During the worst financial crisis for decades CeBIT is bound to be a quieter affair, but it still remains the biggest and best place to catch the trends for the future of IT and the software market. Furthermore, in these cash-strapped times it is software solutions, technical innovation and the general automation of business processes that are even more important due to the greater efficiency and cost savings they can bring to any organisation. That's why you need to be at CeBIT and why you need to look at Omnis Studio 5.

The major enhancements in Studio 5 include support for Windows Mobile® based devices, such as the raft of 'Smartphones' coming onto the market in 2009, and full support for Unicode compatible data. Omnis Studio 5 will therefore allow you to reach new mobile platforms and new markets: you need to integrate these new features into your applications now, so you are ready when the recovery comes along.

New for this year: the CeBIT organisers have reorganised the halls so we are in a different hall, with a brand new booth (Hall 6, No. E08). To book an appointment with our German team at CeBIT, please contact Birgit Jaeger.

For more details about the show, see www.cebit.de.
You can read more about Omnis Mobile & Studio 5 here.

We are pleased to bring you news of a new service, called "Walter's Library Analysis", designed to assist developers moving from Omnis 7 to Omnis Studio. The new service is brought to you by long-term Omnis development firm Mophilly & Associates, who (as you may know) created the Omnis developer map, and has always been a great champion of Omnis and supporter of the developer community. The analysis service provides valuable information to help developers clean up an existing Omnis 7 application, or assess your Omnis 7 application prior to preparing a move to Omnis Studio.

Mophilly tells us the Library Analysis is like a "CAT Scan" of your program, revealing a wealth of information about the makeup and complexity of your program, including revealing hidden flaws or programming constructs that need to be modified for use in Omnis Studio. It provides information that cannot be obtained any other way, and is an invaluable tool for the Omnis 7 programmer who wants to get a new type of view of the "guts" of their application.

To learn more about this brand new service by Mophilly, or to request a download of the Library Analysis, please visit their website here: (Maybe you can ask them who Walter is at the same time!)

Omnis has its own set of conversion tools as well:
see here for more details.

Based in Elliniko in Greece, OMNICON SA is a software house with a long history in developing applications for vertical markets. They started developing in Omnis back in 1985, using Omnis 3 on the then-new Apple Macintosh (which is 25 years old this month), since it was judged at the time to be the best tool for producing commercial applications. Their mission has always been to use the latest technological breakthroughs to create genuinely "user friendly" products, to minimise development time and cost, as well as minimise the users' learning curve and the need for support resources. OMNICON has developed applications for the food and beverage markets (POS / Back office / Remote Ordering), Petrol Stations, Car Testing Stations, IVF Clinics, Project & Cost Management, as well as General Ledger and Payroll systems. Some of these systems have used the Omnis Web Client technology.

Even though OMNICON's development team has always kept ahead of all major developments in computing over the last 24 years, the original choice of Omnis has proven to be the best and most efficient. "The ultimate performance of producing stable, efficient, user-friendly applications in the fastest time possible (usually less than 1/10 of the time it would need using other programming languages like Java or C++) is attributed to Omnis," said Fotis Georgiadis, President of OMNICON Information Technologies SA.

The release of the Unicode version of Omnis Studio has greatly helped OMNICON in solving any localized issues with respect to Greek characters, alongside the creation of multi-lingual web applications. They are looking forward to the full release of Omnis Studio 5 (later in 2009), which will be fully Unicode compatible (see here), and will further enhance their ability to create fully localized applications.

OMNICON SA is the official distributor of Omnis products for Greece and Cyprus since 2004. For more information, visit their website.

At the beginning of a new year, it might be a good time to look again at Omnis or learn a new technique. With the current financial situation, using IT solutions for greater efficiency and competitive advantage is more important than ever.

