BCD Tech Blog

Clover Query 3.5 is now available for download at our public site or via myBCDSoftware.com. Here are the key new features and enhancements:

• New PDF Report Template: Your users will love the ability to access their reports as PDFs from a browser. This new template makes it easy for you to create reports that are output as .pdf files that users can view, print or save.

• Improved Processing of Query/400 Objects: Page breaks and extended field attributes are now handled correctly.

Read more…

This is a followup to our October 19, 2011 Minimum OS/400 Release Level Notification for BCD products.

As of later this month V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD product releases as well as any software updates we create.

The following versions of our products are the last releases that can be installed on OS/400 V5r3:

• WebSmart ILE 9.0
• WebSmart PHP 4.0
• Clover 3.0
• Presto 3.8
• Catapult 7.71
• Nexus 4.03
• ProGen Plus 9.6
• Spool-Explorer/400 4.52
• File-Flash Plus 4.5
• DbGen 2.5
• Docu-Mint 6.6

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

As part of our ongoing development strategy and planning efforts here at BCD we are scheduling future internal IBM i system upgrades. This will affect the minimum OS/400 release level supported by BCD products. Our product line currently requires a minimum OS/400 release level of V5R3. As of January 1, 2012 V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD products and updates released after that date.

As our products continue to evolve and new products are introduced it is generally our intention to keep in step with IBM OS/400 release levels, while also giving our clients enough time to plan for this change. This allows us to develop using current technology and to make this technology available to you in our product family.

IBM discontinued support for V5R3 on April 30, 2009.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

For those of you using WebSmart or Clover to access MySQL on IBM i you may have been concerned about Oracle’s announcement earlier this year that they would no longer support MySQL on IBM i. Although we believe this would have had a minimal short term impact we are very pleased by Zend Technologies’ recent announcement of a December release of an IBM i-specific version of the MySQL database that they will develop, maintain and support.

The Zend Server 5.5 for IBM i release will include Zend DBi, which has been described as a ‘drop in replacement’ for MySQL. This is good news for IBM i shops who deploy pre-packaged or already develop PHP and MySQL applications.

Since last December, when Oracle announced plans to drop support for MySQL on many operating systems including i5/OS, IBM i PHP developers have been left wondering who, if anyone, will maintain the database.  The MySQL project is open source, so developers could download and create binaries, but that’s much easier said than done!  With this announcement Zend has moved into this space with the upcoming release of Zend DBi.

Changes that Zend makes to the code base will be posted back to the MySQL open source project.  Zend has no immediate plans to make the Zend DBi project open source though.  The initial release of Zend DBi will be functionally identical to the current release of MySQL shipped with Zend Server 5.1.  Moving forward there is the potential for some divergence as the code base is maintained and features added. We’ll be keeping an eye on these developments.

WebSmart and Clover clients can now have a greater degree of confidence that the classic PHP and iAMP stack will be supported on IBM i although we may have to rename the stack iADP.

More good news is that IBM will continue to support the IBMDB2i storage engine, which enables MySQL data to be stored in DB2/400 and accessed using traditional DB2 functions. For those of you interested in IBMDB2i we’ve developed a free utility called DB2iToMySQL to help you create MYSQL tables with that engine.

If you weren’t aware that you can create web reports over MySQL with Clover Query that’s probably because we just released a new version with that feature last week. You can read more details on the Clover new features page.

Read the full Zend DBi announcement in IT Jungle >>

WebSmart Build 5983-9484 is available for download. This includes a Clover fix to an issue where the filter or where clause was not added to the SQL query when the SQL validation was turned off.

The option to turn off SQL validation is a feature we recently added for customers creating Clover reports over very large datasets. You can find this option in the Tools/ILE area; it’s called ‘Validate Clover SQL’.

You can find further information about recent WebSmart, WebSmart PHP and Clover updates at the web site.

I spend a fair amount of time worrying about performance. Within the Professional Services group I work with one of our clients, MedAxiom, developing an increasingly large and complex web application. Yet at the same I want to improve the user experience by speeding things up. One of the simpler ways to make a site faster is enabling gzip compression.

Gzipping components is one of ySlow’s recommendations and Steve Souders also recommends it in his book “High Performance Web Sites”. It’s an Apache module that applies gzip compression to certain output before sending it to the client. Once at the client, the browser unzips the content and displays it to the user. The end result is we’re sending less bytes which takes less time.

I set up a few benchmarks before enabling gzip so I could get an idea of the effect it has. I used Firebug’s Net panel to load each page five times and record the total size of the page and load time, I then took the average of the five loads.  Here are the results:

I was blown away by the improvement in load times!  MedAxiom has some pretty heavy Nexus pages so that’s where we saw the greatest improvement.  Yet even on smaller pages we still saw an improvement of 15%-34% in page load times.

Setting up gzip in Apache is pretty easy, you can do it by adding these directives to your Apache config in the appropriate place.

# Load the module that performs the compression.
LoadModule deflate_module /QSYS.LIB/QHTTPSVR.LIB/QZSRCORE.SRVPGM

# Compress all output by default.
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Disable gzipping for images and pdf documents.
# Gzip compression has no effect on these types.
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI (gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary

We have recently created new WebSmart example programs and published many KB articles that may be useful to you. Also, registration closes on Saturday for the WebSmart ILE online training, and there are some new updates you should be aware of.

