, the file schema pad, the very cool alignment features in the window designer... well, I'll leave it at that for now. More cool stuff tomorrow.

Random Thoughts #3

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Posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 by Dave Harms   

This week Clarion Magazine is having its annual fall subscription sale (save some bux, go to the home page for details), and that's put me in a reflective mood. This time I'm mulling over the future of Clarion development.

Oh, not C7 and Clarion#, per se. We all know that's coming.

I'm thinking operating systems. Specifically, Vista 64.

I know, Vista is the OS everyone loves to hate. Except, it seems, when it's 64 bit Vista. Maybe it's the 128 GB maximum addressable memory. Maybe it's better stability thanks to the 16 bit subsystem finally getting turfed (and incidentally, every time I try to type "16 bit" my fingers say "15 bit" - it just happened twice in this sentence - which I suppose means my subconscious is trying to tell me something).

Whatever the reason, I'm hearing more and more about Clarion developers going to 64 bit Vista. Why are they doing it? Because of VMWare.

As Mark Riffey explains, VMWare is a great solution to two problems. One will be with us for a long time, and that's the need (at least for some of us) to test applications against various versions of Windows. With VMWare you can install as many different Windows versions as you like. Each Windows OS runs in its own virtual machine, in its own window, making it trivial to keep as many different test beds as you need without shelling out for a whole lot of extra hardware.

The other problem, which I trust is about to go away, is that the old (the very old) Clarion IDE is a 15^H^H 16 bit app. And you can't run 16 bit apps natively on Vista 64 (that's a good thing). But you can run C6 and its predecessors on 32 bit Windows, so all you need is a virtual machine and, say, an XP install disk. As well, with the old IDE contained in its own virtual machine you no longer have to deal with focus issues when switching between apps.

Now, not everyone needs to test apps against older operating systems, and not everyone wants the (minimal) hassle of running Clarion in a virtual machine. That's still holding back some folks from making the switch. But once AppGen ships with C7 (and I think that day is getting pretty close) I believe we'll witness a sea change, with a great many Clarion developers switching to Vista 64. And some of those developers, once they get to Vista 64, will see the light and get VMWare anyway for compatibility testing.

Vista 64, gobs of memory, a fast multi-core mobo, C7/Clarion# and VMWare all make for a sweet development environment.

No doubt someone will point out the benefits of making developers use minimal hardware, thus encouraging them to optimize their code. That's how the old London Development Centre worked, and the idea has merit.

Just not a lot of merit.

There are lots of ways to design for and test against minimal hardware, memory-constrained virtual machines being one, virtual machines on crappy hardware being another. Just don't restrict your development that way.

To keep up on all the latest Clarion articles and news, make sure your Clarion Mag subscription is up to date. Log in to the My ClarionMag page to check your status, and/or go to the ClarionMag store to renew/subscribe. Remember, the fall subscription sale ends Friday, Sept 26.

Store: http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/store.html?action=shop

Random Thoughts #2 (and sale reminder)

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Posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 by Dave Harms   

This week Clarion Magazine is having its annual fall subscription sale (save some bux, go to the home page for details), and that's put me in a reflective mood. What are some things most people probably don't know about the mag?

In this installment: Massive lists of articles and news items.

The Clarion Magazine home page has some URL options you can use to list all articles (and at the same time news items) for a given year, a given year and month, and even all articles and news items ever published in Clarion Magazine.

The three parameters involved are year, month, and limit. You'll need to specify the limit parameter in all cases or the default (currently five) applies, and typically you'll specify a limit higher than any reasonable maximum. .

For instance, to see all articles for 2008 you can use this URL:

http://www.clarionmag.com/index.html?year=2008&limit=500

You'll notice that the articles are in descending order (newest articles first), which is the default. To see oldest first add &desc=false to the URL:

http://www.clarionmag.com/index.html?year=2008&limit=500&desc=false

To see just the articles published in May, add the month (and, if you like reduce the limit, though it won't matter unless you use a lower limit than the number of articles available):

http://www.clarionmag.com/index.html?year=2008&month=5&limit=50

Again, add &desc=false to the URL to see the oldest articles first:

http://www.clarionmag.com/index.html?year=2008&month=5&limit=50&desc=false

To see all articles ever published in Clarion Magazine, in descending order, try this (but be prepared to wait - it's a very big page):

http://www.clarionmag.com/index.html?limit=2000&desc=false

I tried that with a limit of 1000 but that only took me to mid 2006. A 2000 limit should work for a few more years. The URL on the site index uses a more generous value of 5000.

The same approach works on the news page. To see all news items for this year:

http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/news.html?year=2008&limit=500

And to see all news items ever posted (another big page):

http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/news.html?&limit=5000

Actually that isn't all news items ever posted - it's all news items since January 2001. Prior to that time I created the news pages manually (I can't believe I actually did that). And a limit of 5000 should work for another two years or so.

