'Generic' Data Driver File + Printing/Displaying Arrays (Part II)

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 (awarded for correct or near correct predictions) would be calculated.

Requirement

Not everyone had the time to trawl the internet looking for a league table that may assist them with making their predictions (Hopefully they have enough time to read this article though). The requirement was to show a realtime league table as fixtures results were entered.  It was decided to record the points the actual teams achieved for each fixture and then simply build the league table on the fly.

Additional information

One could have built a simple file and recreated each and every time the results changed. However, due to the limited number of teams and fixtures in a period it was decided to build on the fly in an array. Also this also meant there was no physical file to maintain and promote and the user could easily view any of the previous years.

Solution

Using a generic data driver file. Build an array that computes and sorts the team table into the correct order and then read from the array the teams and show in that order they are in the table.

Next week I will show you how this was achieved. There will be otherways to receive the same result and all notes are intended as a guide. Your individual circumstances and requirements may vary but feel free to emulate and utilise.

As an appetiser the screen below is a DSPFIL based over an Array.

If you require any further assistance you can always email me at (leedare at talk21 dot com)

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

'Generic' Data Driver File + Printing/Displaying Arrays (Part I)

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 occasions 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 at the last 3 2E sites I have worked at.

A worked example of how to do this with screen shots and code sample code will be in part III .  I have also included some notes to help you set up your own generic data driver file and one example of how to utilise it.  This example also has the added bonus of showing you how you can show arrays on a DSPFIL.  Whooarah....Yippee....Get on with it..... I can hear you all say........

This might save Rory and Simon some hassle anyway!!!!  At least with fending off this often requested enhancement to the base 2E tool.

Until then.....(Next Week).

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Enhancement Requests

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 decide.   However, I am saying that the list is made up of requests that we make to the CA support desk.  i.e. no requests equates to a smaller list of items or last years ones (some of which may still be very valid).

My challenge to the community is to think through some of your preferred enhancements and ensure that you register these via the support desk online so that they make the list for you to vote on.  I am also aware that CA is planning to extend its arm further into the user community with a product advisory type approach involving some of the clients.  I am certainly looking forward to contributing to this.

However, in the meantime, start raising those tickets and remember when you are voting you are voting for your top ten in the order you want them.  Some people have been confused by this in the past..... 

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Conference 2009 - The great 'Texas' roadtrip and more.......

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 for a great conference.  I had a fantastic time and learnt so so so so much.  Plex and 2E remain very strong:-

 

• The Plex ecosystem with ADC and Websydian et al has a great reach into multiple technologies and platforms.  Interesting times are ahead as CA and its partners work towards full coverage of .NET
• Extending Web Services support and other 2E functions to handle Data Sets and some neat stuff with arrays is on the potential enhancement list for 8.5+.  This further delights me as I look at ways of providing additional business benefits to my customers.

 

Some collateral from the conference:-

 

The presentations have been posted on the http://www.plex2e.com/ site.

 

A video of the conference is now on YouTube:-

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2NyHRWARyI

 

Thanks Gavin for producing this, but next time.

"MAKE SURE I'M IN IT!!"

 

 

I am looking forward to the next conference and the 6.5 Plex beta programme, whenever that may be (Daniel) ;-) not to mention the SP1 for 8.5 of 2E.

 

Better get back to the usual mutterings from next week.

 

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.

Conference 2009 - Day 3 - Closing

Conference 2009 - Day 3 - Closing

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. Conference 2009 - Day 3 - Final Day!

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 I referred too on the first day and that I couldn't connect to work. Yes..... And guess what? it was early the hours of the morning back home so a phone call and quick email to my online email account wouldn't suffice.

A rushed around to find Bill, but he had left. Fortunately, I then bumped into Jill. She managed to ring Bill who was at the airport. As I understand it he then found some internet access and emailed it to Jill (who could connect properly).

I was two minutes into my presentation by this time. I had a old copy of a similar presentation at Cincinnati. I had performed some tweaks (in that 15 minutes I had spare) and had apologised to my audience. (Thanks for all those that attended by the way. I was very pleased with the numbers and I hope that you got something out of it.).   Anyhow.  Two minutes and the door opens and it was Jill with the primed laptop. I connected it to the projector and then I was able to talk through my 2009 (updated with loads of new content) slides. I understand that these will all be made available online at some stage. However, I have also decided to type up the notes for each slide and will post on this blog.

06/02/2010 - I will do this in the coming weeks.

So, session delivery complete it was time for me to enjoy some additional sessions and attend a couple of demo's. Gavin (my mate from SA) regarding his security and validation pattern and with Soren and Anders discussing in some detail the TransacXML product. Very very very useful. Check them out on http://www.websydian.com/ and Gavin http://www.arad.co.za/

A final note on the conference. The sessions were great, the food was great, the company and friendship was great. Also that iPhone stuff I mentioned can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2eplex2009. If you want to just see the application in a normal phone or online then you can go to http://conf.desynit.com/

Once all was concluded a few of us went to Hooters (you can google this, but I would suggest you google for Hooters Restaurant) for a meal and quite a few beers. After all, it was Friday night.

That's just about wrapped up the 2009 conference. Hope to see you in 2011.

UPDATE - 28/09/2009 - Just found the presentation. It was on the laptop all the time. I had downloaded it using the download manager and I have just spotted it in there. I won't be making that mistake again!!!!!!

Thanks for reading the

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

Lee.