July 28, 2016
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In This Issue

Announcing Synergy/DE 10.3.3a patch for Windows and Linux
The reports are in: Jack Henry saves memory, time with new PDF reporting
Join the Select who Select using Join
Tech Tip: Fixing TOKUDF errors ("Symbol already uniquely defined")
Are you hiring new programmers? Need to train existing programmers on the latest features in Synergy DBL?
Industry News
Synergy/DE Links

Announcing Synergy/DE 10.3.3a patch for Windows and Linux

Synergy/DE 10.3.3a fixes a number of issues, including:

On Linux,
-- The SSL linkage was broken for httpslib.so, synssllib.so, and VTXSSL.so. [tr#36569]
-- (SuSE) The Red Hat versions of the files httpslib.so, synssllib.so, and VTXSSL.so were being installed on SuSE. [tr#36570]

For .NET runtime deployment,
-- Setting SCSPREFETCH while running a .NET client to xfServer hung with a Select or READS. [tr#36543]
-- A Synergy .NET app running on the desktop concurrently with a traditional Synergy app consumed one additional RUN license. [tr#36511]

For xfNetLink Synergy,
-- xfNetLink Synergy failed to connect to an xfServerPlus server using %RX_START_REMOTE with error code RX_NOXFSPL when IPv6 protocol was not available. [tr#36507]

10.3.3a also includes significant improvements for developing traditional Synergy applications in Visual Studio, especially in the debugger.

If you are using version 10.3.3 on Windows or Linux, we strongly encourage you to update to the 10.3.3a patch. Click here to download the patch, or here to view the 10.3.3a release notes.

 

The reports are in: Jack Henry saves memory, time with new PDF reporting

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ: JKHY) was founded in 1976 as a provider of core information processing solutions for community banks. Today, the company’s extensive array of products and services are processing transactions, automating business processes, and managing mission-critical information for more than 11,900 financial institutions and corporate entities. Their Synergy/DE-based Core Director application is used by over 200 banks.

Jack Henry recently moved Core Director’s reporting from HTML to PDF, using the SynPSG_PDF API from Synergex's Professional Services Group. Core Director produces hundreds of reports and also affords Jack Henry’s end users the ability to create dynamic reports (Core Director Report Writer) based on any data that is exposed. Their HTML reporting functionality worked quite well for smaller reports, but really struggled with the larger ones, which can exceed 15,000 pages. Displaying reports in a browser requires that the entire document be converted to HTML and rendered to the client for viewing, which can be extremely slow. Plus, the memory usage is extensive. To display even medium-sized reports in a browser window, Internet Explorer uses large amounts of memory. “Viewing of these types of reports was the largest consumer of memory (RAM) in the Core Director Browser product!” exclaimed Jack Henry’s Senior Software Engineer, Nick Hennemann. “We really needed a solution that removed this memory bottleneck.”

Jack Henry learned about the SynPSG_PDF API from a Synergex blog post that happened to coincide with the early stages of the Core Director 2016 development cycle. The PDF API is a platform-independent API that makes it easy to create PDF files from applications written in Synergy DBL. It contains a set of DBL wrapper classes that allows DBL to access the open source Haru free PDF library. “With the work Synergex has done to seamlessly integrate HaruPDF into the Synergy Runtime, incorporating it into the Core Director Product was a snap,” recalls Hennemann. Jack Henry extended the technology further to embed URL links into the PDF documents, as users had this functionality with the previous HTML solution. “Having the SynPSG_PDF DLL to build upon was fantastic!” enthused Hennemann. “We were able to move forward rapidly with our development since all the groundwork was already laid out by Synergex.”

Although still early in the release cycle, Jack Henry’s move from HTML to PDF documents has already been well received. States Hennemann, “Our customers are now getting reports faster, the reports are consuming less memory, and we are providing customers with a readily portable document.” One of the biggest benefits Jack Henry has realized is that they are now “offloading” printing to Adobe Reader (or the user’s PDF viewer of choice), which greatly reduces Jack Henry’s need to support and maintain their own print routines. Hennemann concludes, “In my opinion, even Synergex customers who are utilizing text reports today would benefit greatly, as moving to a PDF report is now easier than ever with Synergy’s PDF API. Creating a PDF gives your end user a richer output (with the ability to alternate row colors, build charts, include graphics, and add document and external links) and possibly reduces reliance on self-created print routines.”

You can download the SynPSG_PDF API at https://github.com/Synergex/SynPSG_PDF. Learn more at synergex.com/blog.


Join the Select who Select using Join

By John Brunett, Senior Software Engineer

The Select statement was introduced back in Synergy/DE 9.3.1, originally conceived as a tool to retrieve status from the new change tracking feature yet to be released in version 10. Since then, it has grown in functionality as useful new ways to use it have been revealed. Once again, with the release of Synergy/DE 10.3.3, Select contains a new addition: the Join construct. Using SQL92 as a basis, this initial implementation of the Join provides functionality equivalent to SQL’s INNER and LEFT OUTER JOIN. We added two new methods to the From class, InnerJoin and LeftJoin, to accomplish this functionality. Both return From objects so they can be combined to form complex, multi-table joins.

Read more.

Tech Tip: Fixing TOKUDF errors (“Symbol already uniquely defined”)

With Synergy/DE 10.3.3, we updated dblproto so that it now creates a single prototype file (.dbp) containing prototypes for all subroutines, functions, and classes rather than a file for each routine/class. Although this greatly simplifies prototyping, improves prototyping performance, and results in better IntelliSense support, it can break code, highlight errors with imports, and cause TOKUDF errors for duplicate prototyped routines and duplicate global structures. (See the tr#36331 entries in the 10.3.3 Synergy DBL release notes, REL_DBL.TXT, for more information on this change.)

Read more.

Are you hiring new programmers? Need to train existing programmers on the latest features in Synergy DBL?

The Language Essentials class is the perfect opportunity to train new programmers or get existing programmers up to speed on the many added features of the Synergy DBL Language. During the 5-day class, students will discover the Synergy DBL essentials through lecture and applied examples, followed by hands-on lab exercises to reinforce learning.

Visit our web site for more information.

Industry News

Windows
The procrastinator's guide to free Windows 10 upgrades
Microsoft will give you a new laptop if it can’t upgrade your system to Windows 10
Virtually overlooked: Upgrade your Windows 10 VMs while they're still free
Microsoft will start selling Windows 10 as a subscription product to large businesses
Windows 10 Anniversary Update available August 2
Windows 10 Anniversary Update: The 10 best new features
Linux
Linus Torvalds officially releases Linux Kernel 4.7
Why Microsoft's Linux lovefest goes hand-in-hand with its Azure cloud strategy
OpenVMS
HPE's Itanium server refresh should come in mid-2017
Other
This initiative wants to help ransomware victims decrypt their files for free
With no Google Street view, the Faroe Islands start using sheep to map the area

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