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  • The Rock and the Hard Place: Parallel and Agile Development — Part 1: Parallel Development

    In our fast-paced, modern, development environments, the old data processing methodologies are disappearing. Large, up-front design and development techniques can no longer meet the delivery requirements of today's fast-paced, rapidly changing, user demands and competitive pressures. Like it or not, MultiValue shops need to embrace the concepts of both parallel and agile development.

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  • Business Tech: Prediction 2012

    2011 was an interesting year. We saw technical innovation, new services, and a number of changes in the overall landscape. So what will 2012 bring? Nobody can know the future, but here are the best guesses of one of our contributing authors.

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  • jQuery Mobile: Making Mobile with Minimal Misery

    The greenscreen went the way of the dodo bird. Desktop GUIs may be sufficient for in-house employees, but they do not provide ready access for your customers. A well-designed customer-facing website is an absolute requirement in today's business environment (at least according to your customers). But now, even that is considered insufficient. Customers demand access by mobile devices. Perhaps this new tool can help ease your pain.

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  • U2 Replication: An Overview of our Scalable and Robust High Availability Solution

    With the introduction of U2 Replication and complimenting features, UniVerse v11.1 now offers a scalable, robust, feature-rich environment for a 24x7x365 operation for any size of business, with the addition of real-time interoperability with other databases.

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  • Rolling Your Own MultiValue Web Connector - Part 1

    In case you have been asleep the last few years, let us fill you in on some important news. The Web has taken over. In order to meet your customers' demands and stay competitive, the data in your MultiValuebased applications must be accessible by Web technologies. While there are a number of fine products in the MultiValue world to allow you to do this, if you are willing to get your hands dirty with a little bit of programming, you can accomplish a lot of this with tools readily available to you as open source.

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  • Tech Tip: Sort Data by Week Number

    There are times when doing reports when you need to sort your values into weeks. Most people would end up writing a program to do this, but that is not necessary.

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  • Clif Notes: Who Cares if MultiValue Survives?

    Before we explore this question, let me get one thing out of the way — the obligatory New Year's resolution. I will not write controversial column titles. There. Done. And all in keeping with my tradition of starting the new year off with a burst of productivity by simultaneously making and breaking my New Year's resolution. With that out of the way, let's return to the question. Who cares if MultiValue survives? I don't. Oh my, I can already hear the scraping of sharpening stones on steel, the squawking of fowl, and smell the odor of tar being heated in the pots. I should hasten to explain myself before it becomes necessary for me to go on Amazon.com and place an order for large quantities of engine degreaser and burn ointment.

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  • From the Inside January/February 2012

    Big Data has been a hot topic lately. Since it really is not clear what it is, or how to Big Data applies to us, I figured I'd add my two cents on the topic.

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  • From The Inside November/December 2011

    It's the end of the year — time to relax, family enjoyment, gift giving, and time to start planning for the year 2012.

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  • Indexes and System Migrations

    When migrating a MultiValue application from one platform to another, especially from an older legacy platform to one that is more modern, the major goals are to simply get it done, get it working, and get it working correctly. Too often, however, we forget that the new platform may provide capabilities that can give us a dramatic improvement in the performance of our application. Replacing or supplementing application-based cross-referencing with system-supplied indexing is one of those areas to be considered.

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  • Replacing Legacy Reporting with U2 DataVu

    Dull, monospaced type, text-only reports usually provide the necessary information and get the job done. But just like the antiquated green screen programs, the appearance of these reports invokes a negative reaction from both users and management, creating an impression of obsolescence in an otherwise robust application. UniVerse and UniData users have a number of options for modernizing these reports, one of the newest of which comes from their database supplier, Rocket Software.

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  • Session Management with PHP

    As you begin to develop webbased MultiValue applications using a browser as the preferred user interface, one of the first changes in your thinking process has to be how your application communicates with the user. Unlike a traditional dedicated connection between user and server, web-based applications must deal with an ongoing series of non-persistent connections. How does your application know what you and the user were talking about a minute or two ago? Using the built-in capabilities of PHP, this article explores some of the issues of such session management.

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  • Business Tech: Spending Down MultiValue

    For many departments, the end of the year provides a time to take a look at the budgets and make use of any leftover funds. Of course, we do not want to be spending money just to spend it. Here are some ideas of some high-return ways to do that spend down.

