SYNERGY-E-NEWS
News and Updates for Synergy/DE Developers

May 11, 2012

 

Synergy DevPartner Conference: 16 New Hands-On Tutorials to Choose From

Register today


Deploy your Synergy applications faster and easier with ClickOnce

By Marty Lewis, Systems Software Engineer


Synergy/DE Tech Tip

"Unidentified Publisher" or "The certificate in the signature cannot be verified" messages when installing Synergy/DE


Platform News

Read a selection of recent articles

 

 

Synergy/DE 10 Alpha Version Released!

Prepare for Synergy/DE 10—and Windows 8—by running your applications with the v10 alpha


Free Code for Synergy Developers

Parse XML files with over 65,534 characters on a line



Quiz

Synergy/DE pros, see if you can answer this question!

twitter.com/synergyde
 


Synergy DevPartner Conference: 16 New Hands-On Tutorials to Choose From

Register today

There are 16 brand new tutorials to choose from at this year’s conference. These tutorials will help you understand how to adopt and implement the new features and technologies being presented during the sessions. Here’s a sampling of what you can expect:
                        

  • New to developing on Windows using Visual Studio? You’ll want to take advantage of the introductory tutorials that take you step-by-step through using this exciting development tool, including learning the basics of XAML and Model View ViewModel desktop application development techniques.
  • Want to add some sparkle to your Synergy/DE UI Toolkit programs? Try out one of the tutorials that explores using new .NET controls to enhance your user experience--from simple calendar controls to eye-catching, fully functional grid controls—using your existing list load methods.
  • If data is “your bag”, taking full advantage of the Select class to locate and process data is a must. Using Workbench, you’ll use the powerful Select classes to access the sample Synergy database and see just how easy it can be to manipulate your application’s data.
  • Going green with Synergy is now even easier. You can now implement an open source PDF report generation solution that enables you to view your reports on screen in PDF and just print the ones you need. If you’re tired of being a slave to your printer, try out one of the tutorials that walks you through adding this capability to your system.
  • Professional installations are a must in today’s Windows world, but understanding all the package and deployment options can be a little daunting. The “Deploying via Windows Installer” and “Deploying via ClickOnce” tutorials will show you just how professional you can make your application installations.
  • The Synergy IOHooks class is a powerful new cross-platform feature. There are several tutorials that explore the true power of this new Synergy capability that can help you monitor file locks or provide generic data validation routines.

 

These are just a few of the tutorials available at this year’s DevPartner Conference. Register today at http://conference.synergex.com.
 




Synergy/DE 10 Alpha Version Released!

Prepare for Synergy/DE 10—and Windows 8—by running your applications with the v10 alpha

Synergy/DE 10 is scheduled for release later this year. It will include many exciting enhancements, such as:

  • Snapshots, new key types, and other ISAM features
  • Support for Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2011, including Metro support (v10 is required for Windows 8)
  • HTTP/HTTPS API improvements
  • Much more, which we’ll tell you all about at the upcoming Synergy DevPartner Conference in May (Chicago) and June (York, UK)!

Version 10 includes significant changes to the Synergy DBMS file system, so we’re conducting an extended “alpha test” to verify these changes. We encourage all of you to run your applications with the alpha version to verify that your apps will run successfully when you upgrade to Synergy/DE 10.

Note that we’re not testing any new v10 features yet; we’ll just ask you to run your standard application tests with your existing files, especially any high-volume and multi-user tests that you have. (Optionally, you can also recompile and re-test.) The alpha version is available on Windows and uses v9 licensing.

  • Be prepared for Synergy/DE 10!
  • Be prepared for Windows 8!
    (before your users start asking for it)
  • Try out the v10 alpha with your applications today.

If you are interested, just let us know, and we’ll send you download instructions. 




Deploy your Synergy applications faster and easier with ClickOnce

By Marty Lewis, Systems Software Engineer

With version 9.5.3a of Synergy Language Integration for Visual Studio, you have a new option for deploying Synergy .NET applications: ClickOnce. ClickOnce makes deployment faster, easier, and more convenient than ever before. With ClickOnce, you can deploy an application straight from a web page in moments. All necessary runtimes and dependencies are seamlessly installed, and your application can be up and running very quickly.

Does this sound too good to be true? It isn’t. But there are a few requirements:

  • Your development machine must have the following:
    • Visual Studio 2010 or later with C++ installed
    • Synergy/DE 9.5.3a or higher
    • Synergy Language Integration for Visual Studio 9.5.3a or higher
  • Target (deployment) machines must have either Synergy/DE 9.5.3a (or higher) or access to a Synergy license server via a named pipe.

Now that the requirements are out of the way, let’s dig in and get started with a whole new way to deploy your Synergy .NET applications. The process is simple enough. As long as you have a Synergy project with a few key options set, selecting “Publish ProjectName” from the Build menu will generate a setup executable that will do the job. Refining the process to make sure your deployments go to the right place and have the right information is where you will want to take some time and care during setup.

All of the options you need to set for this are centralized in the Project Designer (Project > ProjectName Properties). Start by opening the Runtime Settings page of Project Designer:

Screenshot 1

In this dialog, you can specify settings that will be used during runtime on deployment machines. If deployment machines do not have a license server, you will need to set the “Synergy License Server” field. With this field, you specify the name of the license server that will be accessed by the application runtime. If you have specific environment variables that need to be set in the target environment, specify their settings under “Runtime environment variables.” Variables specified here will be set during runtime initialization.

Note that all of the values on this particular dialog are read from and written to the App.config file in your project. So if it is more convenient, you can configure a basic App.config file and include it in your projects, rather than using this dialog for every project’s settings.

