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Dear Developers,

we have moved our blogging environment from the forums to our new web site.

We hope to continue to provide fresh and useful information to you, our customers. Please visit our new blogging home. There are already numerous blog posts waiting for you.

It takes one mouse click on a total column heading in a Dynamic AI report to make it a Top 10 or Bottom 10 report, and just a few mouse clicks can combine multiple Top 10 reports into a single presentation like this Top 10 dashboard. But what if you want to let the user choose the number to rank, and choose if the report ranks from the bottom instead of the top of the totals? What if, unlike the examples presented in the above Top 10 Dashboard, you also want the rank number to appear on each row? ...

We are excited to announce today the beta test launch of new software for OAuth, RESTful & Web API Integration. This software enables developers to connect their DataFlex applications to a variety of web resources including Office 365, Google, Facebook, Meetup, MailChimp and more. Full details are in a new sub-forum. Use is free to licensed DataFlex developers.

Some background….

Data Access Worldwide's fundamental role is to help developers deliver more and better business ...

Overview

This document provides information about SQL Injection attacks and how the risks associated with them are mitigated in the DataFlex application environment. When SQL statements written by a developer are included in an application program for direct execution by an SQL server, the developer is responsible for making sure that his or her programming style does not let the guard down for threats like SQL Injection or other risks.

What is an SQL Injection attack? ...

Attached Files

• SQL Injection and DataFlex.pdf (372.8 KB, 10431 views)

A normal uninstall procedure of DataFlex revision 19.0 and earlier requires three simple steps:

1. Run Programs and Features (accessible through Control Panel on your Windows machine)
2. Select to uninstall DataFlex
3. Restart your computer to finalize the process (and release anything DataFlex that was loaded in memory)

Sometimes users fail to execute step 3 and go straight to installing another build of DataFlex. What might happen is that files not released from memory will still be ...

The WebApp Framework comes with a prepared system for building proper secure Web Applications. By default there is the session manager that generates a unique key for each session and remembers the login state of this session and there are several hooks that allow the developer to easily implement access rules on view level. Now having this all in place it is just a matter of implementing the right hooks to restrict access to parts of the application based on the login state and user rights. But ...

If you are migrating a web application from Visual DataFlex 17.1 to DataFlex 18.0, you might need to take an extra step to get your application to successfully compile and run in the new revision.

This is due to a change in the tWebRow structure used in DataFlex Web Framework.


Background

To understand the two main reasons for this change it is important to understand how this worked under 17.1.

When the DataFlex web framework was developed, ...

If you use a numeric column in a report where the value requires a currency symbol (e.g. article price, order total) you can format the field to print a currency symbol before the number. In the following screenshot is the Euro symbol seen in front of the Credit Limit, the Purchases and the Balance.



For this you format the field and on the Number tab-page you can choose between "Windows Default ...

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This blog covers a little project I recently have been working on to create a larger and more diverse data set for the order entry workspace delivered as one of the examples. The set of data in the database delivered with version 17.1 was already increased and changed. This was mainly done to get a better set of data for the demonstration of Dynamic AI integration in a DataFlex application. The data in older versions of the workspace was a bit outdated and limited in size. While the increase was ...

Attached Files

• BlogReports.zip (5.3 KB, 7084 views)

Visual DataFlex 17.0 introduced a change in regards to fonts. Visual DataFlex 17.0 (and higher) allows true Windows fonts to be used in applications. Before 17.0, Sans Serif was the only font used in Visual DatFlex.

That means that applications being migrated to 17.0 or higher may need to be adjusted in order to have the desired screen layout on all platforms and resolutions, but once you make this one-time change, your application should look the same on any platform.

...

A standard feature of the Internet Information Server is HTTP compression. This module is available to optimize the performance of web applications by compressing HTTP responses that are sent to the client. The goal is to decrease the size of the responses to allow faster network transmission. Of course this has the side effect that the CPU usage increases on the server (and on the client). So we are trading CPU usage against bandwidth here. This means that HTTP compression doesn't always make your ...

