Synon 2E and Plex Emporium by Lee Dare (A developer blog)

Data Driver project to get *Array onto screen or print UPDATE: 06/12/2025 - Linked to a summary post dedicated to deep dive long form posts. https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-2e-technical-deep-dives.html The greatest rugby competition on the planet. Alright, I live in the Southern Hemisphere now and as a direct result have begun to believe the hype. That said the Super 14 (Super 15 from 2011) competition is recognised as one of the strongest leagues in Rugby Union and has team from Australia, South Africa and my current place of residence, New Zealand. Sorry to all those that think I have sold out and not created a Football (Soccer) or NFL example. System Overview The requirement was to build a system that allowed the user to make simple sports results/margins predictions on a group of games on a weekly basis. The fuxtures would be published and the predictions made. Once the results were known they would be entered in to the system and participants points (awar...

Generic Data driver for *Array to Screen (DSPLFIL) or Print (PRTFIL/PRTOBJ) UPDATE: 06/12/2025 - Linked to a summary post dedicated to deep dive long form posts. https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-2e-technical-deep-dives.html This is a three part story. I can think of quite a few occassions in 2E where I have needed to display or print information from a non 2e standard file i.e. A non 2E defined file, an array or even a Data Queue. I have also had the need to build PRTFIL's and DSPFIL's which needed to aggregate data in a master/detail arrangement. The example below is from a change management application I worked on years ago.  It shows a diary note (Header) and the detailed comments (Detail) in one screen and uses a toggle button to determine the entires shown for either the summary mode or detail mode. To implement these solutions I have used the 'Generic Data Driver' file concept.  I have introduced this...

CA Plex wishlist post Well it is almost that time of year again.  You know.  Christmas!!!!   We all sit back and relax, eat turkey (far too much) and discover that port is okay to drink by the bottle after all. But putting that aside it is also nearly the new year and that will mean the annual CA enhancements voting survey.  So many of you know this annual event and the results are collated and influence the R&D effort.  Certainly a .NET client for Plex came top last year and this is what we saw at the conference albeit in technology preview mode. Whilst not everything on the list can get done.  CA tend to try and get the balance right between the list items that rank highly and the market direction of the product as they see it too.  Which is fair I guess. My call to you all today is not that the enhancements are starting soon and you should al be reaching for your new 2010 Pirelli calendar.  That's for Bill and the team to decid...

After the conference I was lucky enough to spend a great week with ADC Austin taking a look (Deep Dive) into their products and services in particular the '2E to Plex' migration process and patterns plus the WebsydianWebClient for Plex.   What can I say!   I was suitably impressed.  ADC are busy working on an updated version of the migration patterns and the dedication and passion I witnessed from their development team was first class.    A Plex application running in a browser using Dojo controls.      A big thank you to John, Juan, Andrew, Eric, Chris, Jill, Bob and Srinath for all your help and hospitality during the week.  Hopefully one day I can return this in good old New Zealand.  It was much appreciated, especially the Friday evening on the boat.  What a fantastic way to finish a fantastic trip. Thanks to the CA team   A massive shout out also to Bill, Daniel, Rob, Rory and Simon from CA fo...

06/12/2025 - Removed legacy links to help improve google indexing 06/0202010.  Just revisited these posts.  Tidied up a few typo's and added addition links of images. Well, where do I start. I guess I can start at the end. Its all finished. Developer roundtable and closing credits done, final night out for those remaining done, business cards exchanged and now looking forward to 2011 conference. Early favourite (amongst us gossiping) is Chicago in around 18 months. Only time will tell. At this stage I should though say a great big thank you to Jill Fender from ADC who saved my day today, quite literally. Here's the story. My session was at 11am and like all speakers I got there 30 minutes early to set up. You know, plug in the laptop, check the projector and open the powerpoint. OPEN THE POWERPOINT!!!!!. HEART RATE INCREASES. Now with 15 minutes to go (long bootstrap on my laptop) I find out that I left my presentation on my work PC desktop. Remember that internet ...

06/12/2025 - Removed legacy links to help improve google indexing Wow. What a day. Attended quite a few motivational sessions today. When I say motivational. I don't mean some corny bible basher preaching good values and encouraging us all to give up tobacco, beer and girls (I could never give up 2 and 3), but the emergence of self-motivation by seeing what others are doing out there in the plex/2e world. The first session I attended was the Plex update by Daniel Leigh. Although terms like "no commitment can be made on delivery or a date", one certainly left the room with a feeling that the .NET client in 6.5 is happening. Tomorrow we will be seeing this in action (I hope). I saw the icon on a laptop at one of the presentations. Other than that Plex is BAU with planning being tidied up for the 6.5 release. It was also nice to see what others had been doing. Chris Smith (albeit nervous) and please dont worry about that mate as what you have done in the plex java wo...

