Sig Report March 2007

Even with some regular faces missing, "less regular" ones more than made up the numbers and this Sig was another well attended event.

As has been the pattern recently, the morning was given over to Internet/Web development matters, while the afternoon packed in several diverse subjects, with a preview of VDF 12.1 due in this summer to the fore.

After briefly covering the opportunity that Web 2.0 presents to application developers, Vincent Oorsprong (Data Access Europe) went into some depth on the implentation of the VDF  AJAX framework that Data Access are working on as part of VDF 12.1. The message from both these presentations is, our web applications are going to get better looking, and easier and quicker to develop, and looking further ahead, both industry wide and within our Visual Dataflex specialist area. you ain’t seen nothing yet!"

Paul Anthony (Asckey Data Services) followed this by showing an about to go live web application that implements some aspects of this already in its provisions for user friendly access large amounts of data.

Martin Kelley (DM Software) showed another aspect of web usage, with a highly effective system for synchronizing two geographically separate sets of data (UK/Turkey) using Web Services to connect both applications to a central common data set managed by VDF Web App server.

Vincent rounded the morning off with a quick reference to the Visual DataFlex Personal Edition, encouraging the experienced VDF audience to recommend the PE to potential new developers as an ideal means of becoming familiar with what we all know to be a very good development product.

Vincent returned again after the break to outline the goals for VDF 12.1. In addition to the new Internet development features, VDF Windows desktop applications wil potentially gain a whole new suite of clothes, as Data Access are implementing aspects of the CodeJock library of interface controls, with excellent visual results. The goal is to have this (at worst) close to release by the Synergy Conference in May. Some very good screenshots of what can be achieved are included.

Moving on to "other things", Martin Pincott (Asckey Data Services Ltd) went through how to implement e-mail in a VDF applicaiton,  covering not just sending material, but receiving email content directly into a VDF application database.

Peter Bragg (Care Data Systems) then took us back to some "OO Basics" outlining an elegant method - The Object Factory - for handling situations where several different mechanisms will be needed to fulfil what is esentially the same requirement. As ever, a little complexity in the foundaitons can result in much easier work later on.

Francis Giriffin (Flex Projects) extended the "comms" theme by discussing his usage of SMS to get data out to mobile phones, again for both sending and getting data, and for good measure extended that into the area of WAP, which, after initial disappointment at take up is now becoming a useful tachnique with growing numbers of browser capable mobile phones.

Next VDF Sig - Saturday 13 October