Now, here's a fun thing to try. If you're using Google's new Chrome browser, bring up the above news page. Press Ctrl-F and type RPM in the search field. Chrome will highlight all the instances of RPM in the document and show a colored line for each instance in the scroll bar. Click on any line to jump to that instance of the search term.

To keep up on all the latest Clarion articles and news, make sure your Clarion Mag subscription is up to date. Log in to the My ClarionMag page to check your status, and/or go to the ClarionMag store to renew/subscribe. Remember, the fall subscription sale ends Friday, Sept 26.

Store: http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/store.html?action=shop

Site index (which also has links to the Clarion Online articles): http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/siteindex.html

Random Thoughts #1

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Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 by Dave Harms   

This week Clarion Magazine is having its annual fall subscription sale (save some bux, go to the home page for details), and that's put me in a reflective mood. What are some things most people probably don't know about the mag?

In this installment: ClarionMag's most popular subscriber-only articles.

Actually there are some difficulties in evaluating which of Clarion Magazine's articles are in fact the most popular, and if I had a more sophisticated tracking system I could bore you endlessly with analysis. But I don't, so I'll just bore you a little.

I do track the number of hits each article receives, but that in itself doesn't tell the whole story. For one thing, the longer an article is up, the more times it's likely to be read, so older is better. For another, some articles are referenced a lot in subsequent articles, which improves their numbers. And of course free articles will have much wider readership and cannot be directly compared with subscriber-only articles (I'll cover the top free articles another time).

Here are the top fifty subscriber-only articles of all time, with the most popular article's rating normalized to a value of 1:

Top 50 subscriber-only articles of all time
	Title	Date
1.00	Interfaces Everywhere	Feb 3, 2003
0.66	Clarion Apps Can Be Sexy!	Dec 30, 2005
0.64	Introduction To SQL: Part 2	Mar 6, 2001
0.63	Clarion 6 First Look: The Examples	Oct 16, 2003
0.59	Look Out, It's Outlook! (Part 1)	May 9, 2002
0.59	Clarion COM:ýAs Easy As Visual Basic COM	May 9, 2000
0.58	XML For Clarion Developers	May 16, 2003
0.57	COM: Getting Easier By The Minute (Part 1 of 3)	Feb 6, 2001
0.56	Creating Utilities For MS SQL 2000	Dec 31, 2003
0.55	Using The Web Browser OCX	Aug 2, 2001
0.55	Introduction to SQL - Part 4	May 1, 2001
0.55	SQL Data Types Comparison	Nov 15, 2002
0.55	Viewing An Excel Spreadsheet In A Clarion Browse	Dec 5, 2002
0.54	Interfacing With An Interface	Jun 12, 2002
0.54	Adding Page Of Pages To A Clarion Report	Aug 16, 2002
0.54	Introduction To SQL: Part 3	Mar 14, 2001
0.53	Avoid My SQL Mistakes!	Jul 18, 2001
0.51	A Single Browse For Multiple Lookups	Jul 5, 2002
0.51	Clarion And The Fatal MyODBC/MySQL Flaw	Jun 28, 2002
0.50	The Nuts And Bolts Of Passing Parameters: Part 1	Sep 12, 2000
0.49	.NET Basics: What Is .NET, And Why Should I Care?	Sep 15, 2005
0.49	Emailing PDF Files From A Report Previewer	Jun 28, 2002
0.48	Clarion, COM, Soap, and HTTP	Jul 10, 2003
0.47	Beautifying Clarion Applications	Jul 13, 2006
0.47	Creating ODBC Data Sources At Runtime	May 9, 2001
0.47	The Nuts And Bolts Of Passing Parameters: Part 2	Sep 15, 2000
0.47	SoftVelocity's Upcoming Product Technology (Part 1)	Apr 29, 2002
0.47	Using Clarion With MySQL Part 2	Apr 11, 2000
0.47	Migrating The Inventory Application To SQL Server (Part 1)	Aug 15, 2001
0.47	It's an XML World!	Apr 25, 2002
0.47	SoftVelocity's Upcoming Product Technology (Part 2)	Apr 29, 2002
0.45	Mixing Clarion with .NET, Part 2	Sep 15, 2005
0.45	Calling A Clarion Application With PHP	Jan 6, 2003
0.45	System Tray Popup Windows	Mar 31, 2004
0.44	Handling COM Events - Part 1	Jan 11, 2002
0.44	Look Out, It's Outlook! (Part 2)	May 14, 2002
0.43	Product Review: NetTalk, Part 1	Sep 19, 2003
0.42	The Clarion Advisor: API Tricks	May 3, 2001
0.42	Creating A Designer Interface In Clarion (Part 1)	Jun 5, 2003
0.42	Clarion 6 First Look: The Source Code	Oct 30, 2003
0.42	Creating An MS OutLook-Style Menu In Clarion	Aug 29, 2000
0.42	A Class For Tagging	Feb 13, 2003
0.42	Migrate Your Topspeed Application To Firebird, Part 1	May 27, 2004
0.42	ETC Keynote Address Covers Clarion 7, .NET	Jun 9, 2004
0.42	First Look: Clarion 6.3	Jan 27, 2006
0.42	Creating An MS OutLook-Style Menu In Clarion: Part 2	Sep 5, 2000
0.41	Multi-Platform Development: Clarion, MySQL, and Linux Part 3	Apr 18, 2000
0.41	.NET for Clarion Developers	Jan 19, 2007
0.41	A Class For The ASCIIng	Nov 8, 2002
0.41	Images, BLOBs, And The Imag'N OCX/DLL	Apr 9, 2002

