Conference 2009 - Day 2

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 world with the 'plug in' looked fantastic. I salute your efforts and would like to get involved. Even if it is only from a ideas and scope perspective.

A few others around the performance products from CA which could have a place at my work and a excellent implementation and demonstration of a codejock toolbar control being integrated into the Plex patterns. Thanks Asgeri and Gunnar (http://www.vigor.is/) for sharing that. Nice to meet you guys.

I skipped the IBM session as I was lucky to have Alison Butterill visit Auckland where I live a few weeks ago.  So I actually caught up on some of that sleep deprivation that had been occurring recently.

Lastly, I looked at the TransacXML product. Soren and Anne-marie did a great job explaining the concepts of SOA. The products new import feature in the latest release (August 2009) looks like it can save a huge amount of time for the Plex developers at the modelling stage as well as increase accuracy. It's just another piece in the puzzle that keeps this tool viable and a serious option for any 2e shops wanting to target other platforms.

Time for dinner and then Plex in the City. Which is basically dinner and then a visit to a few bars. Starts in two minutes so better go.

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Conference 2009 - Day 1

06/12/2025 - Removed legacy links to help improve google indexing

Day one kicked off today for the 2009 Plex/2e Developers conference and what 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 separation 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 tool.
• Keynote presentations.
• Crap internet. The internet is so slow I am using a connection (not my wifi) which is making it impossible for me to check my business emails at work. Will try other options tomorrow.

A big thank you to the Websydian team for putting on a great dinner tonight. As usual Bill kicked off the conference in his casual style. He's done so many now I guess he can do this with his eyes shut. There was a big shout out to the participants. 19 different countries were represented and well over 100 delegates to boot.

The usual thank yous to the event co-sponsors. See http://www.plex2e.com/ for more information about them and the event time table.

Anyhow, back to the action.

Then came a couple of keynotes from John Leadbetter (Websydian) and Simon Williams, the later being the founder of the tools we all love to use. He presented an accurate history of the tools and some of the early drivers and it all made sense. Of course, there was a plug for the AMD (Associative Model of Data) at the end but I guess he's earn't that. Considering I have made a career out of the tools he invented. I guess thats okay.

Personally though, I am gutted that Gunter and the team from All About Gmbh didn't make the event. I hope to pop over and see you guys in December 2009 if you would put up with me for a day? Still there are lots of very interesting sessions planned and I hope to come back to NZ with a much greater knowledge about the direction of the tools that I love.

There is lots of talk about an announcement around a .NET WPF client generator for version 6.5. This would certainly give the tools a great advantage over their rivals with the ability to hit both the Java and Microsoft technology stacks from a signle design model.

And I must mention the Desynit guys who have developed an iPhone 'conference' application that allows delegates to rate the sessions that people attend. Anyone can take a look online or via their iPhone, Blackberry, Web phone etc and track these. I'll post more on this in the future. Who would have thought that this would have been achieved using Plex and WCF web services. More on this and other interesting news as I hear more.

For now a couple of beers in the bar and hopefully some sleep tonight. After 3 hours last night and that was a good night (jetlag) I'd be grateful for that alarm clock to go off and it actually do it's job rather than interupting me watching Lissette Gonzales. A rather hot weather girl on one of the news channels here.

See what I mean!

Tomorrow there is a string of sessions planned and a couple of meetings with product owners. I am particularly keen on the Websydian TransacXML patterns and see some excellent business benefit using these. Not to mention that Soren (the guy who knows all about the product) enjoys a pint two. Looks like we might pop out to Waxy O'Connors for lunch. :-)

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Synon 2e Development Standards - Screen Functions (Part II) - SELRCD

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 by a different key value. For example, where the primary key is a surrogate#.

These reasons may justify having more than one selection program, probably built over different ACPs. All other selects other than the default must be name SLT name and not *SLT name. This ensures correct ordering in the file. If using a different access path I would name them 'SLT By access path'.

The *SLT function is named this way as it will be used by the generator when building implicit field prompting code. The routine is also used to validate a record existence in relation checking. (The check restirction within functionaity). As such a default select must be first on the file and also never have its parameter interface changed unless the keys to the file changes.

CA:2E always regards the first SELRCD it finds on the model file as the default. If an alternative SELRCD should always be called for certain relation checks then that should be assigned via the Access Path relation settings. This situation might arise when a file refers to itself. E.g. Horse Refers to Horse for Mare and Horse Refers to Horse for Sire. At the relation level for the access path it is possible to set a default select record for each relation. Therefore the ordering considerations for the generator to substitute a select record are Function Level – Access Path Level – File Level (First on alphabetically on file).

The standard SELRCD should only perform a selection facility. That is, X=Select. However, a display option may be necessary in some cases as is F9 to Add a record.

Selection logic is usually performed one entity level at a time. Therefore if the SELRCD is for a lower level entity, e.g. 'Owned by', then the high order part of the key(s) will normally be RST.

The standard SELRCD should not pass back values other than the selected key. Validation and passing back of attributes is best left to standard RTVOBJ functions since the user may bypass a selection prompt and enter key values directly.

The SELRCD should not be modified to do anything unusual. If a user exits with *Exit key the default SELRCD will always exit program with return code Y2U0016='no value selected' and also send the same completion message. This processing should not be altered.

The parameter key values passed back should have NOERROR set. This is because CA:2E does not treat a 'no value selected' exit (Y2U0016) as an error when called implicitly. But it would be an error if called explicitly in an action diagram.

Closedown option should be set in the context that the program would be called.

If a SELRCD is not sufficient because of action diagramming restrictions then a DSPFIL may be used instead. But it should have a naming convention of 'SLT By or filename'. It should follow the same logic that a SELRCD would do, i.e. Same parameter definition and same action diagram style. This is often used if additional processing like F9 = Add is required.

The advantages of the DSPFIL method is it allows increased flexibility. But if you do choose this approach then this function will never implicitly be used and developers need to handle the output parameters. That said you could template this kind of function.

Tip

Using a Neither MAP input parameter does allow you to set CTL values for additional filtering.

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

TLA to FLA and beyond

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.

https://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 into IT mode and creating a naming standard 2.0.

Many of you have heard of terms like HDMI, HTML, XSLT, PCML and J2EE. Some may have heard of SaaS and HaaS. A few may have been using WDSc. What is it with the little letters? Are we witnessing the birth of the second naming standard. Our kids are certainly into these with text language LMAO, PMSL and WUU2. You can look these up yourself.

With this in mind we should be covered for FLA’s for quite some time. If we exclude numbers we have 26x26x26x26 combinations available. A staggering 456976 configurations from which to choose from. That should keep us going for a while but with patenting and copyright on the increase these might run out sooner than we think.

Then we will be heading towards Five Letter Acronyms. Or FLA’s.

“Hmmmm. Isn’t that TLA for FLA already taken?” I hear you say. We might have to skip to SLA or (Six Letter Acronyms) or is that Service Level Agreements.

Interesting times ahead I guess. I am quite fond of the Five letter Acronyms though, especially BURMA :-)

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

CA Plex/2E Conference 2009

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:-

https://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 the

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

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 both internally and externally.

In summary, this is 'Modernisation Room: 101' for 2E shops.