The Search400.com editorial staff, along with users, industry experts, analysts, and consultants judged the awards.
Catapult won the Gold Award in the
Document/Image Management Software category. WebSmart won the
Silver award in the
Application Development Tools category. And Nexus Portal won the Silver in the
Security Software category.
BCD and our development team are very excited and humbled in receiving these awards. Thank you to all who voted for us.
For further details on these awards, please visit our web site.
BCD Consulting Group Services
If you are receiving this technical bulletin from BCD, the most likely reason is that you have been working with one of our software products. However, you may not be aware that BCD, together with ExcelSystems Software Inc. also provides consulting services in conjunction with all our development tools.
Over the last few years consulting has been one of our strongest growth areas, particularly in the area of helping customers build web applications where WebSmart programs are the cornerstone.
For an overview of the services offered by our consulting group, please visit the consulting area of our web site. At our site you'll find an overview of the services we provide, a list of references and write-ups on completed projects, many of which include links to screen shots and demos you can run online.
If you would like additional information about any of our consulting services, please contact Kevin Cronin.
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Capital Health
Capital District Health Authority (Capital Health) provides core health services to 395,000 residents of Nova Scotia, Canada. Capital Health exists within the largest integrated academic health district in Atlantic Canada, known as the Capital Health District.
Capital Health users now have browser based access to a Remote Requisitioning application, running on the iSeries that interfaces with a database purchased from SSA-Global-Infinium. This application provides the various departments in the hospital group a method of entering/displaying/tracking requisitions (or inventory orders). A requisition can consist of items from surgical supplies to pharmaceuticals.
WebSmart was selected by Capital Health as the tool of choice to develop browser based applications to replace the existing text based programs. The existing application consisted of several RPG programs with numerous display file record formats. The general flow of the existing system, including the underlying data files and business logic needed to be preserved in the browser development.
For additional details about the site, comments from the senior programmer involved, and several screen shots illustrating the application, please visit the BCD Consulting Site.
For further information about how this application was developed, or details on our consulting services, please contact Kevin Cronin.
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New BCD Webcasts Home Page
Webcasts are educational sessions you can view on your computer, designed to provide in-depth information to help you become more familiar with BCD products and services. Webcasts typically feature detailed product information, product demonstrations, and a question and answer session.
We have recently added a new page to the BCD web site:
www.bcdsoftware.com/webcasts.htm. This page brings together all our webcasts to date, with links and descriptions of each. The only requirement for running the webcasts is that you download the WebEx player (linked to from the page above).
WebSmart 5 Upcoming Training Seminars
We have scheduled the WebSmart 5 Public Training for the week of March 21, 2005 (due to conflicts with other scheduled on-site training classes, this is a different date than previously published). This upcoming session will be the
first WebSmart 5 public training seminar, which will address all the new features (
see the list in November's Tech Update). So if you are just getting going with WebSmart, or even if you're a veteran WebSmart programmer wanting to familiarize yourself with the powerful new tools in this version, this seminar is the one you won't want to miss.
We are also putting together a two-part course that will run the week of April 11, 2005. This course will include the basic WebSmart 5 training plus an
advanced section. This course will devote 2 days to working with the new WebSmart 5 features and another 2 days on advanced programming techniques.
If you are interested in attending either of these classes, and would like additional information, please fill out our
Training Request form. You can also contact
Marcel Sarrasin, our training coordinator.
Last Call for WebSmart 5 Beta Participants
The WebSmart 5.02 beta will be available for just a few more weeks. Many key customers have already installed this version and are using it regularly (and uneventfully!). And also note: We have already added several new features as a result of beta client feedback!
If you want to get in on the action with WebSmart 5.02, and push yourself to the front of the line with your requests for new features or changes to how existing functions work, you only have a few more weeks to get on board.
In addition to all the features outlined in previous tech bulletins, here is another reason to get WebSmart 5 as soon as possible: the new templates. And it's not just about getting immediate access to the new templates we're producing, but now is the best time for you to request template modifications of your own. Once the product is in general release, it becomes more problematic to make template changes.
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WebSmart SQL Template: Smurfs or Cookies?
During the wizard design stage of the SQL Template there is an option on
the "Additional Design Options" panel called "Use Smurfs for Program
State". If you leave this unchecked your program will use browser-life
cookies instead of Smurfs.
Generally, you should choose cookies to store the SQL program's state.
The only situation in which you should choose Smurfs is when you have
many filtering fields in your SQL program. The reason for this is a
technical limitation of many browsers: only 20 cookies can be stored for
any given web site. Since each filtering field is stored as a separate
entity, you'll rapidly run out of space if you try to use cookies,
especially if you have more than one SQL program.
This is published in the WebSmart Knowledge Base, available online at our web site.
If you have any questions on how this works, please email tech support.
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If you participate in the beta, you'll be able to work closely with the lead developers on any problems you encounter, as well as suggest changes and new features at a stage where the product is still malleable and we can more quickly respond to feedback.
If you use ProGen WebSmart regularly, and would be interested in working with us during the last stages of the beta test for the upcoming new release, we encourage you to visit the
WebSmart 5 Beta Request page at our web site.