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  • Sending E-Mail from Your MultiValue Programs — Part 6: E-Mails with Attachments

    In these articles have discussed various ways of sending e-mail, both plain text, HTML-based, and multipart containing both. This last part in this series on Sending E-mail from MultiValue applications discusses the topic and techniques for including attachments.

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  • Tech Tip: Accounts, Namespaces, and Databases in Caché

    If you are migrating from another MultiValue system to Caché, an introduction to some key terminology differences would be useful.

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  • Clif Notes: The Situation Is Excellent

    There is an oft quoted saying supposedly from Mao Tse-tung. "There is great chaos under heaven — the situation is excellent."

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  • From The Inside September/October 2011

    I need your help in getting the message out that MultiValue is a modern, robust, solution-oriented platform that works well in a multi-system, mainstream environment.

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  • MultiValue Communications: The Persnickety Persistence Problem

    For decades, MultiValue applications have followed the model of having an always active, persistent connection to the server. This worked well when we had control over the connection, primarily by using a dedicated cable to a serial RS-232 port physically located on a board in the machine. Then came networks, where everything is dynamic and out of our control. Yet in 2011, how many of our MultiValue application still stick to trying to emulate the old persistent connection model of the last century?

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  • Useful Tips on Migrating from Legacy PICK

    Useful Tips on Migrating from Legacy PICK Your system sends up certain red flags when its performance has degraded. These signals might include missing your maintenance windows, users complaining about slow system response times, or unreasonably high system maintenance fees. Perhaps your customers are saying the application needs modernization, but the programming backlog is six months and growing. How do you solve these problems? Replace your legacy PICK system!

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  • Sending E-mail from MultiValue Programs - Part 5: Creating and Sending E-mails with HTML and Text Sections

    In the early days of e-mail, text was King. If you dared use that horrible, evil, Microsoft Outlook mailer and sent HTML-based e-mail, you had better be wearing asbestos underwear, because you were going to get flamed. Today, HTML e-mail is the norm for all large businesses (at least in the USA), and the text-only pundits are considered to be somewhat Luddite. Then came mobile devices with small, hard to read screen sizes. What to do? What to do? Enter the realm of multipart html/text e-mail.

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  • Business Tech: MultiValue in the Clouds

    Although there are still concerns with Cloud Computing — data privacy, guaranteed service levels, etc. — it appears that the Cloud is here to stay. So what will it take to be able to deploy your MultiValue applications in the Cloud? (Hint — you are almost there already.)

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  • Auditing Database Changes with UniVerse Indexing Subroutines

    UniVerse has file triggers which can be used to call a subroutine whenever a new record is added, changed, or deleted from a file so that the change to the database can be recorded in an audit trail for IT governance and compliance requirements. But full blown triggers come with a certain amount of performance overhead. For simple auditing, using indexing suboutines with a new system variable available at release 11.1 is a lighter weight alternative.

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  • Tech Tip: Reality CSV Files

    Interacting with delimited file structures for import and export is very important within your enterprise software. Comma Separated Values format is the most common.

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  • Clif Notes: Blood Not Required

    If you haven't already read Nathan Rector's From the Inside column this issue, I would strongly suggest you turn to the front of the magazine and do so. He is requesting help in getting the word out that MultiValue is alive and well and quite able to tackle your modern application requirements. It is also very capabile of fitting into a "mainstream" IT shop having a number of different platforms working together. But as long as there are only a handful of us who write articles or blog entries about the kinds of problems we have solved using our various MultiValue platforms and the techniques we used to do it, as a community we are going to continue to appear to be much smaller than we really are. Whereas other platforms have dozens of writers publishing articles for various magazines, journals, and newsletters, in the MultiValue world it seems like you see the same bylines over and over. Not that there is anything wrong with seeing certain writers consistently producing articles! But when those are the only writers you see, it gives the impression that there must not be very many people using this thing, otherwise you would see a lot more people writing about it and discussing it. I think he did an excellent job explaining some of the issues and shooting down some of the myths about what it takes to write an article. Now I would like to add a couple of thoughts then share with you an idea about how to make the process even less daunting.

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  • Extending Your MultiValue ERP with Web Services: Thinking Outside the Box

    Most companies have ERP needs that are unique to their particular business. When a "standard" ERP package does not fit well with accepted industry practices or company business processes, you seem to have two choices — customize and enhance the software or change the way that you do business to match the package. The first can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. The second can force you into doing things in a way that actually complicates your workflow and raises expenses. It may even hurt your competitive advantages. Find out how this company stepped "outside the box" and solved one of their ERP needs with inexpensive equipment, internal developers, and open source software.

