An enhanced UX with AJUI_Progressbar
Have you ever executed an action, nothing seemed to happen, and you didn’t know if you should click again or continue waiting? There’s no feedback provided, even if the application is performing an action in the background? Perhaps the action requires some time to return a result? As you may know, 4D already provides a built-in progress bar component that makes execution time more tolerable, but if you want something with a more web like design then keep reading, because that’s what the AJUI_Progressbar gives you!
Build a web-based monitoring dialog, step by step
Want to recreate the 4D Server Administration Window with a web interface? Want to conveniently check what’s happening in the 4D Server without needing to go to the server room, to use a remote desktop, or to consume a 4D Client license? It’s now possible to view all of 4D Server’s main parameters(e.g., memory usage, drive space, users, processes, and even the real-time monitor) via the web.
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through a set of commands that 4D delivered over various R-releases to build your own web-based server administration dialog. Additionally, the regional technical manager of 4D Hispano (Angelo Caroprese) has provided a complete component to be used right in your applications.
An ORDA Cheat Sheet
Blog post by guest author Cannon Smith, a 4D developer from southern Alberta, Canada:
The introduction of collections and entities has dramatically changed the landscape in 4D, giving developers new ways to map business rules to code. Just recently I refactored several thousand lines of code that were central to the business rules of our application, resulting in a significant speed improvement (5xs faster) which our users are very happy about. This refactoring was largely about moving from old code constructs to objects, collections, and ORDA.
Power of objects and dot notation
With 4D v17 R5, we showed you how easy it is to manipulate an object to retrieve the attributes of a file or folder. Things have gotten even easier thanks to object notation! In this blog post, we’re providing you an HDI with a user interface to manage files and folders. This isn’t new in 4D since you could do it with classic 4D commands, but now you can do it easier and with fewer lines of code!
A new tool at your fingertips to analyze debug logs
With 4D v17 R5, we’ve improved the debug logs by adding methods and allowing each process to be traced independently. With this R-release, we’ve gone a step further by shipping a debug logs analyzer tool to help you monitor process execution. You’ll be able to see which processes are the most consuming, the call chain with the corresponding running time, and much more.
Retrieve the current execution call chain
When programming an application, you may need to know where you are in your code, especially when one method calls other methods, which may then call other methods. That’s why it’s very helpful to see the chain of methods, or the call chain, during the debugging process. For this, 4D v17 R6 provides the new Get call chain command to give you an insight into the executed code. Now you won’t have to worry about getting lost anymore!
Write generic code with the latest ORDA features
ORDA has its share of features with 4D v17 R5, including various ways to write generic code.
Writing generic code allows you to centralize your code to facilitate updating it. Not only does it enable you to write reusable code that can be used in different use cases, freeing you from having to reinvent the wheel again and again, it also lets you add extra functionalities on top of what you’ve already done.
AJUI_Tip: A tooltip engine for 4D
Have you ever been flooded by confirmation dialogs, alert boxes, and contextual help windows that make it nearly impossible to locate the form window on which you were working? Wouldn’t it be more user-friendly to stay on the same page and see help bubbles pointing directly at the original target?
This is possible thanks to the 4D component AJUI_Tip. It’s a powerful tooltip engine based on the technologies available in 4D such as ORDA, New Formula, SVG, SubForm, CALL FORM, to name a few. In this blog post, we’ll highlight the component’s usage, and show how you can design beautiful tooltips to enhance your applications’ UI. A download link can be found at the end of the blog post.
Use ORDA to boost performance in Client/Server mode
Using ORDA to access large tables (especially those with relations) in Client/Server mode has been greatly enhanced. With 4D v17 R5, you’ll see 2-3xs improved LAN performance and up to 30xs faster WAN performance. And best of all – there’s no need to change anything in your code, it’s all automatic. Interesting, isn’t it? Well, let’s delve into the details.
ORDA member methods to get the structure information
“How can I know the dataClass of an entity? I need it to write generic methods“. “I need information about a field in a dataClass: what is its type? Is it indexed? Is it unique?“. These are the kinds of questions we’ve heard you asking on the forum. 4D v17 R5 provides the answers: introducing new ORDA member methods to provide useful information about your database. Keep reading, because you’ll appreciate the benefits of reducing the size of your code and making it reusable and easy to maintain!
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