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OpenInsight 10.x Features and Benefits
The OpenInsight 10.x application development suite is made up of a number of distinct modules that together provide Windows application developers with a single complete tool set, one that is able to be extended to other technologies as required. For ease of reading, this section will be divided into a number of topics that briefly summarize each module.
OpenInsight 10 is 64-bit.
Form Designer and Presentation Server
The OpenInsight Presentation Server is a core part of the OpenInsight Development suite. It hosts the OpenEngine virtual machine and provides Basic+ programs with an object based interface to create and manipulate Windows Desktop Applications. As well as providing the capability to create your own applications, the Presentation Server also provides the actual OpenInsight development environment itself, which comprises the IDE and its associated tools.
Every Windows based application requires data entry forms, collector windows, etc. The Forms Designer is king amongst the UI tools in OpenInsight and it provides a module where windows can be created with or without data associations. The controls panel provides controls that are both data and non data aware and it provides for most commonly used form controls, such as buttons, labels, edit lines, comboboxes, radio buttons, tab controls, image controls, etc.
In addition, the module includes tools for creating and managing form menus, the tab order for users tabbing through the forms controls and all of the features that you would expect for painting your windows.
The Forms Designer and OpenInsight IDE in OpenInsight v10 have been redesigned to match industry standard development suites such as Visual Studio.
OpenInsight for Web (O4W)
Along with its full complement of desktop tools, OpenInsight includes OpenInsight for Web (O4W), Revelation Software’s next generation of web database development tools. O4W is a rapid application development tool that lets you generate responsive forms, reports, and dashboards. Use our GUI drag-and-drop to lay out your forms and then test in both desktop and mobile browser mode, or use our full-function API to create the most sophisticated web pages.
Fully Web 2.0 compliant, the tool provides both developers and end-users with a largely parameter driven browser based development experience. This enables tabbed web forms to be created with data lookup (popup) windows, multi-page reporting and more.
OEngineServer
The Revelation Software OEngineServer is a java application designed to:
1. Listen (on a configurable tcp/ip port) for requests from various client applications;
2. Start up, manage, and terminate OpenEngines (OEngines) - the database engine for OpenInsight;
3. Route requests and responses from the clients to the OEngines
OpenEngine Common Gateway Interface v4 (OECGI4)
OECGI4.EXE is the OpenEngine Common Gateway Interface version 4. You utilize OECGI4.EXE as the connection to your OpenInsight application from a web server. Introduced in OpenInsight v10, OECGI4 offers improvements over OECGI3.EXE and OECGI2.EXE, including failover, load balancing, and greater security.
Repository Based Environment integrated with Git
OpenInsight is organized around a central repository that acts as a library of entities - individual or groups of application components. These entities can be easily reused within a single application or, through inheritance, they can be shared between multiple applications managed within the one OpenInsight development environment. An individual history can be maintained for each entity and this repository based approach enables team development capabilities to be maintained. Source code can be maintained through OpenInsight Git, an interface from OpenInsight to the Git source code management system. Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. OpenInsight Git's philosophy is simple. It mirrors your OpenInsight source code, stored procedures, windows, messages, help, etc. as text files in Windows directories. From there, Git does the rest. Any change saved in an OpenInsight development tool such as the Editor++, the Form Designer, BRW or O4W can automatically be pushed to the local Git repository, making the source management process much easier.
Data Connectors
OpenInsight features data connectors for several flavors of SQL, Couchbase, as well as MultiValue databases including D3, QM, Universe and Unidata.
The SQL Connector provides the ability to easily connect OpenInsight to a SQL database. With this connector, SQL tables are now seen as native tables to all components of OpenInsight including forms, reports, popups and stored procedures. Use your existing knowledge of OpenInsight development tools, like the O4W web development toolkit, to build applications based on SQL database connections.
Our MultiValue Connectors for Universe, Unidata, D3, and QM have been combined into a single code set which we have named MVBFS (Multivalue Base Filing System). This base filing system will support rti_readu, rti_writeu, and rti_writerelease functions to allow developers to interact with multivalue servers in a more traditional multivalue style.
OpenInsight v10 introduces a Cloud Based Filing System (CBFS) which will allow the OpenInsight toolset to operate on data stored in Couchbase which is one of several cloud databases. A cloud database is an internet accessible NoSQL database key/value store. A key/value store is one which returns an entire document in response to a request for a key. The most popular vendors structure their documents as marked up text. OpenInsight's native data storage is a key/value store which stores data as marked up text, and thus OpenInsight is a natural fit as a toolset for working with these databases. The CBFS connector will translate the OpenInsight markup scheme to the markup scheme of Couchbase which is JSON.
Report Writing Tools
Getting data into your database is one thing, but any good application requires both pre-defined reports and the ability for power users to create their own custom reports. OpenInsight features a number of built in reporting tools to meet both developer and user requirements. These include:
Report Builder – An easy to use fully featured column based report writing tool with a report generation wizard for power users. As well as the ability to select fonts, set headers and footers and define sort orders, the report builder includes functionality to enable single or multiple select statements to be created to filter reports on a fixed basis or based on a user defined basis.
