Uniface®

(Original creator: _baterfly)For the first time in its more than 20 years existence the 2012 Face to Face autumn conference was held at the Compuware office in Amsterdam.  For the attendants the day started very good with an official barista making excellent latte macchiato, espresso etc. so everybody was veryawake for the day. In the technical “potpourri,” which is always the kick off for the event, Dino Seelig made everybody curious for his implementation of a new HR system. Next time we expect a live demo Dino! Edu Kornmann showed his work on a Calendar widget with the famous Uniface Open Widget Interface and Arjen van Vliet on application performance analysis with the TDD tools from Compuware. After the coffee break the presentation from Huddie Klein from Formido was very much appreciated by the audience, first of all because Huddie was able to present without(!) PowerPoint and most important Huddie showed it is possible to calculate the ROI of functional improveme

(Original creator: eknochs)Most readers will remember the Uniface Quick Reference Guide; the one-stop help resource for development and deployment.  In its final form for 8.4, it measures 114mm x 140 mm x approx. 22mm thick.  It weighs 293g, and has 408 pages. Some people miss them.  Recently I received a call from a customer whose colleague was envious of his, even though it is now obsolete.  Of course the final versions also came in PDF format so you could print it yourself.  So, does anyone else miss them? The current Uniface Library is certainly a technical improvement.  Context sensitivity, and increased use of example code, are all welcome advances.  On the other hand, having the QRG open next to your workstation is sometimes less disruptive than swapping windows while coding.  Maybe you have multiple monitors to get around that, but I'm on the road a lot with only a laptop screen available. I've just been looking through my last QRG, and I

(Original creator: GMockford)The Evolution of User Group Workshops we looked at our User group workshop from our side so now I'd like to share with you some of the comments.Happily most, actually 89%, of respondents agreed with our basic reason for the workshop and that was to get some “hands-on” experience with 9.6, and to generate ideas on how to use new features in their work. So that was cool. Remember there are no pre-requisites for attending the workshop and I was happy that there were a few non-technical people in attendance as well. Ok so enough of the fluffy-bunny stuff what was the stuff that people didn’t like and what can we do to fix that? First comment, workshop was slow to start, wasted 30-45 minutes. Yeah well that was down to me, we had the German user group the week prior and when I setup the environment for Las Vegas I choose the German VM instead of the one for the USA.  Opps!, my bad, so apologies for that. Funniest thing about that

(Original creator: bolarotibi)Guest contributor, Ian Murphy from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting (Windows 8 boosts enterprise applications (Part 1)) (Windows 8 boosts enterprise applications (Part 2))Questions of touch, form factor and interface supportNot all parts of Windows 8 will deliver big benefits. There will be big challenges for developers in how to incorporate the touch interface into their applications. Existing touch applications are only enabled for two finger touch as that is all Microsoft previously supported. This was perfectly fine for tapping an icon or pinching a picture or ebook to enlarge or reduce. With Windows 8, it is about multi-point touch which is much more complex. The ability to use two hands on the screen or carry out complex touch operations requires both software and hardware support. Therefore multi-point touch support is going to be limited for some time. Brand new hardware, available around Christmas 2012 should be multi-poin

(Original creator: aschetse)Just returned from Japan… If I would have to summarize my visit in one word it would be: finally! After hard work of everyone in the Uniface team, we finally have the right message, we finally have the right product and we finally have the momentum back in our customer base again! The Uniface world tour has been in Las Vegas a few weeks before – and it was great – this time the roadshow stopped in Osaka and two days later also in Tokyo.  More Uniface customers were there than I’ve ever seen before in Japan and they were very positive. This is not unique for customers in Japan, I’ve seen similar things in Las Vegas and expect to see even more of the same  from customers in France in early December. Why? Well, I have learned three things:1. Usability: People expect easy to use and great looking applications (btw If you don’t know what that is: buy an iPad). Uniface 9.6 finally adds great usability features to our product. People can build ever better

