Apr/May 2006
Featured site & Omnis conversion success

Conversion success
The conversion and migration process within TROS was managed using a complete conversion environment created by VDA themselves and based on the conversion tools supplied by Omnis. So successful was the conversion, achieving a conversion rate of 99% for the application code, that VDA are now providing the conversion tools and consultancy to other Omnis developers wishing to convert to Omnis Studio. We have recently created a case study of the TROS conversion project which you can view here. For more information on this case study and for a special white paper on their conversion service, please contact Rick Hagen at VDA: rhagen@vda.nl or visit www.vda.nl for further details.

VDA

Based in Hilversum in The Netherlands, VDA Informatiebeheersing BV has been using Omnis since 1991 to create its range of ERP and CRM products mainly deployed in the Dutch media industry. One major customer of theirs, TROS, which is one of the leading public broadcasters in The Netherlands, has been using the ERP system from VDA for many years. In fact, the VDA system began its life as a development project within TROS back in 1990 and was turned into a separate company, continuing to supply VDA with new
TROS
systems but also supplying other media companies. The ERP system started in Omnis 3, then graduated to Omnis 7 with the addition of Oracle, and has recently been fully migrated to Omnis Studio.

 
Omnis CeBIT Success ...
CeBIT 2006

Back in March, Raining Data Germany attended CeBIT 2006 in Hanover, Germany. The show organisers reported a definite increase in trade and professional visitors with over 80% of attendees having direct purchasing power within their companies. The show provided a showcase for many new consumer electronic and mobile products and confirmed the renewed buzz in 2006 for the whole IT industry.

CeBIT 2006
Senior Consultant Andreas Pfeiffer (right) delivering one of our 20min demos of Omnis Studio to audiences at CeBIT 2006.

With the greater optimism and investment in IT projects, we were delighted to receive increased interest for Omnis Studio by gaining new customers and meeting many existing customers with new projects in the pipeline. Interestingly, we made new international contacts, not only from the German speaking countries, but also from Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, Italy, Eastern Europe and from the Middle East.

We continue to attract interest in Omnis due to our cross-platform development capabilities and the ability to provide feature rich applications on the web using the Omnis Web client.

We hope to follow up this success later in the year by attending Systems in Munich (October) and the LinuxWorld trade fair in Frankfurt (November). If you are interested in appearing on our stand at these shows, or CeBIT 2007, please contact Birgit Jaeger.
Omnis Wiki
Omnis Wiki

An Omnis Wiki "article stub" has just been created (April 13, 2006) on Wikipedia.org, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and we would invite you, the Omnis community, to add text and further articles as you see fit. Please take a look at the editing rules before you submit...
Go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnis

Among the many sources of information about Omnis Studio, is the complete Omnis Studio documentation set available as PDFs to download here, in printed format from Trafford Publishing here, or to view online here. The latter format was introduced for Studio 4.1 and offers the developer another way to access information about Omnis Studio; the online docs mini-site allows you to look at any of the Studio 4.1 manuals individually (five in all, including the Introducing Omnis manual which has a tutorial) as well as search across the whole docs set.

Other valuable sources of info about Omnis Studio include:

• Support information: product notes, support info, Developer program info, tech notes, white papers, and so on, here

• Technical Newsletter: Whether you are learning Omnis Studio, evaluating it, or if you are an experienced Omnis developer, you will find the Omnis Technical Newsletter a valuable resource, click here to sign up.

• Omnis developer mail-list: The Omnis developer community runs a list server for discussions on all matters relating to Omnis products, visit OmnisCentral to sign up.

• Reference books and components: respected Omnis author, trainer and technical newsletter writer, David Swain has his site here.

 
Mac Intel and Web Services for Omnis
Omnis Studio 4.1

Beta 2 of Omnis Studio 4.1.5 will be available to selected developers in the near future. This new release will include support for the Mac Intel processor which is included in an increasing number of computers sold by Apple Computers. In addition, Studio 4.1.5 includes support for Web Services via a new plug-in which will be available as a separate product, alongside the release of Omnis Studio 4.1.5. The Omnis Web Services plug-in uses the current Java Objects interface in Omnis to implement support for Web Services clients and the ability to expose functionality within Omnis applications as Web Services.

Together with the Mac Intel support, Studio 4.1.5 promises to be an important release. If you are a registered developer and you're interested in trying out Omnis Studio 4.1.5, please contact your local sales office who will forward your details to the Beta Program manager. Read our Beta announcement about Studio 4.1.5.
Studio Tech tip

The Hyperlink control (hyplinks) was introduced in Studio 4.0 and features extensively in the new Studio Browser itself, but you can use it in your own applications. Each option in the list looks and behaves like a hyperlink in a web page. The options in the list of links are based on the contents of an Omnis list variable, which must be defined with three columns in the following format: group(number), command(number), name(character). When the hyperlink control is clicked, the evLinkClicked event is generated with the pLinkgroup and pLinkid parameters; more details about this new list control, and example methods, are in the v4.1 Omnis Programming manual. See the 'What's New in Studio 4.1' manual for more details about the contents of Omnis Studio 4.1.