Banded Report Writer Revealed – Programmatic Data Sources
Perhaps one of the most powerful yet underutilized features of the Banded Report Writer is the ability to pull data from programmatic data sources. As the name suggests, developers can define data sources using BASIC+ stored procedures as an alternative to the traditional method of pulling data from database tables. Conceptually, this should be very familiar to Revelation developers as this takes the concept of a calculated column (aka symbolic field) and elevates it to an entire table. In fact, our team takes its cue from this similarity and uses virtual table interchangeably with programmatic data source. If you are unfamiliar with programmatic data sources, read on for an explanation of how they are configured.
PowerShell as an OpenInsight TCL Enhancement
The TCL (The Command Line) window is an invaluable part of OpenInsight, but at times it can feel restrictive or wanting for more features. This blog article demonstrates how Windows PowerShell can be a flexible enhancement for the command line window with a minimal learning curve while making the task of querying OpenInsight data a lot easier.
Copying the Universal Driver 5 to Another Server
To install the Universal Driver 5, Revelation Software provides a temporary installation key for use during the installation process. This is different from previous versions of the Universal Driver where a static serial number was needed during installation. While the Universal Driver 5 installation key’s expiration date is sufficient for most projects (and can be extended upon request) you may find yourself in the situation of having an expired installation key after hours but need to migrate to a new server. While installing from the setup file is the preferred installation method you can manually copy the Universal Driver 5 to a new server following these steps.
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The Best Laid Schemes
Recently a client asked us if there was a way to call OpenInsight externally using a URL syntax. Initially we were confused because this client was already using the OECGI to enable HTTP access (i.e., via a URL syntax) into his application. After a few more email exchanges we came to understand that the client was interested in creating a custom URI Scheme for OpenInsight like so:
Much ADO About Nothing
Over the past couple of years, SRP has been quite busy working with other development teams on projects requiring integration between OpenInsight and SQL database servers. In most cases, these systems already had interfaces designed around ODBC. While functional, we proposed converting these ODBC processes to ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to improve performance, reliability, and ease of maintenance. While ADO is certainly not new and has been promoted within the Revelation community for many years, we’ve met a number of developers who are still unfamiliar with it. We concluded this is mainly due to two reasons: 1.) adherence to the adage, “if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”, and 2.) general confusion about how to make it work. This article hopes to clear up any uncertainty regarding ADO and perhaps encourage others to give it another look.
New Releases: SRP Zip Utility 2.0 and SRP Utilities 2.0.2
We have two new releases today. SRP Zip Utility joins the 64-bit family, and SRP Utilities gets a lot of much needed love.
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SRP Tech Bites v2
As a provider of two framework products for OpenInsight, we recommend our customers create a dedicated application (e.g., FRAMEWORKS) to maintain the original framework entities. Then the business (or commercial product) application should be created to inherit from this application rather than directly from the Default Inheritance (i.e., SYSPROG). This is easy enough when the local application has not yet been created. However, there are times when the child application already exists. This brings up the question, “Is there an easier way to change an application’s parent without having to back up the local app, delete it, and then recreate it with new inheritance?” Indeed there is.
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