************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * October 2000 * * * ************************************* News and Comments DB/C DX 11 will be released the first or second week in November. New features of DB/C DX 11 are outlined in this month's article. Note that as part of the new pricing and support structure for DB/C software products, there is no charge for upgrading from DB/C DX 10 to DB/C DX 11 as long as support is current. You can check the expiration date of support for your DB/C software licenses using the DB/C Online Sales and Update System. In conjunction with the release of DB/C DX 11, we will be moving the DB/C Software Company servers - web, email and ftp - to a dedicated server that is located at the Hostway Corporation (www.hostway.net) hosting center located in downtown Chicago. The hosting center has multiple T-3 links to the Internet as well as backup power generation. The DNS name of the computer providing web, email and ftp services is 'dbcsoftware.com'. For backward compatibility, 'ftp.dbcsoftware.com' and 'www.dbcsoftware.com' will point to 'dbcsoftware.com'. As part of this move, we have enhanced the DB/C Online Sales and Update System with several new features. The most important new feature is that the method for downloading DB/C software is much simpler. Software is now downloaded directly from the web server instead of being downloaded later from the ftp server. As with any new system, there will inevitably be problems. If you encounter any problems or have suggestions, please email the details to us at support@dbcsoftware.com. As a continuation of last month's article, here is one more product description of a software product written in DB/C: ImagInn by Ramesys is a complete property management system that provides a full automation solution for all aspects of a modern hotel. Features include guest reservations, guest accounting, guest history, accounts receivable, travel agent commission, housekeeping and room maintenance. Numerous interfaces such as central reservations, call accounting and credit card authorizations are available. The company is Ramesys, Hospitality division. The web site is www.us.ramesys.com. If you would like a description of your created-with-DB/C software product to be published here, email it to me and I'll be happy to share it with the readers of this newsletter. don.wills@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** DB/C DX 11 Overview DB/C DX 11 is the next major release of DB/C DX, the flagship product of the DB/C Software Company. Details of the new features of release 11 are described in the following paragraphs. Full details about these features are found in the DB/C DX 11 user manual (file: dx11.pdf) and in the Read Me First document (file: dxreadme.txt). The Smart Client feature allows for remote execution of the user interface verbs of DB/C. That is, for character mode programs (those that use KEYIN, DISPLAY, and TRAP of function keys and characters), the Smart Client program (for example 'dbcscc.exe') is connected to a process on a server that is executing the DB/C DX 11 runtime (for example 'dbc' in LINUX) via TCP/IP. For GUI programs, the Win32 Smart Client executable program ('dbcsc.exe') or the Java Smart Client program implements the GUI user interface capabilities of the DB/C program that is running on the DB/C runtime on the server as a process on UNIX or Windows server. Printing has been enhanced in Windows to allow DBC.EXE to output a raw print stream (with device control characters) and to allow DBCC.EXE to print using the operating system drawing interface (this allows the graphical control codes to function). This capability is controlled by the dbcdx.print.language runtime property and by the L= option of the splopen statement. The new values are L=NATIVE and L=NONE. Support has been added for a multi-line selectable listbox control. MLISTBOX is the keyword used in the prepare resource statement. SELECTnnnn, SELECTLINEnnnn, DESELECTnnnn, and DESELECTLINEnnnn are new change statement functions that work with MLISTBOX controls to select and deselect multiple lines. DSEL is a new message sent to the queue by an MLISTBOX. Printing and drawing of rotated text is supported. The *TEXTANGLE print control code and the ATEXT draw statement control code provide this feature. For example, *PRINT *TEXTANGLE=270, "Hello" prints upside down text. The numeric value is the angle in degrees, oriented like a compass. Thus the default value is 90. The query statement has been enhanced to retrieve the size of an image that is contained in the clipboard or in a JPEG, TIFF, GIF or PNG file. With the MAKEVAR statement, this information can be used to create IMAGE variables that are exactly the size of the image in the clipboard or file. The load statement has been enhanced to retrieve an image from a multi-image TIFF file. The command line options that control what messages are displayed by the compiler have been changed. The open device statement has been enhanced to allow the type of image file to be specified if the file extension is non-standard. For example, OPEN DEVICE, "IMAGE.001(TIF)" opens the IMAGE.001 file as a TIFF file. The ODBC interface (DBCSQL.DLL) has been enhanced to allow multiple concurrent connections with two or more databases. This is accomplished by adding the CONNECTION clause to the SQL statements executed by SQLEXEC. ****************************************************************************** DB/C Class Schedule Class: DB/C DX and JX Language Fundamentals Date: January 2001 Location: Oak Brook, Illinois For information, contact Judi Tamkevic at: voice 630.572.0240 email admin@dbcsoftware.com ****************************************************************************** Subscribing to the DB/C Newsletter If you don't already have the DB/C Newsletter delivered to your email address and would like to have it emailed to you when it is produced, just send an email message to 'request@dbcsoftware.com' and put the line 'subscribe dbcnews' in the body of the email message (omit the ' characters). The newsletter will be delivered to the email address from which the message was sent. To stop delivery, put the line 'unsubscribe dbcnews' in the body of the message.