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Mark Your Calendars for SPC 2009
Boston :: May 19-21 | London :: June 9-11
SPC 2009: Stand out from the crowd.
During these uncertain economic times, it’s more important than ever to run a competitive business. With consumers scrutinizing the value of every purchase, it’s critical to offer a product that is superior to the competition. Likewise, when your application is driving your own internal business functions, you need to make sure you are providing the most effective and efficient solution for the job. For both of these reasons, this year’s SPC might be the most important one ever. This is the year to make sure you are taking advantage of all of the new features and functionality in Synergy/DE so you can offer your users the best, most competitive applications possible. Stand out from the crowd. Attend SPC 2009 to find out how.
Mark your calendars for SPC 2009.
 Add SPC Boston 2009 to my calendar*
*when the dialog box appears, click Open to add the event to your calendar
Add SPC London 2009 to my calendar*
*when the dialog box appears, click Open to add the event to your calendar
Stay tuned to Synergy-e-News for more details about the conference, including registration information.
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New Synergy/DE ADO.NET Entity Framework Capabilities Coming Soon
Synergex is looking for beta testers
Synergex has developed an ADO.NET 3.5 provider that will enable you to use the ADO.NET Entity Framework to access Synergy databases. It will also enable you to interoperate with the Entity Framework and the Entity designers in Visual Studio 2008 SP1.
See Roger Andrews’ blog for more information about the Entity Framework. If you are interested in beta testing our new Entity Framework capabilities, please contact Synergy/DE Developer Support.
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Detect Potential Problems Early with Synergy/DE 9.1.* Enhancements
By Galen Carpenter, Senior Software Engineer, Synergy/DE
To help make your job easier, we recently modified the Synergy linker and runtime to inform you when duplicate global symbols of different sizes are present. As of Synergy/DE 9.1.3, both the linker and runtime detect duplicate common or global data sections. The linker aborts if the symbols are not the same size, while the runtime outputs a message to the debugger window if the second symbol is larger than the first. (Note that you will only see this message if the program is running in debug mode.) In Synergy/DE 9.1.5a, we further modified the linker to generate a warning if a referencing global data section is larger than the defining global data section. The 9.1.5a runtime still outputs a message to the debugger window (assuming the program is running in debug mode), unless the program was rebuilt with 9.1.5 or later, in which case the runtime aborts upon detecting a size mismatch.
One of the hidden problems that can cause an application to fail is when global data areas (common records or global data sections) are defined in two places: either in a .dbr file and an ELB, or in two (or more) different ELBs. The linker has always allowed a common symbol or global data section to be defined (using the INIT option) in multiple places. The problem occurs when the runtime resolves the symbol name to a data area and the two definitions are not the same size.
Click here to read the full article.
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Support Tech Tip
“Error 21: Invalid operation for file type” when making method call with xfServerPlus
When making calls with an xfNetLink — xfServerPlus application, a customer was sporadically getting the error “$ERR_FILOPT 21 Invalid operation for file type”. Once the error occured, all subsequent calls also failed. But the error did not seem to be restricted to a particular routine. The same routine that caused the error in one instance, could be called in a different order or application with no problem. This problem first occurred in a Web application, where all subsequent method calls failed until IIS was restarted. When it was reproduced in a desktop application, all subsequent calls failed until the application was restarted. The error logged to the xfServerPlus log file was “Error #21 at XFPL_FILE_READ, line 265”. The log showed that when the routine that caused the error was successful, it was found in the second-level cache rather than in the cmpdt file. This indicated that the problem occured only when xfServerPlus attempted to read the Synergy Method Catalog (SMC) files, and therein lies the clue to solving the problem.
By default, xfServerPlus uses 243 as the base channel number. This means the SMC files cdt and cmpdt are opened on channels 243 and 244, respectively. When the UI Toolkit routine U_START is called, it closes all open channels up to channel 255 unless the first_channel and last_channel arguments are passed. This is what happened in the scenario described above: The channels opened to the SMC files were closed when U_START was called and, with the SMC inaccessible, no information on the methods was available, except for methods that had been called previously and were therefore cached.
While the use of UI Toolkit is not recommended in remotely called code, you can use UI Toolkit routines that do not make use of the computer console such as U_START, U_FINISH, and the file I/O and channel maintenance routines. See “Removing User Interface Elements” in chapter 1 of the Developing Distributed Synergy Applications manual for information on using UI Toolkit routines with xfServerPlus applications. As mentioned in that section, when U_START is called remotely, you can set XFPL_BASECHAN in the xfpl.ini file to specify the channels xfServerPlus will use. You may also want to specify the first_channel and last_channel arguments to U_START. See “Specifying a Base Channel Number” in that same chapter for details on XFPL_BASECHAN. |
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Quiz
Synergy/DE pros, see if you can answer this question!
What is the output of the following program?
namespace what.does.it.say
function what, a
in req a, int
in req b, int
proc
freturn "hey"
end
class speaker
public static method what, a
in req a, int
in req b, int
proc
mreturn %char(a+69)+%char(b+78)+%char(a+64)+%char(b+71)
endmethod
public static method say, string
in req a, int
in req b, int
literal what
,a6, "Heckle"
proc
mreturn what(a,b)
endmethod
endclass
main
proc
open(1,o,"TT:")
writes(1, "What the... " + speaker.say(1,4))
end
endnamespace
a. “What the… hey”
b. “What the… FRAK”
c. “What the… Heck”
d. This does not compile.
Click here for the answer and explanation. |
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Platform News
Read a selection of recent articles
Windows
Why I Can't Get Enough of Windows 7
January 22, 2009
Windows 7 Beta Outperforms Vista on SSDs
January 20, 2009
Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Released
January 20, 2009
AMD
AMD's $1.4 Billion Loss Bigger than Expected
January 20, 2009
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Synergex Events and Education
NEW! SPC 2009 Boston
May 19-21
Stay tuned for more information
NEW! SPC 2009 London
June 9-11
Stay tuned for more information
MDU Enhancements in Synergy/DE 9
On-demand
From UI Toolkit to .NET: Updating a Legacy Application (A Customer's Perspective)
On-demand
Synergy/DE 9.1 Highlights
On-demand
UI Toolkit Composite Windows
On-demand
Synergy Objects Parts 1, 2, and 3
On-demand
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Announcing the Q4 Developer Support Survey Contest Winner
Erik Read, from Jack Henry, is the winner of the Q4 Developer Support Survey contest, and the recipient of a $100 American Express gift card. Jack Henry is a leading provider of integrated technology solutions for financial institutions throughout the United States.
Want a chance to win? Let us know what you think!
Customer satisfaction with our Developer Support is monitored and enhanced through the distribution of satisfaction surveys upon the closing of each support case. Each quarter, we choose a winner by randomly selecting the name of a customer who has completed a survey after working with Developer Support. So, next time you call on us for support, let us know how we did and you could win $100 just for sharing your opinion. Not too shabby, eh?
Thanks to everyone who completed a Developer Support survey in Q4, and we look forward to hearing from you again.
If you do not currently have Developer Support, contact your Synergy/DE account manager for more information.
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Synergex Holiday Reminder
We will be closed on Monday, February 16, in recognition of President’s Day. If you anticipate needing our assistance on this day, please contact us at synergy@synergex.com to make arrangements.
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