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This blog is about XML readability. Since 1999 DataFlex is capable to handle XML in and XML out via classes defined in the FleXML.pkg (cXMLDomDocument etc). One of the most heard remarks in support questions is how to make XML readable for the human being as Microsoft XML writes the XML data as one long line of text. While OK most developers want to be able to read the content in an editor. You can easily format the XML file with tools like Notepad++ but how to do this from your own code?
...

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Now we are on the edge of delivering the final Visual Report Writer 3.0 I want to learn you how you can make use of the new interactive previewer that is available in the product. In this blog we create a report that shows all orders that used the current selected INVT item. Clicking on an order should bring up the order view with the clicked order found and displayed. Using the INVT table means that you can use the order entry example workspace.

The Report
The report needs to ...

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At the Data Access forums I found a question if it was possible to respond when the computer enters the sleep modus. The topic draw my attention and I decided to play around a bit. In this blog you learn how to make respond code.

Notification event
Windows can send a notification message to your application when changes occur in the power status. To be able to receive the notification message the application needs to register itself for receiving these messages. This is done with ...

In this blog I’ll show you how to use Windows API functions in Visual Report Writer.
We are using the function [B]PathFileExists[/B] exposed by the library ‘[B]Shlwapi.dll[/B] ‘

Visual Report Writer uses the [B]VARIANT[/B] type to communicate with the External Library Functions (ELF). Because of this Windows API’s can’t be called directly, doing so will stop the rendering of the reports as Visual Report Writer expects a variant type to return and direct calling might even crash ...

In this blog, i'll show you how to make a function number2words for use in Visual Report Writer. We are creating a dynamic link library (DLL) containing useful routines that can be used by Visual Report Writer. Using External Library Functions (ELF) is a great way to extend the functionality of Visual Report Writer.

This walkthrough uses C and assumes you understand the fundamentals of the C language and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

[B]This blog covers the following:[/B] ...

In this thirtheenth blog about Visual Report Writer and the Web I want to tell you how you can make a report that is interactive. A demo of a report that does this can be found at the Live Demo website (European Server, USA server). If this is the first blog you read I encourage you to read the twelve other blogs (1: The Solution, 2: Invoices Report, 3: The Cleanup, 4: The CustomerList, 5: The Orderlist, 6: The Credit and Balances Overview), 7: Inventory Stock Levels), 8: Sick Leave), 9: FileList (RDS)), ...

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In this twelfth blog about Visual Report Writer and the Web I want to take you some not really report related features that can be found at the Live Demo website (European Server, USA server). If this is the first blog you read I encourage you to read the eleven other blogs (1: The Solution, 2: Invoices Report, 3: The Cleanup, 4: The CustomerList, 5: The Orderlist, 6: The Credit and Balances Overview), 7: Inventory Stock Levels), 8: Sick Leave), 9: FileList (RDS)), 10: Four Wine Data Based Reports) ...

In this eleventh blog about Visual Report Writer and the Web I want to take you to the last not yet discussed report that can be found at the Live Demo website (European Server, USA server) named top 10 sales persons. If this is the first blog you read I encourage you to read the ten other blogs (1: The Solution, 2: Invoices Report, 3: The Cleanup, 4: The CustomerList, 5: The Orderlist, 6: The Credit and Balances Overview), 7: Inventory Stock Levels), 8: Sick Leave), 9: FileList (RDS)) and 10: ...

In this tenth blog about Visual Report Writer and the Web I want to take you to the next four reports that can be found at the Live Demo website (European Server, USA server) grouped under Wines. If this is the first blog you read I encourage you to read the nine other blogs (1: The Solution, 2: Invoices Report, 3: The Cleanup, 4: The CustomerList, 5: The Orderlist, 6: The Credit and Balances Overview), 7: Inventory Stock Levels), 8: Sick Leave) and 9: FileList (RDS)). Meanwhile we have been able ...