So whether you are new to Omnis or you are an experienced developer wanting to learn new skills, there is plenty of help at hand, some of it provided by Omnis, and some of it available from third parties. One free and easy way to learn new Omnis tricks or simply to evaluate Omnis is via our series of Omnis Webinars (online seminars or demo sessions). We have just put together a brand new schedule of Webinars for 2009. They are designed for complete beginners and experienced developers alike and are available in English and German. Get more details or signup here.

Along with all the free advice that's available in the Omnis community, and via this website, we provide our own Technical Support and training. We have put together a new schedule for Omnis Training in 2009, to be held in the UK, Germany and other European locations. Training represents one of the most cost-effective ways to learn Omnis, and allows you to build your application quickly and easily. Courses are available in English and German for topics such as general application design (with the Quick Start course), Omnis notation, web development, and so on. Click here to see the new training dates.

We have produced a guide that tells you where to get help with your Omnis development projects. Many of the options will cost you nothing, but all of them will save you many hours in your development projects. Click here to get the new guide to Omnis help.

This week (Jan 6-7, 2009) saw the release of two beta products: the beta version of Omnis Studio 5 became available to members of the Omnis Developer Partner Program (ODPP) and other selected customers. (The other beta was, of course, Windows 7 unveiled by Microsoft at CES in Las Vegas.) Omnis Studio 5 was trailed last October at the EurOmnis developer conference, but is now available for developers to try; if you are a supported developer you should sign up here, try the beta and let us know what you think.

Omnis Studio has always been good at integrating all the latest developments in computing while providing a cross-platform, extendable, and easy to use environment for developers to create applications. The release of Omnis Studio version 5 is no exception, which includes support for Smartphones and other mobile devices, as well as full support for Unicode, meaning you can deploy your application in virtually any language to any market place in the world.

For the beta phase of development, we'd like developers to try the data conversion process. The Studio 5 release is a Unicode compatible only release, meaning there is no non-Unicode release. Therefore, when you open an Omnis library or data file, the file will be converted to a Unicode compatible format. (contd.)

For data files, this means all Character data will be converted to a Unicode format. We'd like you to try the conversion process (having made backups of all your files of course) and report back to us. Meanwhile you may like to read our Unicode white paper; it's available in English and German.

Anticipated features in Omnis Studio 5 are:
• Omnis Mobile Client for Windows Mobile® Professional version 5.0, 6.0, 6.1 based devices
• Unicode support for all platforms and all supported server databases; note Studio 5 will be a Unicode only release (and will require new serial numbers), but the SDK will be available for Windows, Linux, & Mac OS X
• Remote form controls are enhanced with correct platform look-and-feel for web browsers and mobile devices, plus new Remote menus
• Other enhancements include many new VCS options, a Windows Registry admin tool, a new configurable Web Server plug-in, the ability to collect method performance data, updated secure Web commands, and many other smaller enhancements

The new Mobile and Unicode support in Omnis Studio 5 will make Omnis even more extendable, flexible and well adapted to the creation of enterprise and web applications. With the Studio 5 release, Omnis Studio will support: all major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux), all clients (Desktop, LAN, Web, Mobile), and all leading databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, ODBC and JDBC). Above all, Studio 5 will allow you to mobilise and localise your apps in order to reach virtually any market, anywhere in the world.

Based in the UK, Brainy Data specializes in creating Omnis components for the desktop and web client versions of Omnis Studio. After more than five years of continuous development and investment, they have created a very comprehensive set of Omnis components, providing word processing, spell checking, PDF generation, scheduling and project management capabilities. Their flagship product is OWrite, a complete Word Processor which you can add to any Omnis application, providing all the standard document features you would expect together with powerful database integration features. Brainy Data's products are now used worldwide by over 150 Omnis developers and thousands of end users.

Brainy Data was set up in 2003 by Michael Monschau, who before that was a key member of the Omnis engineering team in the UK. Michael has become a familiar face at the annual developer conferences and his development skills are now very much in demand. The main development effort for Brainy Data in 2009 will be porting all their products to Unicode, to be compatible with Omnis Studio 5 which is set for release later in 2009 (the beta is available now: see above). See the Brainy Data website for details.