The next set of options you’ll need to consider control how your application is published and deployed (the web page used for publishing, how and where files are installed, and so forth). These are set from the Publish page of Project Designer:

Screenshot 2

This dialog is identical to the one you see when using ClickOnce in C#, so Microsoft’s ClickOnce documentation generally applies to ClickOnce for Synergy. But we’ll discuss a few basic options here that you should know about. (There are some differences with ClickOnce for Synergy. See the “ClickOnce Deployment (Synergy/DE)” topic, which is listed under “Synergy Language” in the help contents when viewing local Visual Studio help.)

To start with, you’ll likely need to change the “Publishing Folder Location” field after you establish any significant process with ClickOnce. This controls where the setup executable and distributable files are placed when they are published. It is powerful enough to allow access to ftp:// paths or most any path supported by your Windows OS.

Clicking the “Application Files” button opens a dialog where you can select which referenced assemblies, or other files in your project, should be distributed with the application. If you have additional projects in your solution that generate libraries referenced by this application, you should also select them in this dialog.

Screenshot 3

In order for your Synergy.NET applications to work correctly on a machine without a matching version of Synergy/DE installed, you also need to select “Include” from the dropdown list for synrnt.dll. This ensures that the Synergy Runtime library is deployed along with your application.

Back on the Publish page, click the Prerequisites button to bring up options for installing lower-level prerequisites for your application:

Screenshot 4

By default, the “Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile (x86 and x64)” option and the “Windows Installer 3.1” option are enabled. However, there is one more important prerequisite you need to select to make sure the Synergy Runtime will be able to run on the target machine. If a version of Synergy/DE is not already installed on the target machine, select the “Visual C++ 2010 Runtime Libraries” option that coincides with your target platform (x86 for 32-bit or x64 for 64-bit).

At this point, you have completed every setup step necessary to deploy a Synergy.NET application with ClickOnce. When you click “Publish Now” on the Publish page of Project Designer, Windows Explorer will open to the location of your published files (assuming your project builds correctly). And if you keep that hierarchy intact, you can copy the files to a web server or common network share. Once the project has been published, you can run the setup executable to quickly deploy prerequisites and necessary runtime assemblies and to launch your application, even on a machine without a Synergy installation.

There are more publishing options you can set: options that enable you to configure publisher information, file associations, automatic updates, and even a desktop shortcut for your applications. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7azx932h.aspx for more information on this dialog, and see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t71a733d(v=VS.100).aspx for more information on ClickOnce deployment.

Learn more about this functionality, as well as other exciting new features in Synergy/DE 9.5.3, at the upcoming Synergy DevPartner Conference in May (Chicago) and June (York, UK).

 


Free Code for Synergy Developers

Parse XML files with over 65,534 characters on a line

The ParseXML CodeExchange entry is intended to overcome the limitation in the Synergy XML API routine %XML_PARSER_PARSEFILE, which can only parse XML files that have fewer than 65,534 characters on a line. This limitation rarely causes problems, as XML files generally contain line breaks, but if you happen to encounter such a file, you'll want to download ParseXML to help you deal with it. This program parses the provided XML file and writes out a new copy of it, complete with line breaks, which can be parsed by the standard %XML_PARSER_PARSEFILE routine.

For more information and the code, see CodeExchange. CodeExchange is available in the Synergy/DE Resource Center to supported Synergy/DE customers. Be sure to take advantage of this great resource, and don't forget to submit your own CodeExchange entries so that other Synergy developers can benefit from your cool code.

 


Synergy/DE Tech Tip

"Unidentified Publisher" or "The certificate in the signature cannot be verified" messages

When you are installing a Synergy/DE product on Vista or Windows 7, you might see a UAC (User Account Control) window displayed, warning that “An unidentified program wants access to your computer. Don’t run the program unless you know where it’s from or you’ve used it before. setup.exe Unidentified Publisher". Or, if you right-click on setup.exe in Windows Explorer, then select Properties, select the Digital Signatures tab, highlight the line with “Synergex International Corporation” in it, and select the Details button, the message “The certificate in the signature cannot be verified” might appear on the Digital Signature Details window.

This happens when the digital signatures for the Synergy installation and product files cannot be verified because the root certificate is out of date. Running Windows updates to get the latest system updates, which will include up-to-date root certificates, will quickly elimate these messages.


Quiz

Synergy/DE pros, see if you can answer this question!

How many times does the following program print "bip" to the terminal?

main
record
       count    ,int
proc
       open(1,o,"TT:")
       for  count from ^b(10000000000000000000000000000000) thru 0 by -1
         writes(1,"bip")
end                 

a. 10000000000000000000000000000000
b. 2147483648
c. 2147483649
d. 0


Click to read answer

Platform News

Read a selection of recent articles

     

Windows

Microsoft updates the public Windows 8 countdown calendar http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-updates-the-public-windows-8-countdown-calendar/12533?tag=content;search-results-river

 

Unix

Linus Torvalds wins the tech. equivalent of a Nobel Prize: the Millennium Technology Prize
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-wins-the-tech-equivalent-of-a-nobel-prize-the-millennium-technology-prize/10789?tag=must-read

 

HP Unveils Enhancements to HP-UX for HP Integrity Systems
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2012/120426b.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

 

OpenVMS

Changes to OpenVMS Support
http://www.openvms.org/stories.php?story=12/05/03/8063553

 

Misc/General

Programming languages not copyrightable rules top EU court
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/programming-languages-not-copyrightable-rules-top-eu-court-192231