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  • From the Inside July/August 2011

    It is the time of year that I start planning for the next Spectrum conference. If you haven't seen the ad for the 2012 Spectrum, it will be Apr 2nd-5th in West Palm Beach, FL. We are having it at the same venue as the 2011 conference, so if you are a golfer, make sure you bring your clubs.

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  • Creating Breakthrough MultiValue Applications

    Breakthrough applications are solutions that dominate markets, destroying the competition by providing unique functionality. Of course, creating these breakthrough applications may require additional skills and technologies. With the MultiValue developer in mind, this article explores the characteristics and requirements to produce a breakthrough application.

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  • The Trial of Telnet

    For almost 30 years, Telnet has been the primary way that users log into and access their MultiValue applications and data. It has been a good workhorse, but as with most tools, there comes a time when what has worked well for many years no longer meets the modern requirements of security and reliability. Is it time to retire telnet? If so, where do we go from here?

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  • Business Tech: Managing Creative Talent

    When we hear the word "creative," we tend to think of musicians, authors, visual artists, and the like. Although many members of the Information Technology community consider themselves to be, and may actually have degrees in, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Networks, we have more in common in our work needs and habits with the artists than is first apparent. Managers of these group of people are advised to understand and remember this.

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  • Sending E-mail from Your MultiValue Programs — Part 4: Using MS Exchange and Sockets

    Continuing the discussion of interfacing MultiValue programs with e-mail, this part of the series of articles discusses talking directly to an SMTP server by using sockets. Although the actual details of opening, writing to, and reading from a socket differ from platform to platform, when you have made connection, the SMTP dialogue is remarkably straightforward.

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  • Tech Tip: Address Verification — Parsing

    The address is a key piece of information in anyone's database, but it can be extremely hard to validate, and due to free form input, even harder to search.

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  • Clif Notes: What is the Sound of One Hand Crumbling?

    Unless this is only the first or second of these columns you have read, you are already aware that one of my hot buttons is getting rid of the green screens in our MultiValue applications. I have repeatedly made the point that having the most visible part of our applications using an antiquated approach to user interfaces is not just an embarrassment — it is probably a major contributing factor to why non-technical upper management kicks the MultiValue system to the curb (and the MultiValue developers along with it) and replaces it with something more "mainstream." If it looks like a dinosaur, waddles like a dinosaur, grunts like a dinosaur, well then, it must be a dinosaur.

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  • Read and Writing Unix/Linux Files from D3

    This article will shows SUBROUTINE (stored procedures) code for reading and writing to Linux/Unix files from D3.

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  • Read and Writing Windows files from D3

    This article will shows SUBROUTINE (stored procedures) code writing to Windows files from D3.

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  • Read and Writing Windows Files from UniVerse/UniData

    This article will shows SUBROUTINE (stored procedures) code writing to Windows files from UniVerse or UniData.

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  • Read and Writing Unix/Linux Files from UniVerse/UniData

    This article will shows SUBROUTINE (stored procedures) code for reading and writing to Linux/Unix files from UniVerse or UniData.

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  • MultiValue and the Web: Step into the Future

    If the idea that the green screen is dead and has been replaced by GUI is new to you, you must be reading International Spectrum magazine for the first time. Toss into that Ajax, Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, etc. and you have an entirely new set of customer expectations that you must meet in order to remain competitive in today's modern technology world. This article introduces a new series and explains why and how it will explore this topic.

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  • Sending E-mail from Your MultiValue Programs — Part 3: Sendmail

    In the first two articles in this series, you learned how to construct an e-mail with the required header lines and a body. You were then introduced to SMTP using Microsoft's Internet Information Server. Now we take a look at the granddaddy of Internet mail — the venerable Sendmail.

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  • Tech Tip - Reading/Writing OS files

    Reading and writing OS files is very important in the new hybrid systems we have to write these days. Most of our applications are pretty self-contained,and don't need to interact with programs or applications outside the MV environment. But that is slowly changing.

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  • Clif Notes: Where's My Yada-Yada?

    On a recent flight, I was flipping through a copy of The Economist magazine. Not my usual entertainment material, but a guy has to have something to read until they allow him to turn his Kindle back on. I spotted a small article titled "Spare us the e-mail yada-yada." It was subtitled "Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless."

