Simplicty and flexibility!

Pure 8 - or DataEase Por.. as we call it around here.

As you might have guessed. DataEase 8 is not an "upgrade", it is a completely new version of DataEase for Windows.

It was time this product shook off it's parent issues and stood firmly on its own too feet. For way too long has migration/conversion/compatibility etc. been the only item on the menu.

No more!

We are sorry that so many people had a bad experience when trying to move from DFD to DFW, but it wasn't all our fault. The early versions was bad, but if one want to move forward one also must handle change. It was a big mistake not to make it easier for DFD users to move forward with DFW, but it was an even bigger mistake to "ruin" DFW by trying to implement DFD inside of it.

We have all learnt from experience that prevarication is the road to disaster, and that is what DataEase have done. It moved away from DFD - mistakenly, and then panicked and tried to move back, but only got half the way.

We have now been stuck in the past too long. We are working with a solution to finally help the DFD users onwards, but DataEase 8 is not it!

DataEase 8 is to move DFW user forward, and to capture new users with the DataEase "magic". Don't laugh, we mean it ;-)

If you read our DataEase 8 Product strategy you will see that we mean business with DataEase 8. Not only will we change and improve DataEase 8 dramatically, we will also build a proper support structure around it, empower Application Developers and create a licensing structure that will make it both affordable and feasible to develop and sell any DataEase 8 derived application. The proof is in the pudding and that is why we choose this image of a DataEase 8 Virtual field from the new Default template . if (MemoLength(Emailbody)>0,MemoCopy(MailBodyCoded,"

",1)+MemoMemoCopy(MailBodyCoded,Emailbody,0)+MemoCopy(MailBodyCoded,"
",0)+MemoReplace(MailBodyCoded,chr(13),"
")+MemoWriteToFile(LinkedStyles ,MailFile,1)+MemoWriteToFile(MailBodyCoded,MailFile,0)+MemoWriteToFile(MySiignature,MailFile,0),0) The only thing in this formula that is compatible with any former DataEase version is the if() function and the format...everything else is Pure 8.

So what does it do?

It basically checks if a Memo Editbox field is not empty, if it isn't it starts building a coded version of it. Since it is a HTML body, it first adds a
so it will inherit the default styling for the object (CSS), then it adds the content of the Memo Editbody the closing
then it replaces all carriage returns with html line break
, then it write the virtual field Linkedstyles to our Mailfile with overwrite (1), appends the maibody that we just coded and finally appends the current users Mail Signature. All in one small Virtual field. No OML, no Wizzardry...just Pure understandable DataEase..

And what about this?

RecordSave( )+MemoCopy(Attachments,concat(GetFileName("","",GetCurrent("MyDocuments")),","),0) +RecordSave( ) This simply open the file directed by GetCurrent() in your local My Documents, let you browse it till you find your file and appends it to the Attachment list in Attachments. This list is later written to the att file that the Email Send function will use to attach any list of attachments. if (MemoLength( Attachments )>0,MemoWriteToFile( Attachments ,AttachmentFile ,1),0) Her we simply use the new function Memolength to check if there is any attachments, and if there is we create the file built with in the virtual field AttahcmentFile. concat(getcurrent("AppPath"),"\mail\",UniquID ,".att") This is DataEase my friends. Pure DataEase. Pure understandable linked activity DataEase style. If you think that Scripting, Events, Menthods, Properties etc is DataEase, then you got it wrong. When you use Virtual fields to control your functionality, then you know in which order things are fired, and you will immediately see if you got the wanted functionality. If it fires in the wrong order, simply know that DataEase fires from the top down, and form left to right, Higher up trumphs further left, so one pixel higher and it gets fired first. DataEase does not fire derivations in fields that is not on the screen, so make sure your fields are within your visible area (you think this is bad, but it is good when you know it. When starting to play with the gui objects, you don't always want them to be played with..especially not in table view or in reports...you will see what I mean sooner rather than later). DataEase will also trigger recalculation down the chain, so if one Virtual field is dependent on another, this virtual field will be recalculated if the first one is "touched" i.e. changed. This way you can predict the order of you firing...Rather straight forward. In the Advanced Mail client we use rather a lot of Virtual fields to get our programming right, and to make sure they are fired we need them inside the main record, i.e. on top of our wanted visible fields... We could make the very small, push them up in the left corner and hide them with with colors...but why not simply do this. SetState can do 2 things so far. Hide or show an object, of enable or disable an object.
SetState("mySiignature",0)+SetState("Current User",0)+SetState("MailFile",0)+SetState("sendbody",0)+SetState("BuildBody",0)+SetState("Initiate",0)+SetState("sendstring",0)+ SetState("sendattachment",0)+SetState("AttachmentFile",0)+SetState("ManipulateEmailBody",0)+SetState("MailBodyCoded",0) +SetState("Initiate2",0) +SetState("MessageBox",0)+SetState("Message",0)
The title was Pure 8 after all.... All DataEase 7 customers will be able to upgrade to 8 in December. Good luck!

Published: 29/11/12 - 12:10:08 (Amanda Higgins)

Last changed: 11/12/12 - 14:41:01 (Ulrik Jacob Hoegh - Krohn)

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Pure 8 - or DataEase Por.. as we call it around here.