One of the most critical components of the Presentation Server is the System Monitor – as well as providing a simple command line interface to your forms and Basic+ Stored procedures, it is also responsible for a lot of hidden message processing and routing, such as providing the underlying framework that implements the IDLEPROC property and the POST_EVENT function.  It’s always there, even when you think you’ve closed it.

Needless to say it’s also the first part of the Presentation Server that gets written, and while the existing System Monitor is quite basic (it hasn’t been changed for many years) we’ve taken the opportunity with OI v10 to make it a bit more powerful and user-friendly.

Here’s a brief overview of the changes we’ve made:

  • It remembers it’s position and size between sessions.
  • It remembers a list of the last 100 executed commands between sessions.
  • Commands are no longer executed when scrolling through the dropdown – they are executed when the Enter key is pressed.
  • The font is set to “Consolas” with a fall-back to “Courier New”, which is hopefully easier on the eyes than the ugly “System Font” and allows more information to be seen.
  • The results editbox is read-only and results are only appended to existing text.
  • The command line supports the TCL-style “.number” syntax to execute a previously executed command (e.g. “.1”, “.2” etc).
  • Entering “RUN” before the name of a stored procedure is optional.
  • Any command entered that is not recognized is assumed to be the name of a stored procedure and is executed as such.
  • The command line parser has been improved – quotes and commas used to define arguments are now optional (like TCL).
  • The command line supports “AutoComplete” functionality.

We’ve also added the following commands:

  • ABOUT – Displays version information.
  • CFG – Displays the information parsed from the RXI file loaded at startup.
  • CLL – Clears the drop down list of previous commands.
  • CLS – Clears the results editbox.
  • EM – Shorthand for the “Exec_Method” stored procedure.
  • CMD – Opens the Windows command prompt window.
  • GC – Executes a Basic+ GarbageCollect operation.
  • GP – Shorthand for the “Get_Property” stored procedure.
  • LIST – Executes the command as an RLIST “LIST” statement.
  • LOGTO – Closes the current OpenInsight application and opens another one.
  • QUIT – Shuts down the Presentation Server
  • OFF – Same as QUIT (for TCL fans)
  • SHL – Executes an OS file/document via the Windows ShellExecute() function.
  • SP – Shorthand for the “Set_Property” stored procedure.

Be sure to let us know if there’s any features you’d like to see added to the System Monitor, but be advised that requests for full TCL compatibility will be ignored!

OI10 System Monitor

[Edit: 14 Jan 13 – Added CLL command and AutoComplete note]

[Edit: 24 Apr 13 – Call_Method renamed to Exec_Method]

(Disclaimer: This article is based on preliminary information and may be subject to change in the final release version of OpenInsight 10).