Agenda
Technical deep dives, customer case studies, product updates, and open discussion
Whether you’re maintaining, modernizing, or building what’s next, our sessions deliver practical insights to help you discover new opportunities and position your software and teams for long-term success.
Featured Presentations
Keynote: Why Everything Still Matters When Everything Changes
Scott Hanselman, VP of Developer Community at Microsoft
We're thrilled to welcome Scott to our conference. Known for his insightful and engaging keynotes, he'll make the case that as AI amplifies what we can do, the enduring skills of great engineers—judgment, systems thinking, and care for users—will matter more than ever.
The Extreme Risk of Generational Turnover
Billy Hollis, Architect/Designer at Next Version Systems
A favorite speaker at past Synergex and industry events Billy examines the operational risks of losing institutional knowledge tied to legacy systems and shares practical strategies for assessing and managing generational turnover across users, systems, and technologies.
Customer case studies
Software Development Leaders Modernizing Their Solutions
Hear directly from Synergy developers who are modernizing their applications and development workflows. Learn how they’re improving user experiences, increasing agility, and positioning their mission-critical systems for long-term success.
New Product Introductions
The Evolution of ISAM
ISAM has been the backbone of Synergy applications for decades, and ISAM REV 7 builds on that foundation to bring customers capabilities modern databases now expect: greater scalability, built-in encryption, and additional protection against data corruption, all without disrupting current operations. We’ll walk through what’s changing, what’s coming, and the milestones ahead.
Static Code Analysis
Purpose-built for Synergy developers, this security tool detects OWASP vulnerabilities in both traditional Synergy and Synergy .NET applications, bringing modern security analysis to your existing development workflow.
High-Cooperative ISAM
A new capability to existing ISAM REV 6 that enables common database operations—such as expanding record sizes, adding or modifying keys, and restructuring ISAM files—to be performed while users remain active in the system, eliminating the downtime traditionally required for these tasks.
xfODBC and SQL Connection replacement products
We’re updating the technology under these products to provide better control and supportability with fewer dependencies. We’ll cover what’s changing and how to transition to the new versions.
Synergex and Synergy Updates
Welcome Address
Neit Foley, Synergex President
Neit will share an update on the company, reflect on his first 10 months leading Synergex, and discuss his vision and direction for the future.
Product Updates
Development team leaders
Stay up to date on the latest enhancements and upcoming innovations across the Synergy product set. Discover new tools and capabilities for your applications and your developers.
Technical Deep Dives
Streaming Integration Platform
Enabling high-performance, real-time data replication and event-driven architectures.
Visual Studio
Empowering your development team with industry-leading tools—and the latest features—that enhance productivity, collaboration, and creativity.
Harmony Core web services framework
Transforming your applications into secure RESTful web services for integration with modern platforms and systems.
Other Developer-Focused Topics
NET and .NET 10
As more teams move all or part of their DBL solutions to .NET, this session covers the latest Synergy and Microsoft advancements and how to take advantage of them.
Keeping Synergy Modern
Learn how Synergex continues to evolve its development processes, including how we’re incorporating AI into our workflows to improve quality, efficiency, and innovation.
Schedule
Full schedule with more session details and speakers coming soon.
Monday, October 26
Welcome Reception
Evening
Details to follow
Tuesday, October 27
Welcome
9:00am
Neit Foley, President
Synergex President Neithard Foley opens the conference with welcoming remarks and a look at the days ahead.
Keynote: Why Everything Still Matters When Everything Changes
9:30am
Scott Hanselman, Vice President of Developer Community, Microsoft
AI is moving fast, and with it comes a familiar pressure: the feeling that the ground is shifting and we need to scramble to keep up. But the engineers who thrive through moments like this tend to be the ones who've been doing the hard things all along. Judgment. Systems thinking. Genuine care for the people on the other end of the code. Twenty years ago, those qualities separated the great engineers from the rest. And as AI amplifies what we can do, they only become more visible and more valuable. This talk makes the case for durability over urgency, and for trusting that the skills that built lasting systems haven't gone anywhere. If anything, they've become impossible to ignore.
Synergy Product Update: Latest Features & Roadmap 2026
10:35am
Taras Yakovchuk, Associate Software Development Manager, & Marty Lewis, Software Development Manager
Learn about the new and upcoming features across the Synergy product set. Synergex Development team leaders share all things Synergy/DE and Synergy DBL Integration (SDI) to bring you up to speed on what’s new in the Synergy product space.
Your Data Is Streaming. Now What?
11:30am
Zeke Dean, Senior Partner Solutions Engineer, Redpanda
You've got change data capture running and your data flowing through Kafka streams. That's the hard part, right? Not quite. In this session, Redpanda's Zeke Dean walks through what happens after your data hits the stream: where it can go, what you can do with it, and how capabilities like the agentic data plane open up possibilities that weren't on the table a few years ago. Whether you're just getting started with streaming or looking to do more with the infrastructure you already have, this session is about seeing what's actually within reach.
