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

2E Hidden Gem - Action Diagram PARMS

It's always nice to learn something new every day!

Today, whilst navigating a functions' action diagram, I was presented with the following screen showing numerous NLL fields.

Usually I page down looking for the field I wanted to view or update, and as you all know, on some files this can be quite cumbersome. That is until I read a request in the 'Ideas' section from Broadcom's support portal. A user had requested a filter for NLL's or in Peter's parlance "Meaningless" :-)

I thought to myself, that's a neat idea I'll up vote it!!!!

After clicking the "Thumbs Up" button and anticipating the AI to build the feature and email me a PTF, I noticed that the idea had already been implemented...... I quickly fired up a 2E session and went looking for it!!!!

"Lo and behold" (The English equivalent of "Mamma Mia"), there it was, albeit slightly hidden. You see the toggle is F15 and the label was stating "Undefined parts only" (First image). However, the toggle is a triple toggle and a third option to remove NLL field was just another key press away!

This little feature makes scanning for used data fields way easier. What do you think?

On a side note, this also works for unentered fields during file maintenance of if PARMS have been added to a function. The F15 options' initial toggle will show any unmapped fields.

Thanks for reading the Synon 2E and Plex Emporium by Lee Dare (A developer blog).

Lee.

p.s. Perhaps I should start a hidden gems series in the blog.

Another tool to the list - Outsystems?

My New Year resolutions:-

Learn some new stuff.
Finish my personal projects (Arcade, game development and writing).
Try and get better at golf!

Let's kick off #1 :-)

Revisiting Outsystems: Free Developer Tier and Familiar Parallels

I’ve been experimenting with Outsystems on and off for a while.

First tried it back in 2019.
Revisited in March 2025.
Challenges: environments only lasted 10 days (though there were workarounds), and everything was in a shared space—meaning my work was visible to other newcomers. At one point I even accidentally updated someone else’s tutorial models!

Hot News

As of October 1, 2025, Outsystems now offers a 100% free developer tier that doesn’t expire. Even better, it’s your own private environment—not shared. As long as you revisit it periodically (no exact timeframe specified), your training instance will remain available.

This feels like the right time to revisit the technology, both personally and professionally.

Pricing Caveat

Once you move beyond the free tier, Outsystems is priced for enterprise use. The entry point is around $36k, with additional costs for resources, capacity, user counts (internal and external), and multiple applications. Think of it as a pricing model similar to Salesforce. If you’re coming from Synon or Plex, the structure will feel familiar.

Observations While Exploring

1. Community Energy The Outsystems community reminds me of the old Synon days in the mid-90s. Take a look at the conference and the energy.

https://www.outsystems.com/events/one-conference/on-demand/lisbon/mainstage/?wchannelid=pxt6wekkkm&wmediaid=09cga6kg83

I remember attending Synon Europe in London around 1997, with Vigil on stage talking about advanced patterns. The energy in the room was incredible, and it looks like Outsystems developers are experiencing that same buzz today.

2. Architectural Parallels The concepts, approach, and terminology in Outsystems development tools feel very familiar to anyone from the 2E and Plex ecosystems. I’d even hazard a guess that there’s some crossover of ideas. You can see more in their evaluation guide.

https://www.outsystems.com/evaluation-guide/developing-with-outsystems/

Looking Ahead

I’ll continue exploring Outsystems and share direct comparisons to Synon 2E and Plex where appropriate. Some tutorials (like the Horse Racing Model) aren’t available, but overall I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

Subscribe to the blog for updates, or follow the Outsystems label. After this, I may also look at other low-code platforms—Appian, Salesforce, Mendix—and see how those ecosystems align.

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

👉 Have you tried Outsystems or another low-code platform? Share your experiences in the comments—I’d love to hear them.

CA Plex - Model API related posts

Quite a popular series of posts on this blog were to code with the CA Plex Model API

To make things a little easier, this post summaries all the related posts.

Model API Overview

https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2011/10/beginners-guide-to-ca-plex-model-api-Part-1.html

Using the Model API in a c# project (Tutorial)

https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2012/03/beginners-guide-to-ca-plex-model-api.html
https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2012/03/beginners-guide-to-ca-plex-model-api_06.html
https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2012/03/beginners-guide-to-ca-plex-model-api_11.html

Entity Creator project. What I developed with this knowledge.

https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2011/11/great-ca-plex-entity-creator-update.html
https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2012/02/great-ca-plex-entity-creator-update-20.html

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Synon 2E Internals - Steve Hinzmann Synon User Group 1991

Synon 2E internal file structure

I have a few posts (see below) where I discuss the Synon 2E internal files.

https://leedare-plex2e.blogspot.com/2025/12/synon-2e-sql-and-model-files-summary.html

This all stems from the awesome work presented by this legend, Steve!!!

OG presentation scan.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DOCFi0RPE1Bv2foCvFawmAM1oyLaDhhy/view?usp=sharing

Warning query these files at your own peril! However, this knowledge is awesome for things like generation of data dictionaries and source code pre-compilations.

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.