Monitor the Progress of OpenInsight 9 Index Update or Rebuild

dbmgrWhen rebuilding or updating a large index in OpenInsight 9, the user interface can go into a Not Responding state even though the rebuild or update process continues to perform the task. This leaves the user uncertain if the process is working or when it might complete. This blog article provides a strategy for working around this issue so you can monitor the process.

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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.

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PowerShell as an OpenInsight TCL Enhancement

PowerShell

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.

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Copying the Universal Driver 5 to Another Server

UD 5.0

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:

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