We know that some users had a real issue with controls repainting under Win7 and causing an annoying “flicker”.  The problem was a side effect of a workaround we introduced to compensate for a change MS did for Aero support which started in Vista, and to many seemed to worsen to a large degree in Win7.  We’ve been working on it as a part of a much larger body of work for the entire window handling code (menu, MDI, SDI, et al). We recently sent out internal builds to a few users whose apps were “flickering” and giving them fits, and I’m happy to say that they’ve reported back with excellent results – one user was reportedly spontaneously dancing around the office after seeing the results on his app (and no, I won’t say who he or she is) but you’ll see it for yourself (or rather not see it :)) in the next release.

Coming up in the next C8 release we’ll be providing you with some help for tracking down those pesky GPFs.  We’ll be shipping two variants of the RTL; one the regular RTL, and the other RTL variant with some code added to read embedded debug info, and to decode the names of functions in the call stack and associated line number information.  The decoder-enabled RTL is a drop-in replacement, so you can just copy it over the standard RTL and that’s it.

Let’s take a look at what it gives you, here is a simple program that creates a GPF

On line 9 we declared a LONG with 8 dimensions, but look at line 29,it’s not hard to accidentally introduce an error like this, and a lot harder to track it down when it only fails intermittently at a customer site.  This what we get if we run this program when compiled with debug info:

As you can see our LOOP causes a GPF because it attempts to access a dimension that does not exist – but with the debug info decoded at runtime we immediately see exactly which line of code caused the problem, as well as seeing the entire call stack.  For those who like to stay away from long debug sessions (and who doesn’t) this will be very handy.  Your end-user can just press the “Log info” button and send you the log text file and then it’s ball in your court. 🙂

We’re delaying the .Net release until Monday so that we can ensure a problem with the Linq model templates is fully resolved, and to hopefully have time to introduce some very useful new functionality across all 3 models (ADO.Net, Linq, ClarionDrivers).

We also have a new Win32 release planned for next week as well as updates to all the drivers and ReportWriter.

A new release of C8 (build 8973) went out today.  Around 50-60 fixes, changes and improvements.  One of the new features was to implement support for PREVIOUS() for the ASCII and BASIC drivers; that means you can now easily drop ASCII/BASIC files into a Listbox control and “Browse” your text and CSV style files.

On the IDE side a few related new productivity features;
FEATURE: When selecting an image file in the window formatter you can now type in the name of the file and if it can be found via Redirection, the file will be used
FEATURE: When opening the file dialog in the window formatter for the first time the dialog will now open to the first directory where the file type would be found via the Redirection system
FEATURE: When re-opening the file dialog in the window formatter the dialog will now open to the last directory it was previously opened in.

We’re looking at other places where can use the Redirection system to make your programming more productive – have fun with the release.

Last Friday (March 2nd) we did a ClarionLive webinar to share the progress on the T4 templates – in particular the ASP.Net templates and the LinqToFileProvider.  Diego also showed a .Net solution that utilized the managed code IP driver to talk with a ported version if the IPExtender class.  We’ll have an update FOR .Net released this week. You can see the recorded webinar at the ClarionLive site

We had planned to release a C8 update today – but ran into a very small problem (at the very last minute), its resolved now but we’ll do the release tomorrow.

This weeks ClarionLive webinar will focus on quickly putting any of your data onto the web, without knowing (or using) any ADO.Net, and with minimal ASP.Net knowledge.  This expansion on the ASP.Net templates uses your Clarion Dictionary to specify which tables to offer up over the web, and uses the Clarion database drivers for all file access.  This means you can put your .TPS file data and other ISAM data into reach for remote users.  Of course you can use any Clarion drivers, so your SQL data plays equally well. This webinar will focus on using the templates, but we’ll reserve a little time at the end to answer questions regarding writing T4 templates.

If we have sufficient time we’ll show a couple of new features in C8, and then we may have time to ask  webinar attendees a few questions to regarding Windows 8.

The next C8 release is still going through internal testing, and is also out in the hands of several external beta testers.  If the feedback is good, we’ll release it this coming Friday.  We’ll definitely be releasing a new Clarion.Net build with the latest fixes and enhancements to the T4 AppGen (and the latest templates) this coming Friday.

Download instructions are going out today for the initial release of the .Net AppGen.  We have two new newsgroups setup;

For questions on writing T4 templates
sv.clarion.T4.WritingTemplates

For questions on using the T4 templates
sv.clarion.T4.TemplateHelp

We’ll make a decision on whether to host the T4 template project on our Subversion server or on Codeplex next week.

Here is an excerpt from the “getting started” document that’s included in the download:

.NET offers many choices for application architecture; from placing the data access code directly in the
UI through datasets and data source controls, to creating a data access layer that talks to the database,
and using an n-tier architecture approach that consists of multiple layers and objects to pass data back
and forth.

While embedding data access and business rule code directly into the UI is generally easier, in some
cases it’s not the best approach for a given project.

.NET supplies a data control structure called the ObjectDataSource which gives us the possibility to use a
3 tier design model. It supports an architecture whereby all Sql commands are embedded into a middle
tier. You only have to supply the underlying object and map the methods from the Business Layer to the
different Sql commands.  And while I am talking about Sql and ADO.Net right now, take a look at the
image below.  The data access layer can (and soon will) support using the Clarion Driver technology;
both direct drivers and thru the IP driver, as well as other access approaches like using a webservice.

In this initial release of the .Net AppGen the templates for both Web and WinForm make use of the
same 3 tier architecture using the ObjectDataSource. This first release supports ADO.Net for the data
access, and our next update will utilize the same 3-tier architecture; but the data access layer uses
Clarion drivers and our LinqToFile provider.

We realize that this release can be a bit of a leap – moving from the ABC data access layer or direct
driver use in the Clarion chain to a 3-tier architecture model means there is a bit to learn.  But it’s well
worth exploring it, even if after the fact you choose to keep your development closer to our Win32
model (we intend to support that as well). The same n-tier architecture model will be implemented in
future templates to support using other object-relational mapping frameworks; like Microsoft’s Entity
Framework and nHibernate.

If you follow along with the steps below (for either Web app or WinForm) you’ll end up with a
“Enterprise architecture” style 3-tier app, and possibly find that you like it. Most of the problems that
you will run into come in 2 flavors; ADO.Net connection strings that refuse to connect but return no
errors (usually a backend config issue), and for web apps; IIS configuration issues. Hopefully your trip will
avoid them but don’t be surprised if you have to battle configuration issues.
3 tier Application

We’ll create two projects for our web application.  We’ll first create the Model application; this will
create a reusable assembly (DLL) that defines and contains all of our data access objects to be used in
our Web Application.

………………………..

For the rest of the story refer to the GettingStartedWithT4templates.pdf in the download!