The most popular article, Jim Kane's Interfaces Everywhere, falls into the category of much-referenced articles, as it laid the groundwork for much of Jim's COM work. That, I think, accounts for its substantial lead over the #2 article, Colin Wynn's treatise on spicing up Clarion apps (and what do you know, sex really does sell). Colin's article is also a few years newer, so I'd say it's a contender for top spot.

COM and SQL dominate the top fifty, with Clarion 6, XML, the Windows API, OOP, and .NET all putting in appearances.

But of this list, only one article has a publication date after 2006. That's mostly because of the time factor - these articles have been around long enough to get more reads.

Here are the top fifty subscriber-only articles published since January 2007:

Top 50 subscriber-only articles since Jan 1, 2007
1.00	.NET for Clarion Developers	Jan 19, 2007
0.89	New Alpha 2 Build Improves DCT UI	Jul 13, 2007
0.89	Clarion 101: Designing A Database	Jan 26, 2007
0.87	Embed Analysis: Which Embeds Do Clarion Developers Use The Most?	Jan 30, 2007
0.79	C7 Alpha Bits Part 1	Mar 10, 2007
0.78	Embedding The SQLite Engine In Clarion Applications	Feb 27, 2007
0.77	Using the SQL Advanced Tab	Mar 16, 2007
0.73	Embed Analysis Part 3	Mar 22, 2007
0.70	Vista-Compliant INI Files	Mar 29, 2007
0.69	Adding Aero Glass Effects to Clarion Apps	May 30, 2007
0.67	A Simple Clarion# PDA Application	Dec 26, 2007
0.67	Getting Useful Information Out of SQL, Part 1	Feb 15, 2008
0.67	Embed Analysis Part 2	Mar 21, 2007
0.62	No More Tight Loops	Jan 31, 2008
0.62	Aussie DevCon: Bob Z Shows Clarion.NET	May 27, 2007
0.61	Interprocess Communication: Sending Messages	Mar 14, 2007
0.61	C7 Alpha Bits Part 2	Mar 27, 2007
0.61	Tiers and Objects: The Future of Clarion.NET Development	Oct 11, 2007
0.59	Coping With Windows Vista - How to live with User Account Control Security	Apr 13, 2007
0.57	The New Dictionary Diagrammer	Sep 30, 2007
0.55	Signing Your Applications: New Challenges	Jan 12, 2007
0.55	Clarion.NET Language Changes: What's Gone	Sep 27, 2007
0.53	Review: Clarion Training on Demand - SQL Programming Series	Jan 10, 2007
0.52	PostgreSQL Revisited	Aug 15, 2007
0.52	A Simple Solution for Accordion Menus	Oct 31, 2007
0.52	What Can You Do With The Clarion.NET Beta?	Jan 25, 2008
0.51	Clarion.NET Language Changes: What's New	Sep 27, 2007
0.51	Calling Google Earth From Clarion	May 23, 2007
0.49	The Clarion 7 Beta Release	Sep 12, 2007
0.48	Querying ActiveDirectory In Clarion	Jan 17, 2008
0.48	Get Ahead Of Your Competition With Vista And Office 2007	Feb 14, 2007
0.47	Converting A Process To A Stored Procedure/Trigger	Jun 15, 2007
0.47	Lists, CHOICE, and Hidden Tabs	Jan 11, 2008
0.46	Coping With Vista - There's A Manifest In Your Destiny, Part 2	Apr 26, 2007
0.45	Multiline Radio Buttons And Checkboxes	Sep 18, 2007
0.45	Profiling Your Applications	Jul 11, 2007
0.43	Coping With Vista - There's A Manifest In Your Destiny, Part 1	Apr 20, 2007
0.43	Using A Browse Popup Menu For Lookups	Jun 26, 2007
0.42	Kalashnikov Programming	Jun 11, 2007
0.41	SQL Processing and Class Interfaces	Jun 30, 2008
0.41	Boost Compile Times By Putting The ABC Classes In Their Own DLL	Jun 18, 2008
0.41	Accessing Private Class Data	Jan 26, 2007
0.41	Getting Useful Information Out of SQL, Part 3	Feb 22, 2008
0.41	Writing To The Windows Registry	Mar 13, 2008
0.40	Using CHOOSE With PROP:SQL	Jan 10, 2008
0.39	Showing ABC Errors	Jul 20, 2007
0.39	Getting Useful Information Out of SQL, Part 2	Feb 21, 2008
0.38	Testing Clarion# Libraries With NUnit	Dec 27, 2007
0.38	Clarion# And The Google Calendar API	Dec 17, 2007
0.38	Designing Clarion# Libraries	Dec 20, 2007