GantrySQL: Your Database, Your Terms
1:30pm
Jeff Greene, CTO
GantrySQL is a new database platform from Synergex that speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, giving you access to modern SQL capabilities, standard PostgreSQL tooling, and a migration path that supports phased cutover via cluster replication. It will be priced for SMBs, ship with enterprise features as standard, and come with the same level of support you're used to getting from Synergex. This session previews what GantrySQL can do, how it will fit alongside your existing environment, and where we are on the roadmap. If you've been paying too much for SQL Server or Oracle and getting the runaround from their support teams, you don't want to miss this.
Roundtable: Ask Me Anything
2:45pm
Scott Hanselman (VP of Developer Community, Microsoft), Jeff Greene (CTO, Synergex), Billy Hollis (Architect/Designer, Next Version Systems), Zeke Dean (Senior Partner Solutions Engineer, Redpanda), Rosanne Brill (former VP of Software Development, Synergex), & Rachel Gibson (Director of Sales & Marketing, Synergex)
Scott Hanselman, Jeff Greene (CTO, Synergex), Billy Hollis (Architect/Designer, Next Version Systems), Zeke Dean (Senior Partner Solutions Engineer, Redpanda), Rosanne Brill (former VP of Software Development, Synergex), and Rachel Gibson (Director of Sales & Marketing, Synergex) open the floor. Bring your questions about building a lasting career through technology shifts, modernizing legacy systems without losing what works, developer productivity, and what it takes to bring technical products to market. No slides, no agenda. Just engineers and the people who work alongside them, talking shop.
Modernizing Legacy DBL: Moving to Visual Studio Without Breaking What Works
3:50pm
Paul Usher, Solutions Architect, Gateway DMS
Your legacy DBL system works, and the goal isn't to rewrite it. In this session, Synergex customer Paul Usher walks through practical strategies for bringing legacy DBL codebases into Visual Studio without introducing unnecessary risk. We'll cover three migration paths (wrapper first, lift and shift, and incremental refactor), when each makes sense, and how to spot the common pitfalls that derail even well-planned efforts. You'll walk away with a plan for better debugging, more consistent builds, and easier onboarding for new developers, all while keeping the reliability you already have.
Building a Modern Rules-Based Product Configurator Using Synergy .NET
4:30pm
Ben Newton, .NET Programmer, & Nick Sarno, Jr. Programmer, Jackson Lumber
Learn how the team at Jackson Lumber & Millwork used Synergy .NET to replace their legacy bill-of-materials (BOM) system with an attribute-driven, rules-based product configurator that has helped them stay ahead of competitors in the millwork manufacturing space.
Dinner and 50th anniversary celebration
6:00pm-9:00pm
Special Event: Dinner and drinks at the historic California Railroad Museum in Sacramento, celebrating Synergex’s 50th anniversary, with a special tribute to Bill Mooney.
Wednesday, October 28
Morning coffee
8:00am
Join us early for coffee or tea, and get settled in before we start the day’s sessions.
HICO: Modify Your ISAM Files Without Taking Down Your Application
9:00am
Tate Chamberlain, Software Engineer
Got large ISAM files that take forever to convert with fconvert? Tired of scheduling downtime just to add a key or extend a record? This session introduces high-cooperative (HC) files, a new ISAM file type that lets you make structural changes while other processes keep reading and writing. We'll demo the full workflow live: patching an existing file to HC with isutl, using the new hcutl utility to extend records and add or delete keys on a live system, and updating application code to react to structural changes on the fly. We'll also cover new supporting concepts like non-qualified duplicate keys, plus the limitations and trade-offs you should know before adopting HC files in production.
Dashboards, APIs, and the Real Path to a Modern UI
9:55am
Matt Canaday, VP, Software Development, ASI
Follow along as Matt Canaday, VP of Software Development at ASI, walks through the evolution of his team's UI refresh project. Starting with Harmony Core–powered APIs and OData, moving through a proof of concept built with a third-party partner, and arriving at a fully in-house development effort producing production-ready dashboards. This session offers a practical look at what it takes to modernize from the inside out.
What's Next for ODBC Connectivity in Synergy
10:45am
Jeff Greene, CTO
We're building a new ODBC driver for Synergy from scratch. Built on the Postgres wire protocol, it brings modern SQL capabilities, more predictable performance on real workloads, and production-grade observability and security features. In this session, we'll walk through the new driver's architecture, what it means for your reporting and integration workflows, and what the migration path looks like for existing xfODBC users.
Rebuilding SQL Connection from the Ground Up
11:40am
Michael Oleshchuk, Jr. Software Engineer
We're replacing the SQL Connection driver with a new one built entirely in-house using Rust. The new driver drops the third-party dependency, uses industry-standard client libraries under the hood, and works with managed cloud SQL deployments without needing a server-side install. In this session, we'll explore the new architecture, show what the migration looks like for existing SQL Connection users, and discuss how the new foundation improves diagnostics and sets us up for easier maintenance going forward.