If you have any questions about the beta, you can contact
Technical Support. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have on the upgrade process or any of the new features.
HTML Tip: CSS Magic - Using IDs and Descendant Selectors
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are intended to help you separate content from presentation design. Content should be controlled with HTML, while page layout and appearance should be controlled using CSS. You can reduce considerably the amount of coding effort
(and therefore the size of your web page content) by effectively using the features of CSS.
In the course of doing some research for an internal development project, one of our programmers wrote a detailed article explaining how you can apply custom presentation rules to standard HTML tags (in this case, links) within a specific section or area of a page while other sections have a different appearance.
The technique involved uses CSS IDs and Descendant Selectors in combination. These terms, and how to implement the techniques mentioned above, are
described in detail in the article.
If you have any questions on how this works, please
email tech support.
WebSmart Templates Tip: Adding a Default File to a Definition
One of reason for wanting to customize WebSmart templates is the need to include a default file in all programs of an application. For example, you may want a user file, an authority file, or perhaps an external data structure available in every program. To add a file like this, such that it always appears as the last file in your list, you need to follow the syntax below. Note that before making any modifications to your templates, you should first create a new folder for the templates you'll be using in the application, and copy a set into that folder. Once you have placed your templates to modify in a new location, follow the instructions below.
In the example below, the segment number we've used (21) is simply a numeric continuation of the segments found in the template and is sequenced to be inserted between 20 and 30. If you needed to insert several files you could re sequence the next segment which, in this case is 30 to be a higher value (39, for instance).
Each segment element identifies an attribute necessary to add a file to the program. These are:
- 21 - File name and library.
- 22 - File name and member name.
- 23 - Record format name.
- 24 - File level ID.
- 25 - External DS (yes/no) 0=No, 1=Yes.
Here is an illustration from a template, with the inserted code shown in red:
SHELL='*'
{
CODE='1'
{
TYPE='ONETIME';
SEG='1'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,ONLOAD=*,AUTOFORMAT';
VALUE='1';
}
SEG='10'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,ATTRIBUTES=*,VERSION';
VALUE='3.00';
}
SEG='20'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,PANELS=*,PANEL=ListHeader,DESC';
VALUE='Page header';
}
SEG='21'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,FILES=*,FILE=COMPMST,LIBRARY';
VALUE='GN#DEMOLIB';
}
SEG='22'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,FILES=*,FILE=COMPMST,MEMBER';
VALUE='*FIRST';
}
SEG='23'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,FILES=*,FILE=COMPMST,RCDFORMAT';
VALUE='RCOMPMST';
}
SEG='24'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,FILES=*,FILE=COMPMST,LEVELID';
VALUE='1010401175027';
}
SEG='25'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,FILES=*,FILE=COMPMST,EXTDS';
VALUE='0';
}
SEG='30'
{
KEY='PDF=MAIN,PANELS=*,PANEL=ListHeader,DETAILS';
VALUE='<html>
...
Keep in mind that if you don't follow the correct syntax (for example, if what you do instead is view a WebSmart program and copy the file definition into a template) the default file always appears as the primary file which means that file is always used for record access loops and field placement.
If you have any questions about this technique, please contact
Technical Support.
New WebSmart Example Programs: Dynamic Highlighting, Using the SQL MAX keyword.
There have been two new
WebSmart example programs published this month:
- Example 82 - This example demonstrates how to dynamically highlight the table row currently under the User's mouse. To do this the program uses a combination of JavaScript event handlers and CSS style sheet classes.
- Example 81 - Example 81 calculates the maximum quantity ordered and maximum extended amounts over all invoices using an SQL MAX query. The MAX query finds the maximum value for a certain field based on the entries selected.
For further details on any of the WebSmart examples, or if you have any questions on how to implement the techniques they demonstrate, please contact
Technical Support.
Nexus 2.50 Portlet Documentation Now Available
Since the initial release of Nexus, a number of important new portlets have been added to the documentation, including the following:
- Terminal Emulation.
- TelNet Sessions.
- A web messaging utility.
- Spool-Explorer for the Web.
As new portlets are continually being added to Nexus, the documentation for these is not included in the main User Guide. Rather, we are publishing stand-alone documents (in PDF format) describing each new portlet class individually. The documentation is available for download from the
Nexus Home Page.
If you have any questions about any of these documents, please contact
Technical Support.
Summary List of Recent Updates
ProGen Plus 8.02
- PG8R018 - 2005/01/03 - Requires OS/400 V5R1 or later. Fix problem when working with parm lists for user defined validation modules. The runtime error "Receiver value to small to hold result" occurred in modules that were converted during the upgrade to release 8.
Please visit the
ProGen Plus Updates page for further information on the available updates.
Docu-Mint/400 6.0
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please note that these updates require V5R1 as a minimum operating system release level (DN60R013 and later).
- DN60R015 - Resolves an issue where some CL programs where being incorrectly listed in the WWU list for a file.
- DN60R014 - Resolves an issue with logical files not being resolved during a WWU over the physical.
- DN60R013 - Resolves an index error when more than 25 libraries are in the user library list. (543kb)
© 2005 ExcelSystems Software Development, Inc.
ProGen Plus and ProGen WebSmart are Trademarks in the US and Canada.