06/12/2025 - Removed legacy links to help improve google indexing Day one kicked off today for the 2009 Plex/2e Developers conference and wha t a day it was. I say day one. I have been here for a few days trying to acclimatise and attending a business partner seminar for the Websydian product range. All in all a great couple of days so far. I have meet up with a few old friends and made new ones. I have even managed to find time to share a few stories and pints whilst scouting out a laundromat with a very tall South African fellow named Gavin (Arad software http://www.arad.co.za/). My mate Martin from NZ also came along for the journey. I used to work with one of Gavin's old school mates from SA and we have now become friends. Talk about 6 degrees of seperation etc. There are a few words or sentences that helps describe these early days so far. Extreme jetlag. Excellent training session today on web service connectors for multiple languages and platforms using the CA Plex to...

This week I discovered a few new TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms). These are ACL, PCL and MCL. Unfortunately I also discovered that when used with terms like ‘ruptured’ and ‘torn’ it is not a good prognosis for a knee. Still I’ll get over it, get fixed up, get fit and once again start to play my beloved football (soccer to some of you). You might recall that I wrote a blog some time ago about airport codes and the potential to eventually run out of codes. See link below. http://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-millenium-bug.html Today. I am amused. Very amused. This must be the analytical in me. Consider this. We were all familiar with BBC, ITV, CNN, MGM, WWE or WWF. The techoids among us are familiar with terms like XLS, DOC, PPT for our office documents or RAM, DVD or CDR as components of our PC or media centers. Has anyone else noticed that there appears to be a trend to using FLA’s (Four Letter Acronyms) these days. Have we ran out of these or is the world moving in...

Only about 5 more weeks to go!!!! I am really looking forward to this event and meeting up with friends new and old in the community. For more details visit:- http://www.plex2e.com/ I will be presenting a session on your 2E modernisation options. The brief is below. I look forward to meeting you in sunny Florida. Thanks for reading. Lee. This session will provide ideas about legacy modernisation paths for CA 2E, incorporating open discussion and highlignting some experiences along the way, with particular focus on:- What is application modernisation? What are the prerequisites (if any)? What are my options?...with a comparison of the pros and cons of numerous approaches. What are the technical hurdles that development shops encounter, and continue to face with regards to modernisation and any potential platform migration? This presentation considers the impact that such a drive has on a company's structure, processes, internal systems, the development teams and their customers bot...

How software and technology has affected my life 06/12/2025 - Updated to remove a bad link issue that may impact google indexing When I was a lad. Alright. 30 years ago I used to stay up late on a Saturday night so I could watch 'Match of the Day' As I remember it was on after 'Hammer House of Horror' I used to watch it in the TV room. It was my footy/tv combo highlight of the week. Some years later as my interest in football began to align itself (like most brits) to fanatical religious levels. I remember cycling over two miles to my grandad's house and play cribbage. We used to play for a few hours and in the background we have the text services on. "Fifteen two, fiffteen four and a pair makes - GOOOAALLLLLLLLLLL - Yes, Oh, sorry and a pair makes 6." The Brazilian goal was of course my beloved Tottenham Hotspurs scoring a goal. I'd then sit there glued to the television for the next hour or so waiting patiently as page 303 as it was then on Ceefax re...

During my time working in the software development industry I have met a large group of interesting professionals with varying personalities. I have blogged before that some of these relationships have been challenges. However, I guess that is just part of life’s rich tapestry otherwise known as human-kind……We are only talking about 6 or 7 out of hundreds and hundreds…… Another occasion I have blogged about management and team building principles. In particular I once wrote a post that was referring to the team leader or manager being whiter than white when it came to their decisions and actions. Viewing a team member or a manager through a different perspective is a technique I have come to appreciate in recent years. After all, there is always another view point out there. Whether you agree with the other persons view or not is largely irrelevant, at least in the first instance. The skill is if you are able to see it from their perspective, you are in better position to assist them s...

Synon 2E CA 2E French speakers Just a quick blog today. CA, actually Daniel Leigh in particular, is looking for Beta testers for the new 8.5 version of 2e. This time for the french language version. So all my colleagues in 'Les Bleus' country. You can contact daniel. Just let me know you are interested via the comments feature and I will pass on your details or you can contact him directly at:- daniel.leigh at ca dot com. Good luck. There are certainly plenty of great new features in this release to get your creative juices flowing. Thanks for reading. Lee.

Synon 2E DSPFIL development standards Update: 05/12/2025 - I have created a page for all standards related posts. https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-standard-posts-all-in-one-page.html Today we shall take a quick look at the Display File function (DSPFIL). This is a very commonly used function type in 2e and if my notes are correct there may be a thing or two of interest in this post. However, I guess that this depends on whether you are an ageing old developer like myself or one of the new kids on the block in Bangalore. But back to the action. Like many other function types the DSPFIL can be used to display data and interact with it in multiple manners. i.e. It can act like an intelligent Select Record and also allow multiple selects. It can also be used to show the contents of an array. Hold on I hear you say. "It's a display file and arrays are not files......" That's true but there are methods to complete this. Nudge me with some comments an...

