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Developer Resources: Finding Information

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A big part of our job as software developers is knowing lots of detailed information, but I would argue that knowing how to find information when you need it is even more important. So here is an assortment of resources and tips for Visual DataFlex developers. I use just about all of these resources on a daily basis:

  • The DAW Development Team blog (you're reading it now )
  • The DAW Forums: Peer to peer support for developers.
  • DAW Knowledge Base (KBase): Technical articles with solutions to common problems and questions.
  • DAW BugTracker: Our official bug tracking system, you can find out if bugs are logged and fixed and see workarounds for logged issues.
  • DAW White Papers: More in-depth technical papers than KBase articles on specific topics. These are mostly on legacy topics, we mostly use this blog for newer topics now.
  • Product help: all DAW products come with help systems. The most complete and up-to-date versions are usually in the latest Visual DataFlex help, which encompasses VDF as well as numerous add-on products, such as our connectivity kits (drivers).
  • Supported Environments: This is our supported products list, which lists supported operating systems and other platform information for our products. This is a frequently asked forum question.


Finding help for specific error messages:
Each individual error does not have a separate index or table of contents (TOC) entry in the VDF help. If you know the error number, you can type into the search tab page of the help and bring up the help for that error by clicking on search results listed in book 'VDF Errors'.
Finding Related Information in the VDF Help:
There are many ways to get into individual help topics. For example, pressing F1 almost anywhere in the Visual DataFlex Studio will get you to a page related to where you are currently in the Studio. Or you might find a help topic via the help index. Once you are on a specific help page, that page typically has links to related pages. However, the page is just about always part of a book or set of books devoted to a particular topic. To see where exactly the current topic is in the help's TOC, and thus find other related information, click the Locate button on the help viewer's toolbar.

Note that this feature will only work with pages that are included in the TOC, and all pages are not in the TOC. The most common exception are individual class members in the Class Reference. However, at the top of each page there is a link to the class and type (e.g. Property. Method, Event); each of these pages is in the TOC.
Successfully Finding articles in the KBase:
I usually start by searching for as specific a piece of information as possible, like an error number, file name, or specific exact phrase, and simply leave the default of "ALL CATEGORIES". This ensures you will find all articles containing that specific piece of information and you won't miss one that is categorized in an unexpected way. This search method usually returns nothing or a lot of hits. If nothing, I try a less specific search or a different keyword, still leaving ALL CATEGORIES selected. If there is more than one page of hits, I'll try to refine my search further by being more specific or changing to a specific category.

BTW: The top 2 categories you can choose below ALL CATEGORIES, ** DATAFLEX (ALL) ** and ** VDF (ALL) ** will search multiple categories related to either character-mode or Visual DataFlex. If ALL CATEGORIES returns too many hits, these might be good categories to switch to as a next step.

Also, you can find KBase article by number by typing one or more article ids, separated by a space, into the search form and selecting the 'Article ID(s)' radio before clicking the Search button.
Finding documentation for Connectivity Kits, etc. before installing:
Our FTP site has readme files and User's Guides for the Connectivity Kits (CKs) along with the kits themselves. Find them here: SQL Server, ODBC, Pervasive.SQL, DB2. Also, in any of these FTP locations, if you go up one level and then select archives, you can find older versions of that CK.

We welcome feedback on any of the above resources. These resources have been created for you, our customers, and they are only as good as the information contained in them. I originally created the KBase to track all the information I was learning when I began working for Data Access in support 15 years ago. When we created web application server, the first web application we made public was the KBase to give everyone the same access to this information we had. You will often see developers post forum messages specifically pointing out typos and errors in the help or asking for new content. This is the perfect method for such requests and discussions, then all other developers can benefit from your insights.

Related reading: John Tuohy's article We could answer your question, but then we’d have to kill you.

Comments

  1. Allan Greis Eriksen's Avatar
    Request: Would it be possible to have an all-in-one search site, that automatically searches the above resources (with default values?) and return a list of all the hits. Hmm... Google comes in mind...