The Extreme Risk of Generational Turnover
1:20pm
Billy Hollis, Architect/Designer, Next Version Systems
A lot of the business automation built in the late '80s and early '90s was piecemeal, held together by spreadsheets, scripts, and batch processes. The people who know how all of that stitches together are nearing retirement, and some of them are mission critical to daily operations. If their expertise walks out the door without a replacement plan, the consequences can be severe. In this session, Billy Hollis from Next Version Systems details the problem, lays out a blueprint for investigating your own exposure, and covers approaches to managing generational turnover of users, systems, and technologists.
First Look: ISAM REV 7
2:15pm
Jeff Greene, CTO
ISAM REV 7 builds on the REV 6 foundation with improvements designed around the needs of modern workloads. This session is an early look at what's coming: changes to locking, caching, concurrency, and the other enhancements that make REV 7 a meaningful step forward for Synergy data storage. If you're running traditional ISAM files today, this is where your storage engine is headed.
Building a Modern UI on a Legacy Code Foundation
3:05pm
Aaron Edmondson, Senior Manager of Development, Jack Henry
How can you build a modern web application on top of 30-year-old business logic? In this session hear how Jack Henry did it with help from the Synergex team and Harmony Core. Learn how they formulated their plan and put it into action to complete a total modernization of their tech stack while keeping their legacy code in place.
50 Years of Bets: Our Biggest Wins, Worst Misses, and What They Taught Us
3:45pm
Marty Lewis, Software Development Manager
Fifty years is a long time to be in business, and we didn't get here by getting everything right. In this session, we look back at some of the product decisions that paid off, some that definitely didn't, and what we learned from both. We'll talk about the bets that shaped the company, the ones we'd rather forget, and how all of it feeds into the direction we're headed today. Expect some honest storytelling and probably a few laughs.
Thursday, October 29
Morning coffee
8:00am
Come early for morning drinks and informal networking.
Streaming Integration Platform: The Full Toolkit
9:00am
Nick Tammadge, Software Engineer & SDI Team Lead
This session is a full tour of the Streaming Integration Platform, with a focus on standing up a sample environment end to end in a local setup. We'll cover the major modules; spend extra time on the newest addition, the JSON serializer agent; and walk through what it brings to real-time data workflows. Whether you've been using SIP for a while or you're just starting to evaluate it, this is a good chance to see what the platform can do today and where we're taking it next.
Static Code Analysis: From Output You Can Actually Read to Onboarding You Can Actually Do
11:00am
Oliver Chu, Software Engineer
Synergex's static code analysis tooling has come a long way since you last saw it. This session covers what's new, starting with a front-end interface that produces human-readable output in an industry-standard reporting format your existing tools already know how to consume. We'll also walk through what it takes to get onboarded: if you're already building with MSBuild on Windows, we'll show you how to get into the pipeline and what to expect when you do.
Doing More with More: AI-Directed Development at Synergex
11:00am
Taras Yakovchuk, Associate Software Development Manager, & Michael Oleshchuk, Jr. Software Engineer
Our dev team has gone all in on agentic coding workflows using Claude Code and Codex across every new project. In this session, the team shares what that actually looks like day to day: how engineers set intent and success criteria while AI handles high-volume drafting and iteration, how tests written by AI become the primary feedback loop, and what the human review gates look like in practice. We'll also talk through practical ways you can start applying these same approaches in your own Synergy DBL workflows. If you're curious about what AI-directed development looks like and how to bring some of it back to your own shop, this session is for you.
What's Next for Harmony Core: A New Data Access Foundation
12:50pm
Jeff Greene, CTO
A major shift is coming to Harmony Core. The existing Select/ISAM data access path and homegrown Entity Framework Core provider are being replaced by a new PostgreSQL-compatible database engine. That means meaningful changes to performance, architecture, and how your applications talk to data. If you're building on Harmony Core today or planning to, this is the update you need to hear.
Synergy DBL Meets .NET 10: New Language Features in Action
1:30pm
Marty Lewis, Software Development Manager
.NET 10 arrived as a long-term support release with C# 14, runtime performance improvements, and a wave of new language capabilities. Synergy DBL has kept pace. In this session, we'll walk through the latest language features now available in Synergy DBL and demonstrate how they work in real code. If you've been wondering what the newest SDI release gives you access to (and how to actually use it) this will be 30 minutes well spent.
Hands-On Workshop: Getting Started with the Streaming Integration Platform
2:00pm
Synergex Professional Services Architects
This two-hour workshop puts you in front of the Streaming Integration Platform so you can see how it works firsthand. Bring your laptop and follow along as Synergex PSG architects guide you through setting up and running real-time data replication. You'll work through exercises covering Kafka-compatible streaming and SQL integration, getting a feel for how SIP fits into modernization and migration scenarios. PSG architects will help troubleshoot, answer questions, and explain how the platform could apply to your environment.