Pre-conference hyperbole CA Plex and Synon 2E Hi all, I'd like to start this off by writing that I have been on a desert island for the last two months on a meditation course for mid life crisis for balding IT men. But that wouldn't be true... or perhaps that I have been on a second honeymoon with my wife and was far too tired to blog :-). But that wouldn't be true........either. I have however, been very busy at work and the soccer season has started here in NZ so I am playing the beautiful game once more, although i'd preferyou didn't ask how we are doing. But, even these distractions aren't the reason for my lack of postings in the last 8 weeks. The true reason is that I have moved my laptop to the study and my 6 year old daughter has discovered the magical world of computing and dominates the machine. I do wonder where she gets it from but I think a new computer is on my shopping list in the next month or two. How many computers are required in a family ho...

CA Plex Updates Update: Removed old legacy links that were causing Google issues. Wow! What a week. I, like many of you spent 3 hours on the recent CA Plex/2E webcast marketed as 'Blitz'. For me it was a little more inconvenient as it was from 2am until gone 5am in the morning. To top it off it was a school night as well. Suffice to say, Friday night after a hard days work, I was exhausted. The result though was worth every last minute of sleep deprivation. I felt energised by what these guys had achieved. To kick off we had an overview from Bill Hunt with a plug for the 4th Annual Conference in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Then the action got going. We were treated to an update for the ADC Austin/Websydian Plex Web Client. Delivered by John Rhodes. This is a plex client delivered out of the box once you have the patterns and web environment setup which is receiving plaudits from around the community. Then Gary McGeorge from Desynit in old blighty demonstrated their cu...

Why bad designs sucks! Hmmmm, As I suspected a couple of weeks ago once you open your eyes to a subject and commence blogging about it you have it constantly in the back of your mind. My post on bad systems design and planning has had this affect on me. I am minding my own business at my local quiz night when a question was read out by the quiz master or perhaps mistress as she is a lady. "What day of the week was Valentines Day in the year 2000?" Now as I am not the romantic type so I certainly couldn't recall this answer based on an event, although a friend 'H' was adamant he knew the day. I decided the simple solution was the mobile phone calender so I plucked out the phone. It is a reasonably new Motorola Razor phone. So you know the routine, Menu, Organiser & Tools, Calendar. Voila.... The calendar is showing February 2009 (the current month when this event occurred). "Excellent", I said (I remember the excitement), I can now work it out by coun...

SELRCD - Synon 2e Development Standards Update: 05/12/2025 - I have created a page for all standards related posts. https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-standard-posts-all-in-one-page.html Part 2 in the series around screen function types will concentrate on the Select Record (SELRCD) function type. This is often overlooked as a valuable function as it always appears to be generated on your behalf by 2e when you create a file. However, it has a few useful quirks that require a little thinking and I have often seen everly complicated logic added to them due to a lack of understanding where a simple workaround works quite nicely. Below I summarise some of the key points when using the SELRCD:- In general there should only be one SELRCD record per file, the default. I propose you rename your default select per for to '*SLT filename' . (See posts on naming standards). However, there may be occasions when it is necessary to select by a variety of different styles, or b...

Why bad design sucks! There are many areas of computing that have been let down by poor design. Actually that may be a little harsh. However, poor assumptions have definitely led to numerous designs that in hindsight could be considered questionable at best. These decisions have in turn led to systems that have suffered due to higher than anticipated volumes or longer than expected life spans. A few examples that come to mind are:- The millennium bug. Everyone knows this story. Developers designed systems in the 60s, 70s and 80s with 6 character dates ie DDMMYY or MMDDYY. The assumption being that storage is expensive and this system won't be around in 20 or 30 years. Well we all know how much effort was involved ensuring that airplanes never fell out of the sky in the late 90's, not to mention the contract rates for COBOL programmers that went with it. So I guess the lesson learned here is short sightedness. http://www.trademe.co.nz/ . Another example I heard about was for a ...

Synon 2E - *Array bug and workaround Hiya, I have just become aware that *Arrays do not support the correct ordering sequence for negative index values. This has been referred to CA Support (2nd Level) for investigation. My scenario is an array that is ordered based on a difference between two values. For the purposes of a meaningful example lets pretend that our array is a league table for the English football premier league (Soccer to some). If your game is rugby or another sport then you can draw your own comparisons. The scenario is that after 2 games of the season I have 5 teams on 4 points. These teams are place 1 to 5 on the table. Let's further embelish this example and assume that my team, Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) are at the top. :-) Team Points GD (Goal Difference) Tottenham 4pts +78 Liverpool 4pts +5 Everton 4pts 0 Wigan 4pts -4 Chelsea 4pts -8 ...... Arsenal 0pts -78 Apart from the obvious good start by Wigan and the strange GD for two games. I believe the example tabl...

