Omnis News, May 2005

May, 2005

New Beta of Studio 4.1...

The next major release of Omnis Studio will be Version 4.1 and the Beta 2 version is nearing completion. Studio 4.1 has many new features, and several have been added at the Beta 2 stage. Here's what is going into Studio 4.1

• Unicode version of Omnis Studio: Omnis Studio 4.1 will fully support Unicode under Windows and Mac OS X. There will be a separate Unicode compatible version of Omnis Studio, together with the existing non-Unicode version of Omnis.

• Support for Mac OS X Tiger: Omnis Studio 4.1 will fully support the latest version of Mac OS X, version 10.4 (codenamed Tiger) which will be released on April 29, 2005.

• Class Comparison tool: a useful tool that lets you compare classes in two different versions of the same Omnis library or different revisions of the same class in a VCS project.

• Multipart form data: This will allow you to pass non-ASCII data and upload binary files, such as spreadsheets, documents, and sound files, using a standard HTML form.

• Remote forms on the thick client: You will be able to open remote forms in the thick client, which means you can build the forms/windows you need in your application once, so long as you create them as remote forms.

• Optimized remote form data handling: In this new version Omnis will determine the data that needs to be sent from the server to the web client automatically, so you no longer need to use the $senddata() method.

Plus there are numerous other enhancements in Studio 4.1 and plenty of bug fixes. If you are registered on the Omnis Developer Partner Program and would like to test Beta 2 of Omnis Studio 4.1, please go to the Beta web page and signup:
www.omnis.net/develop/betaprogram

Top Omnis author in print

If you are in the US, look out for an article by David Swain in the March 2005 issue of MacTech magazine. The article is about "Enterprise Information Systems on Mac OS X" and deals specifically with transferring data from Frontbase to Openbase, using Omnis Studio (of course). And by way of an incentive to get the magazine, we have provided MacTech readers with a free download of Omnis Studio 3.3, so they can try out the techniques described by David in the article.

Check out the MacTech web site to find out how to get a copy of the magazine.

Featured Site

German developer A&L GmbH has recently released a product called Force4 that allows you to build applications that support Flex, a presentation technology created by Macromedia. At the heart of Force4 is the Application Composer which is built in Omnis Studio: this provides many templates and components which allow you to build so-called Rich Internet Applications (RIA) quickly and easily, with no programming.

Using Force4, development teams can reduce the time spent on labour-intensive programming and focus on the interface, database transactions, and business logic of the application. A&L claims Force4 can save up to 90% of development time and it can reduce maintenance effort significantly. The product was introduced at CeBIT in Hannoer this year and received a very favourable response. For details about Force4, go to: www.more4flex.com

DLA at CeBIT Australia

The DLA Group, Omnis distributors for Australia and South-East Asia, has recently announced its participation at CeBIT Australia, which will be held at the Sydney Darling Harbour convention & exhibition centre from 24 - 26 May, 2005 (see www.cebit.com.au). The trade fair is the top event for the ICT Industry in Australia with more than 600 exhibitors from 22 nations, and over 30,000 visitors.

DLA has built a brilliant stand which allows developers and partners to participate and demonstrate their products: it looks great branded with the Omnis Studio 4 colors.

Two Australian developers, HASS and JobBag, have already taken a pitch on the DLA stand. David Lewis, CEO of The DLA Group, said "We are very excited to make this investment and expect that many [of our developers] will want to participate."

If you would like to be represented on the stand in some capacity, please contact David or Amanda at DLA: info@dlagroup.com.au

Studio Tech Tip

Not so much a tech tip this month but a mention of where you can get excellent technical help on a regular basis. The Omnis Technical Newsletter is published every month and contains in-depth technical detail on many important aspects of Omnis programming and application development.

The newsletter is written by respected author, trainer, and all-round Omnis guru David Swain, who is also a familiar face at the Omnis international developer conferences held throughout the year. The current issue of the newsletter begins a mini-series about tasks, the task class being one of the more elusive objects in Omnis, but no less useful or important for making your applications more efficient and ultimately easier to use. It's an essential read... To subscribe to the Technical Newsletter, please click here.

Please send the editor your suggestions for featured site, tech tips and any other news and we'll try to mention it here.

Omnis Success at CeBIT

CeBIT 2005
One of the many 20-minute demos of Omnis Web Client to visitors at CeBIT in Hanover, March 2005

Back in March, Raining Data Germany attended CeBIT 2005 in Hanover, Germany. The overall mood at the show was very optimistic and the level of interest and firm inquiries from the show indicates that IT spending is on the increase this year, which is great news for developers! As a result our German sales team had one of their best ever shows in terms of sales and gathering business contacts, with an increasing number coming from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The selling points for us remain the cross platform capability of Omnis, the option of moving to Linux for development and deployment, and the unique Omnis web client technology.

We are appearing at several other shows in Europe during 2005 including:
LinuxTag, Karlsruhe, 22-25 June
Systems, Munich, 24-28 October
LinuxWorld, Frankfurt, 15-17 November
See you there!!