Sep/Oct 2011
From The Inside September/October 2011
I need your help in getting the message out that MultiValue is a modern, robust, solution-oriented platform that works well in a multi-system, mainstream environment.
Useful Tips on Migrating from Legacy PICK
Useful Tips on Migrating from Legacy PICK Your system sends up certain red flags when its performance has degraded. These signals might include missing your maintenance windows, users complaining about slow system response times, or unreasonably high system maintenance fees. Perhaps your customers are saying the application needs modernization, but the programming backlog is six months and growing. How do you solve these problems? Replace your legacy PICK system!
Sending E-mail From Your MultiValue Programs - Part 5: Creating and Sending E-mails with HTML and Text Sections
In the early days of e-mail, text was King. If you dared use that horrible, evil, Microsoft Outlook mailer and sent HTML-based e-mail, you had better be wearing asbestos underwear, because you were going to get flamed. Today, HTML e-mail is the norm for all large businesses (at least in the USA), and the text-only pundits are considered to be somewhat Luddite. Then came mobile devices with small, hard to read screen sizes. What to do? What to do? Enter the realm of multipart html/text e-mail.
Business Tech: MultiValue in the Clouds
Although there are still concerns with Cloud Computing — data privacy, guaranteed service levels, etc. — it appears that the Cloud is here to stay. So what will it take to be able to deploy your MultiValue applications in the Cloud? (Hint — you are almost there already.)
Auditing Database Changes with UniVerse Indexing Subroutines
UniVerse has file triggers which can be used to call a subroutine whenever a new record is added, changed, or deleted from a file so that the change to the database can be recorded in an audit trail for IT governance and compliance requirements. But full blown triggers come with a certain amount of performance overhead. For simple auditing, using indexing suboutines with a new system variable available at release 11.1 is a lighter weight alternative.
Tech Tip: Reality CSV Files
Interacting with delimited file structures for import and export is very important within your enterprise software. Comma Separated Values format is the most common.
Clif Notes: Blood Not Required
If you haven't already read Nathan Rector's From the Inside column this issue, I would strongly suggest you turn to the front of the magazine and do so. He is requesting help in getting the word out that MultiValue is alive and well and quite able to tackle your modern application requirements. It is also very capabile of fitting into a "mainstream" IT shop having a number of different platforms working together. But as long as there are only a handful of us who write articles or blog entries about the kinds of problems we have solved using our various MultiValue platforms and the techniques we used to do it, as a community we are going to continue to appear to be much smaller than we really are. Whereas other platforms have dozens of writers publishing articles for various magazines, journals, and newsletters, in the MultiValue world it seems like you see the same bylines over and over. Not that there is anything wrong with seeing certain writers consistently producing articles! But when those are the only writers you see, it gives the impression that there must not be very many people using this thing, otherwise you would see a lot more people writing about it and discussing it. I think he did an excellent job explaining some of the issues and shooting down some of the myths about what it takes to write an article. Now I would like to add a couple of thoughts then share with you an idea about how to make the process even less daunting.
