4D Project: Embrace a new era of collaboration
4D has been a longtime supporter of team development, ever since 4D Server 1.0. The greatest benefit of working together on the same source code, is allowing both team development and team testing. However this can create some disadvantages for distributed teams since they may not be able to work on the same source.
Following a complete rewrite, 4D now supports two ways to work with sources: binary and project. Binary is the 4D we all know and love, with the source in a binary file to allow team development with 4D Server. Project makes it easier for distributed teams to work collaboratively by storing the source in a source control system in plain text files.
Get started with encryption in 4D
In a previous blog post, we announced new data encryption tools for your 4D databases. Now it’s time to get our hands dirty and learn more about these tools which were designed to be as automatic as possible.
Read 4D object fields with SQL Engine
A 4D object field is a persistent database field type, stored as binary content. Previously, reading this type of field by an ODBC driver wasn’t possible. Until today.
Before, an error was returned when trying to read an object field. This prevented the completion of simple Select * from myTable requests, which could be frustrating for users who only wanted to browse the content of a table.
Good news! The SQL engine has been updated to allow 4D object fields to be read.
Introduction to data encryption in 4D
DATA is everywhere. As our lives increasingly move online, the importance of data security also increases. Customer data must be vigilantly guarded against potential threats and breaches. In many cases, using a disk encryption tool (such as Microsoft’s Bitlocker or Apple’s FileVault) provides a sufficient level of protection, but what if your customer or your CSO (Chief Security Officer) requires encryption at the database level – on a per table basis?
During 4D Summit 2018, you asked for a solution to encrypt your data and we’ve delivered. We’re excited to present new data encryption tools for your 4D databases.
4D Write Pro now supports virtual structures!
Understanding end user needs and creating user-friendly interfaces are high priorities for every application developers.
And as you may know, the 4D language lets you alias table and field names in order to make them more readable for end users. This allows easier translating and readability in standard dialogs (query, sort, and formula editors), but also filtering out any table or fields that should be kept away from end users sight.
During 4D Summit 2018, we had requests to extend this feature to 4D Write Pro. Well, we listened and it’s now available with 4D v17 R4!
Name your ranges and formulas in 4D View Pro
4D v17 R4 is on the way with a cool new 4D View Pro feature: named ranges and formulas. If you need to use formulas with references to cell(s) or constant(s), this feature can be a great help!
With these new commands, your formulas are more readable and easily accessible with 4D View Pro’s automatic completion.
Restricted queries with 4D for iOS
With 4D v17 R4, embedding and displaying filtered content in your 4D for iOS app is a piece of cake! With this R-release, you’ll be able to filter the data to be displayed in your mobile app.
Get coordinates in a 4D Write Pro document
By now, you should be familiar with the WP Get position command. At the very least you’ve read about it in this blog post. Introduced with v17, it helps you get information about the location of elements within your 4D Write Pro documents.
4D v17 R4 spices things up … now, it also returns coordinates!
Easily synchronize your processes
Preemptive processes are very useful for performing extensive calculations in parallel, using all of the cores in your CPU, but sometimes you need to delegate tasks to a cooperative process (e.g., using a non-preemptive command). With the New signal command, you can pause a process and wait for the response from another process!
New server administration commands
4D continues to deliver features to help you create your own applications to monitor your servers. From programmatically retrieving information about sessions, processes, and the application server, to getting information about the web server.
Having already provided you commands to read about statuses, 4D v17 R4 now gives you the ability to change statuses. You can now create your own administration interfaces as dialogs on the server, client, or even as HTML pages for web access. It’s up to you. These commands allow you to perform the same actions as the standard 4D administration interface. For example, you can send a message to your users to notify them of scheduled maintenance, or block new connections to the application server while you perform an operation on it.
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