Google Depression! I thought I'd have a little whinge today about Google. Well not Google themselves. I think that they are a great innovative company who have transformed how we all interact with the internet and for that, I am grateful. I do remember the early days with Compuserve dialup and prior to that premium phone bulletin boards and usenet groups. But recently I have been exploring business ideas of my own. When I say recently. Like most IT guys I have been pondering the 'garage' project, aka the 'killer app' for years. We can all use google to research our ideas, get an idea of the validity of the idea i.e. any competitors that may be lurking in the wings etc. However, today, I am suffering for "Goopression". Google depression!!! This means that your killer idea (no matter how you search for it) has already been taken. The domain has gone, as has your enthusiasm for your idea. This feeling really sucks. You see, as much as the internet can be an i...

Top 10 tips for a software developer I was updating the blog and getting a few advance posts in place for February 2009. Thanks Blogger.com for the neat features of scheduling blogs that you introduced last year. This saves me a lot of hassle in remembering to post pre-written content and also allows for me to have a blog day every now and then. Anyhow, I was also reading a few "Top Ten" advice lists that were sent to me over the years by a trusted colleague called Jim. I always take the time to read these and he generally only sends over meaningful content and this time was no different. This did get me thinking a little so I thought I'd write one and see if he agrees. I have blogged in the past about what I believe makes a good developer. Today, I'll issue my Top Ten tips for developers covering both work and life. In no particular order apart from number 10. 1. Always be on the look out for the next big thing (in IT) and see if you can get in early enough to actua...

06/12/2025 - Removed legacy links to help improve google indexing Not many software companies give you the chance to directly influence the strategic direction of a product you use. The product team at CA are once again asking us to cast our votes for potential enhancements to the CA Plex and CA 2E (Synon) tools. This recent communication was sent by Bill Hunt to all PLC (Product Line Community) members. If you are not on the list then you are not in the know. Join. See details below. "Hello CA Plex and CA 2E Community, User feedback, suggestions and ideas are an important element in our development planning efforts. With this in mind, we would like to invite and encourage you to participate in our annual Enhancement Request Priority Voting program. We are launching this program effective now. As was also the case last year, we ask that you review the attached list of enhancement requests which our team has reviewed and considered worthy of additional research. There is one lis...

Bloggertunity - Spoiler alert - not a real word I have been meaning to write this little post for quite a while. I coined the term many many months ago when I was at my local pub quiz. Most of you bloggers out there realise that once you start blogging you go one of two ways. You get addicted, it consumes time and you post. Or you have a go for a while and then it peters out as you run out of ideas or opportunities to blog. This got me thinking about a "bloggertunity". This is an event that leads to the opportunity to blog. I have checked http://www.dictionary.com/ and the word is not referenced.......Indeed the resultant alternatives leave something to be desired if you ask me.... Look Here. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bloggertunity I then decided to google the term and it came up with "Results 1 - 10 of about 171,000 for bloggertunity. (0.07 seconds)" Number of hits for the term as of 31st January 2009 17:40 NZ Time). So clearly it is going to take a w...

Synon 2E Development Standards - PMTRCD Update: 05/12/2025 - I have created a page for all standards related posts. https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-standard-posts-all-in-one-page.html I guess the last couple of months have been a bit quite on the site. This was due to some holidays on my part and the visit of relative from overseas for 5 weeks. As you may know I live in New Zealand and the Christmas and New Year period is a time of relaxation and recouperation as well as a period of mass and I mean mass national holiday. Many businesses shut down for a compulsory two weeks. I am now refreshed and ready to finish off those blog posts that I promised at the back end of last year. Today I want to continue the 2e (Synon) development standards theme. I really want this site to be an extension to your technical libraries. So without further procrastination, I will get on with development standards, tips and gotcha's for 2E screen functions. Today will shall conc...

Credit Crunch Edit: 27/12/2025 - Job hunting - Useful now in 2026 as AI and woke government squeeze business I would suggest that other that Britney Spears in recent months "Credit Crunch" has been the most widely used search term on the google servers. No doubt someone will correct me on this subjective comment. What does this mean for us in IT over the coming months/years. For sure many companies are going to tighten their belts during 2009. Capital expenditure will probably have processes, procedures and forms redesigned/created for general publication. The good companies started this 12 months ago. Well I guess there is (as always) both opportunity and risk. Mergers and Aquisitions will continue therefore some consolidation will occur. How you are affected will very much depend on what you do, your role and business etc, your skills and a little bit of luck. There isn't too much you can do if your CEO is Bernard Madoff. But if your company is tight on expenses and has...