WebSmart 8.8 IDE Update
WebSmart IDE version 5983-8198 is available for download. This updated version of the IDE resolves two issues: getparm would not retrieve values into a structure, and some View Data problems with user input values in Clover. We also added additional JavaScript keywords to the context-sensitive F1 help.

WebSmart 8.8 Feature Spotlight: jQuery
Developers wanting to use more powerful web development features will be particularly excited to see that in WebSmart 8.8 we switched our templates to use the jQuery JavaScript library. If you aren’t yet familiar with jQuery it’s well worth spending a few hours reading up on it online and reviewing some of our own online examples. We use it extensively ourselves, both in our software tools and our professional services work.

WebSmart 8.8 is the latest release of the software. Check our web site for an overview of the new features, or view the recorded webinar.

WebSmart 8.2 Updates
Just before releasing WebSmart 8.8 we had created a few updates for WebSmart 8.2. You can find more information about these updates at the WebSmart server and client side updates history pages.

These fixes are included in version 8.8, but if you aren’t ready to upgrade and would rather just apply them as updates to your current installation of version 8.2, email us to request download instructions.

Last call for WebSmart ILE Online Training
Registration for next week’s first WebSmart ILE online training course ends this Saturday. You can attend these 2 hour courses from the convenience of your office at the low cost of $149 per course. You can register for individual courses or all of the following topics: WebSmart templates, intro to PML, passing parameters, getting user input and validating the data, stateless programming and security. Enroll or learn more >>.

New Code Samples
We have published several code samples you can use as you create WebSmart applications:

• Example 214 illustrates how to use jQuery to quickly display list record details in a pop-up window without loading a separate page.
• In Example 213 we helped a client resolve a validation problem where users were submitting data that included specific characters they could not have in their files.
• Example 206 describes the steps to create a web service using PHP and SOAP.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments on these, or need help implementing them!

New KB Articles
Our Tech Team has also been busy writing new KB articles. Here is a sampler:

• A solution to a problem with PHP programs timing out before fully loading very large pages.
• Information on how to work with PDF and Excel files in your PHP programs.
• How to check which WebSmart service programs are currently used by your applications (a great new feature in WS 8.8!)
• A way to add compiler directives to your programs via the PML.
• Advice on where to look if you have issues with user-written functions after an upgrade.
• Suggestions on how to use SQL scalar functions for enhanced functionality in the PML.
• Information on the option to log program execution time.
• An approach to limiting the number of records returned by a Clover report.
• A technique for adding post-processing actions (deleting a work file) to Clover programs.

These are just a few of the new articles. There are also many others that include troubleshooting and error information for obscure compile and runtime errors.

Stay up to date on the newest WebSmart features by signing up for the WebSmart ILE 8.8, WebSmart PHP 3.8 and Clover 2.6. new features webinar happening on Thursday, October 28th at 1:00 pm EST. This will be a very interactive webinar where you can ask questions about the new features and have them answered by a WebSmart developer.

WebSmart 8.8 was officially released yesterday and includes the following features and many more which will be covered in the webinar:

• jQuery being used for all the templates
• Support for function parameters
• New SQL templates by keys instead of RRN

Sign up for WebSmart 8.8 New Features Webinar >>

WebSmart 8.8 is now available for download at our public site or via myBCDSoftware.com (no form to fill out). Sign up now for the WebSmart 8.8 New Features webinar!

The download also includes Clover 2.6 and the latest updates to WebSmart PHP.

Upgrade and Installation Instructions
There are no special installation or upgrade instructions for this version unless you are upgrading from a much older release. Contact Technical Support if you have questions.

WebSmart 8.8 New Features
Here is an overview of the main features in WebSmart 8.8:

• All ILE, PHP and Clover templates use the jQuery JavaScript library for improved cross browser compatibility, flexibility and power.
• This version includes support for local variables, function parameters and return values.
• New templates that use keys instead of RRN for record access for faster SQL queries.
• WebSmart Change Management (WCM) now has a tool bar in the IDE to access common functions.
• New SmartSnippets for PHP Record Level Access. This feature has been included in conjunction with our dropping the PHP RLA templates.
• You can now use the keyboard combination CTRL-G to go to a particular line.
• F1 context sensitive help for JavaScript files in the IDE.
• The F1 function reference help now accesses online HTML help, which we can update more readily.
• In SQL programs the cursor name is now the program name, rather than MC.
• Added a “Changed” flag to let you know an open definition has changed (* following .pdw in Title Bar).
• SQL Utility now word wraps and vertically scrolls.
• The Fields window shows the actual type for numeric fields.
• We have increased the size of a number of internal files.
• There is a new utility accessible via your WAS configuration pages that allows you to list the service programs used by the WebSmart programs in a particular library.

Please visit the WebSmart New Features page for additional details.

Documentation Note: The functions reference section of the guide (the help available in the IDE when you press F1 in the PML) has been updated in this initial release of 8.8, but the rest of the documentation is not yet complete. We’ll send another email to this list as soon as all the guides are done. In the meantime, please review the items on the New Features page or call Technical Support if you have questions about specific features.