Banded Report Writer (BRW) – A tool similar to the standard Report Writer, but with the ability to band data. The BRW is a tool used for creating and editing powerful and easy-to-use banded reports with a user interface that is compatible with Access and Crystal models.
OIPI – Enables developers to create formatted reports where (usually) single record information is required. For example, a contact record. OIPI supports polygons, graphics and tables.
All of the reports are rendered in OpenInsight’s built in report viewer which features thumbnails, print preview, saving to multiple file formats (including .csv, .pdf and html). There is also a facility to find and select text within a report and more.
Management Console
The OpenInsight Management Console is a browser-based database management tool for system administrators. It utilizes an embedded web server included with the OpenInsight OEngineServer to allow system administrators to monitor and maintain the performance of an OpenInsight database system, either via an intranet or Internet connection.
Database Tool Panel
The Database Tool Panel brings together a number of tools for managing your database, data dictionaries and indexes. It also enables data tables to be added, attached, removed, deleted and provides MFS (Modifiable Filing System) control.
User and Policy Management
The OpenInsight Authentication Module (OAM) builds upon the legacy OpenInsight security processes and provides additional enhanced industry standard security processes. OpenInsight v10 by default utilizes this new enhanced login security policy. System administrators can choose to disable enhanced login security policy and retain legacy login processing instead.
The module provides support for login policies including locking out of users after a definable number of unsuccessful attempts, password construction requirements, etc. Sensitive data for policy and user information is stored in AES encrypted records. In addition, the OAM records ("journals") successful and unsuccessful login attempts, changes to policies and changes to user information.
Should the network infrastructure support it, OpenInsight also allows Single Sign-On (SSO) as an alternative authentication process.
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OpenInsight 10 Released!
Westwood, NJ. – April 16, 2018, Revelation Software today announced the availability of the latest release of OpenInsight Development Suite (OI) 10. OI 10 provides the following new and/or improved components:
New IDE - OpenInsight 10 includes a brand new IDE, visually similar to modern application development tools, yet still designed for the MultiValue developer. Each of the product’s designers, for forms, tables, reports and all others are now contained into a single, cohesive workspace.
Arev64 – The next generation of our Advanced Revelation emulator, utilizing the full power and capabilities of modern 64-bit architectures.
User and Data Security – With increased concerns about security and privacy, including upcoming GDPR requirements, a number of enhancements and changes have been made to strengthen data security.
Management Console – The OpenInsight Management Console is a browser-based database management tool for system administrators.
Git Integration – OpenInsight’s repository based environment is integrated to the Git source code management system.
Universal Driver 5.1 – 64-bit and VSS capability.
“This release of OpenInsight is revolutionary”, said Mike Ruane, President/CEO Revelation Software, “We’ve rewritten nearly every bit of code in the product, from the interface with the user, to the reporting tools, and the speed of the indexing routines.”
Also included in OI 10 are a number of enhancements for the MultiValue Base Filing System (MVBFS), Cloud Based Filing System (CBFS), NetOI/RevDotNet, OIPI.Net/OIPI, SQL Connector, Editor ++/Basic+, OECGI4 and CTO.
“The improvements to our O4W robustness is a huge breakthrough”, said Robert Catalano, Director of Sales, Revelation Software. “Our new WYSISYG Form Designer makes creating responsive browser-based applications much easier, and much more intuitive.”
OpenInsight Development Suite 10 is available from Revelation Software, or through their network of resellers. See Revelation.com for details.
OpenInsight X - A Sneak Peek
By Andrew McAuley
Sprezzatura Ltd
So OpenInsight X has finally arrived resplendent in all its glory! After a gruelling beta cycle Revelation Software announced yesterday the formal release of OpenInsight 10.0.1.
We've been working with the software internally for quite some time and it has been a pleasure to see it flesh out and come to life. So many small but important details are taken care of. The main executable is now digitally signed - so no more scary warnings when launching the program. The long term goal of developing a tool that's good enough to develop a tool has finally been achieved - no more random executables! These are all of the exe files in the product - not a formdes.exe in sight. Finally form designer is written in OpenInsight itself. This is testimony both to the power and flexibility now delivered in the shipping product.
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Creating Relational Indexes in OpenInsight 10
The How and Why regarding Relational Indexes
Our suggested best practice is NOT to embed the relational in the data table, but rather to make a table called MYTABLE_REL whose key is the same as the data table. Why are we suggesting this? Because MYTABLE_REL will never be locked by a user and the relational updates will always succeed. Also long lists of keys in a record will not skew the hashing on the primary table. With this method, you can run clear-table on the relational table prior to rebuilding the index. This provides the ability to have a table related to itself without getting confused.
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OpenInsight 10.0 / O4W 2.0 WYSIWYG Form Designer
OpenInsight for Web (O4W) is a flexible and powerful web development toolkit for OpenInsight.
Don’t limit your application to the desktop! OpenInsight for Web (O4W) is a rapid application development tool that lets you generate responsive forms, reports, and dashboards. Use our GUI drag-and-drop to lay out your forms and then test in both desktop and mobile browser mode. You can also use our full-function API to create the most sophisticated web pages.
Using our WYSIWYG Form Designer we have created a sample Mobile Pizza Order Entry application. Click HERE to run the application.
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