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  • From The Inside May/June 2011

    User Group Members Wanted!

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  • Business Tech: Disaster Planning

    Planning It is human nature to want to avoid thinking about painful things. But when disaster strikes, not having any plans on how to react or recover can vastly limit our chances of survival — either personally or as a business. This article explores some of the issues of planning business survival after a catastrophe. If you are like most of us, you will find some things that had never occurred to you to think about.

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  • 2011 International Spectrum Conference Feedback

    As we did last year, we decided it would be more interesting to you to hear what attendees at the conference had to say rather than what we thought of it. In these three interviews we hear the opinions of both seasoned MultiValue developers and a newcomer to our database.

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  • Serious Data Compression for Network Transport in MultiValue Systems

    With the cost of disk space continuing to fall, does anybody except the very largest shops worry about the cost of data storage anymore? Maybe yes, maybe no. It still depends on the circumstances. But although network bandwidth continues to increase, there is still a price to be paid — not just in gigabytes transmitted but also in things like the hidden cost of lost productivity due to network congestion. This article suggests some data compression options, and it includes ready-to-run source code in MultiValue Basic.

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  • From the Inside Mar/Apr 2011

    Welcome to the International Spectrum 2011 Conference!

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  • Character Encodings

    It's a small world and getting smaller, especially thanks to the Internet and web-enabled applications. Whether due to a business expanding into international markets or acquisitions by, or partnering with, foreign companies, many applications are finding a need to be multilingual, not just MultiValue. So how do you represent the different non-English characters?

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  • Business Tech: User Ownership of Data

    Gone are the days when the Data Processing department was both keeper and defender of the data and parceled it out to users on green bar reports where they could look but not touch. Today's users insist that data be presented to them in such a manner that they can manipulate it, summarize it, use it, and even lose it. This provides the modern IT department with a new set of challenges.

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  • Sending E-mail from Your MultiValue Programs Part 2 - Using IIS

    Part 1 of this series of articles showed you how to construct an e-mail, including the necessary items in the header and body. So now you have it, what do you do with it? There are a variety of ways to actually send e-mail. We start by introducing you to SMTP using Microsoft's Internet Information Server.

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  • MultiValue and QuickBooks, Part 2: Exporting to MultiValue

    Many MultiValue accounting packages lack the GUI interface modern users demand or other features that are considered to be mandatory by anyone who has used a modern accounting application. One option is to replace it with an off-the-shelf commodity accounting package and share data between it and the MultiValue system running the core business functions. Part 1 dealt with getting data from MultiValue to QB. Now we go in the other direction.

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  • First Steps to Securing Your Information in the Internet Age

    While computer and data security is a large and complex subject, it is disconcerting how many MultiValue systems do not even take the most fundamental precautions to protect user data from unauthorized access. Just a couple of straightforward techniques can prevent that kid on the coffee shop WiFi from stealing your access codes and walking through your system at will.

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  • User Interface Design: Defacto Standards and Unicorns

    The green screen may be dead, but graphical user interfaces bring with them their own set of issues. Because of their flexibility, a set of GUIbased programs in an application written by different programmers, each with their own opinion and style, can be even more difficult to understand, use, and navigate than the old green screens. But do user interface standards appear magically?

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  • Clif Notes: They're Everywhere! (Well, Not Quite Yet)

    I see QR codes. But unlike the ghosts of dead people, these things are present in our external reality. And I'm not alone. Lots of people see them, including the attendees at the 2011 International Spectrum conference. You see them too. Look up at the top of this page. See that square checkerboard thing? That's a QR code.

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  • Barcode scanning with Windows Mobile and Telnet Client

    Windows PPC and Windows Mobile devices from Symbol and Intermec are used quite often enterprise warehousing. They are rugged devices and give you a wide range of development options to interface with your MultiValue database. While you can write a GUI application to take advantage of all the devices features, it takes time. You can create a proof of concept, and a full blow production application using a telnet client for the PPC.

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  • D3/NT RPC Client Error NE2320

    This error is generated from the D3/NT 7.x RPC Client library. D3/NT 7.x was designed to take advantage of domain RPC calls to help find the MDS server. While this made setup, installs, and other applications faster to implement, the new securities implemented in Windows sometimes interferes. Error: NE2320

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