SQL is still a big factor, but unsurprisingly .NET has taken over from COM. (Which is as it should be; one of the really wonderful things about .NET coding is all the stuff you can get done without having to resort to the dog's breakfast that is COM. And when you have to use COM you can often do so indirectly, via an existing .NET wrapper.)

The embed analysis series has received a lot of attention, likewise the numerous articles on Vista and its virtualization and security "features." And of course anything on C7 is a must-read for many ClarionMag subscribers.

So what can you expect to see in the coming months? Much more on C7, no doubt. Although the templates aren't changing a whole lot from C6 to C7, the IDE is quite different, and there are a lot of nooks and crannies to explore. Once AppGen ships the number of developer hours ClarionMag readers spend in the new IDE will go up dramatically, and along with that I expect a lot of discoveries about workflow and development tools and techniques.

I also anticipate a fair bit of Clarion# coverage, although that probably won't hit the big time until there's a Clarion# AppGen and at least one template set. But we'll see - as always, it's all about what ClarionMag readers want to read and need to know.

If you're not a Clarion Magazine subscriber, you can subscribe now via the ClarionMag store. If you are a subscriber and you want to check your subscription status, log in to the My ClarionMag page. To top up your sub, again just head over to the store. But don't drag your butt. The fall subscription sale ends Friday, Sept 26.

Lock up your Gmail

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Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 by Dave Harms   

Jeff Slarve has pointed out that Gmail users can now use SSL encryption for the entire session, not just login. That matters because there's a security hole in the default configuration that allows someone sniffing network traffic to trick your browser into giving up a cookie that enables access to your Gmail page. This is mainly an issue for people who access Gmail using unencrypted wireless networks.

You can secure your Gmail account by going to the Settings page and setting your browser connection to "Always use https". Thanks, Jeff.

Ouch (Updated)

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Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 by Dave Harms   

Sun's Tim Bray is speaking on changes in programming languages. And I have to say this is possibly the most annoying use of background music I have ever heard. I'd rather listen to my daughter playing Build-a-Bear on her DS.

Ah, it turns out the music was written by Terry Riley, in C, in 1964. So there's a reason it's being played.

Just not a good reason.

UPDATE: Whoops, C was just a twinkle in Dennis Ritchie's eye in 1964; the piece in question is called "In C", and my thanks to Geoff Robinson for pointing out the error of my ways. Geoff suggested that minimalism isn't my cup of tea. I've had another listen to "In C" and it's much more pleasant all by itself (though 30 seconds seems plenty to me). Unfortunately it was an overly-loud accompaniment to Bray's rapid-fire delivery; the combination would make rather a good torture device, I think.

 

Catching up

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Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by Dave Harms   

I've been back in the office since late last week, but the longer I'm away from the office, even with a laptop along, the longer it seems to take to get everything back on track again. I'm catching up on news items which normally I'd have done while on the road, but I had problems with newsgroup access which is how I harvest most news items. And I hope to have the monthly PDFs, source zip and source library update done by tomorrow.

On the road again

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Posted Monday, August 04, 2008 by Dave Harms   

I'm back on the road this week and won't have much access to email, but I should be able to check in at least once most days. I have a few more OSCON 2008 reports this week, and next week after I'm back I'll conclude the series with some random observations and a few more pics. Then it's back to the regular Clarion fare.

OSCON: More to come

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Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 by Dave Harms   

I hope you've been enjoying this year's OSCON coverage. I have one session left to attend and then I'm done. But I still have a bunch of notes to post, on everything from some interesting things said during keynotes to securing databases to web development. Plus some other news and info and a bunch of pictures I haven't had a chance to review yet. Most if not all of that will have to wait until next week. And I have some of the more regular Clarion fare lined up as well, so there's lots of good stuff in the pipeline.

MS Becomes Apache Platinum Sponsor

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Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 by Dave Harms   

Three years ago MS sponsored one of the OSCON lunches, and some attendees were so offended they refused to eat the lunch. Microsoft has continued to attend and increase its participation in open source. This morning Microsoft's Sam Ramji and the ASF's Justin Erenkrantz announced that Microsoft has become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation.

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