May 2016 Newsletter

Revelation Software
May 2016 Newsletter
 
Andrew McAuley of Sprezzatura provides an overview of OpenInsight 10 at RevCon 2016

At the recent conference in Orlando I was given the opportunity to present a very early preview of the sample application that Sprezzatura will be providing for the final release of OpenInsight 10. To make the application simpler for new users to follow and understand how MV can be used to improve on SQL data structures the decision was made to convert an open source SQL bug tracking system (Bugzilla) to OpenInsight 10.

Andrew McAuley

This article represents a distillation of the conference presentation without the rambling asides and with a little more depth given to some of the tools. If you were at the presentation then thank you for being there - but this isn't a PowerPoint of my talk! As you'll know the talk was just a live demo. (And we didn't hit the debugger once!).

To make the conversion easier pre-conference the decision was made to develop the application in 9.4 and then move it over. To keep this blog post focused I won't include the screen shots of the app that were demonstrated at conference but suffice to say that the data tables were populated with a small sample data set (500 clients, 8 products, 5000 bugs, 1-4 incidents per bug) and supporting windows were constructed to allow viewing of these.

An interesting thing to come out of the work undertaken during the conversion was to see just how tight OpenInsight security has been made. At one stage I found myself unable to log into my system to continue working as the system told me that my passwords were wrong. I was slightly taken aback by this as I was fairly sure that I'd remembered them correctly but rather than waste time asserting that I was in the right I decided to cheat. I installed a new copy of the pre-Alpha in a different subdirectory, logged in using the default passwords and set up my accounts and users again. Then I made a note of the system tables used to store the user details and copied those corresponding DOS LK and OV files over to my compromised system.

I was still unable to log in.

I queried this with Revelation and all was revealed. To stop this sort of backdoor entry from happening, passwords are encrypted using a salt value that is NOT stored with the password.This is a significant improvement over previous behaviour. I still remember being at a PC Trade Show with Release C of Revelation when an attendee came up and suggested to me that he could easily break into our password protected system. I scoffed. He TYPEd the ROS file containing all the system details and logged straight in. It's nice to see this sort of security hole well and truly closed!

Back to the product!

The first thing that strikes you about the product is how simplified and clean the interface appears.  READ ON...



Don Bakke of SRP Computer Solutions discusses OI 10 User Management and Security

From early on in the development cycle of OpenInsight 10, Revelation Software made it known that they intended to revamp user management and security. In fact, this was one of the key features that we highlighted to encourage the community to come to the 2015 conference in Houston. Originally dubbed the OpenInsight Authentication Module (OAM), this new user management tool now provides some impressive security policy features and it introduces an option that many developers have requested: full integration between OpenInsight and O4W users.

Bryan Shumsky explored the current state of OpenInsight security in his User Management in OI X presentation. Regretfully, I could not be in two places at once and I opted to watch Andrew McAuley’s Building a new application with OpenInsight 10. Nevertheless, Bryan was kind enough to review some of the technical points I was uncertain about and he filled in the gaps of my knowledge. Thus, what is presented before you is based on my notes from the 2015 OAM presentation, Bryan’s 2016 presentation slides, my own hands-on experience with the product, and a little bit of wisdom from Bryan himself.

User management has been detached from being a menu item under the Database Manager and it is now a first-class citizen under the main IDE’s menu.  READ ON...



2016 DBTA Readers' Choice Awards

DBTA 2016 Readers Choice Awards

Voting is now open for the 2016 Database Trends and Applications Readers' Choice Awards.

Unlike other awards programs that rely on our editorial staff's evaluations, the DBTA Readers’ Choice Awards are unique in that the winning information management solutions are chosen by you - the people who actually use them.

With the range of categories spanning both longstanding technologies, as well as new types of products, this is an opportunity to congratulate all your trusted vendors for a job well done.

Click HERE to cast your VOTE.


FOLLOW US

Become a friend or a follower. Just click the icons to get our RSS Feeds, LinkedIn Profile, Facebook or YouTube page.

 
 
Conference Recap

RevCon 2016 Logo

Martyn Phillips of RevSoft UK was kind enough to blog a day by day recap of our Users' Conference in Orlando, Florida last month.

Day 1

This morning was the first full day of the conference and I had not planned on waking up with my streaming cold back again, but some things never go to plan.  The day on the other hand went really well.

I began with breakfast in David’s Club which is a sports bar in the evening but, closed off just for us,  it made for a great place for breakfast.  Some additional attendees flew in and collected their welcome packs and we all headed off to the conference room for Mike’s welcome address.  This was followed by a question and answer session where a whole host of questions were put to Mike, Carl, Bryan and Bob.

This was followed by Mike who took the lead in looking at the OpenInsight 10 Forms Designer.  This is a vastly different tool visually from what we have in version 9.4 and there is a wealth of new features.  I especially like the way that the properties are handled within the new panels.

Carl continued looking at the new forms designer and he also spoke about some of the many new functions that have been included and especially the greatly enhanced support for images and how these can be  used in making our application look really nice, and across many screen resolutions as well.

To round off the afternoon, Bob Carten took us through how GIT has been integrated into OpenInsight 10 and he also spoke at some length about how Revelation have used the code management tools to better support the development team which is now spread over a wide area and crosses continents.  This presentation generated a lot of interest and questions from the floor.

This was followed by the last session of the day in which Bob and Kevin took a look at the new features and functionality that is being delivered right now through the UD 5.x  We looked at the benefits of the product, the management console and how network administrators can get a better view of their systems.  The highlight of the presentation was watching Bob pull a cable on his ‘special network’ and then to watch the UD recover the OI session.

READ ON...


 



Universal Driver 4.7.1 now available

Universal Driver 5.0

The Universal Driver 4.7.1 is now available as a free upgrade from the Universal Driver 4.7.  This patch release of the Universal Driver has improved memory management and minor bug fixes.  Please contact our Customer Care Department to receive your upgrade.

©2016 Revelation Software. All rights reserved. 99 Kinderkamack Road, Westwood, NJ 07675