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Roland Lannuzel

Loops, loops and … more loops!

Like many other programming languages, 4D provides the ability to iterate over numbers with a For(…) / End for statement, or over a condition thanks to the While(…)/End while and Repeat/Until(…) keywords. These iterations (or loops) are very useful, but not the most appropriate way to iterate over advanced data types such as collections and entity selections. That’s why the new For each(…)/End for each iterator has been created, to help ease your coding!

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ORDA: work with objects and collections

In this latest addition to the ORDA series, we’ll look at how the new ORDA concepts can interact with existing objects and collections. In fact, it’s possible to turn entities and entity selections into objects and collections, as well as build entities and entity selections from objects and collections. By doing so, you can easily integrate ORDA code within your existing code. You can take full advantage of ORDA without needing to rewrite your code!

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Going back and forth between current selections to ORDA

ORDA is a major innovation of 4D v17, this is why we’re dedicating an entire series of blog posts to ORDA. While ORDA has its own concepts that are very different from the classic approach, it’s still possible to mix ORDA with your existing code.

In a nutshell, this blog post will show you how you can update the current selection of a table from an entity selection and get an entity selection from the current selection of a table. It’ll allow you to smoothly integrate ORDA concepts into your existing 4D code, step by step.

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Query your database with an object-oriented approach

After learning how you can create, update, and delete data, here is a new entry in the ORDA series. In this post, you will see how you can query your datastore in an object-oriented mode. With ORDA, queries are lighter, more readable, and you can navigate through the whole data model using object-oriented concepts !

On top of that, ORDA makes it possible to very easily query several related tables, manage recursive relations on the same table, and use several logical operators in a single query. Plus, you don’t have to worry about setting relations between tables … manually or automatically !

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Vanessa Talbot
4D News with 4D Write Pro multi column

Create multi-column documents in 4D Write Pro

Sometimes the information you include in your document is best displayed in columns. Not only can columns help improve readability, but some types of documents – newspaper articles, newsletters, flyers, etc. – are often written in column format. The good news is that with 4D v17, you can henceforth create multi-column documents with 4D Write Pro! And beyond document creation, you can also convert your existing 4D Write documents containing multiple columns.

As in the 4D Write plugin, it’s possible to define the number of columns for an entire document. But here’s a good example where 4D Write Pro exceeds 4D Write: you can also set a different number of columns … per section!

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Create, update and delete data with ORDA

4D v17 introduces ORDA, a major evolution in 4D which is opening a world of new possibilities for 4D developers. To learn more about ORDA and its benefits, check out this post to see how ORDA will change the way you work. In order to guide you through the ORDA exploration, we’ve prepared a series of blog posts fully dedicated to the core concepts and related features. This blog post will detail how you can perform CRUD operations on your database with ORDA. CRUD is an acronym for the four basic operations you can perform on data: Create, Read, Update, and Delete.

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