(Original creator: GMockford)2012 NAUUG Workshop in Las VegasI've had a couple of questions recently regarding what the user group workshops are all about as not all User groups have the opportunity or time to present a session. So I thought I'd take a moment and explore how these came to exist. We set aside an optional day during the North American Uniface User Group for free training. Any subject was possible just needed to fit into the time available, usually 4 to 6 hours. In years past, we would provide PC’s, then asked participants to bring their own laptops that had the unfortunate effect of introducing an extra install period which at times was really stressful for both the customers and us. To solve that we adopted a canned service provided by CloudShare where we can setup an entire environment in the cloud, just bring a network enabled laptop with browser and away you go, perfect! But what can you fit into 6 hours was always the issue. With the Uniface release cycles at the en

(Original creator: adriang) Yesterday was a significant day in the Uniface 9.6 project. It was the day that we RTM'd, or released to manufacturing. This means that we've sent the Uniface 9.6 images to be packaged up and the eDistribution created. (we're not going to make physical DVDs/CDs from now on). It's a kind of 'lull period' for us, we are starting the high level planning on what happens next, with Uniface 9.6.02 and Uniface 10. Tomorrow we hold an internal RAD Race, where the development teams have 24 hours to build a Uniface app which is based on Uniface 9.6. (so a real case of eating our own dog food, which is a term that stems from Dave Cutler and the project to release Windows NT). We did it for the first time last year, it was a great exercise, and also a chance for everybody involved. I'd originally wanted to invite those customers who were involved in the Uniface 9.6 preview, but as it become more popular, it became clear that idea would have to change. Watch this

(Original creator: bolarotibi)Guest contributor, Ian Murphy from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting (Part 1: Windows 8 boosts enterprise applications (Part 1))Bring on the storeThe second significant step that Windows 8 brings is the Microsoft App Store. This is where developers will gain access to a wider market in order to sell their applications. Microsoft has made it a seamless process to deliver an application to the App Store right from Visual Studio. The App Store is designed to only deliver applications to Windows RT and not to the desktop. While this may limit the opportunity for some applications, it will provide smaller software houses with a sales pipeline they could never have created themselves. Enterprise developers do not have to deliver applications through the App Store, Instead, Microsoft has created a process that allows them to deploy enterprise ready applications direct to Windows RT devices. This creates a process challenge for the dep

(Original creator: jhuggins1)Application performance has always been an important topic in Information Technology, however often seems to be neglected. So, what is performance? A simple abstraction is, “how much, in how long.” This can be broken down into many technical metrics e.g. efficiency, throughput, utilization etc… however it is often easy to forget the emotional measures e.g. the perceived performance, time to action, usability, number of clicks etc… . “How much a user can achieve, in how long” is just as important as “How much a computer can achieve, in how long.” The fastest solution is of little use if it takes the user an eternity to use it. Think how much quicker you are able to use many applications once you learn the various shortcuts e.g. CTRL+C instead of (move mouse)->Edit->Copy. Over the years, there have been many views on when it is best to think about the performance of an application. A common approach has

(Original creator: bolarotibi)Guest contributor, Ian Murphy from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting Microsoft has delivered the next version of its client operating system, Windows 8, to the market.In the next few weeks, this will be joined by Windows Server 2012. The changes, from look and feel to underlying functionality, are the biggest Microsoft has made in at least a decade, if not longer. The inevitable debates, as to whether they will deliver benefits to business users, are already well underway. So what is the reality rather than the perception? Microsoft upping its game Developers will know that not every version of Windows has been easy to write for. Changes to APIs and device driver models along with problems writing and compiling 32-bit and 64-bit applications have made the platform a nightmare at times. With Windows 8, it would be foolish to say everything is rosy but Microsoft has upped its substantially game and delivered several things that should impr

(Original creator: adriang)Those who know me will know I've always had an affinity with Japan. During my previous stint in product management it was my second home. So it's always good to come back, catch up with old friends and customers, some of who I have known for over 15 years. We had two user conferences this year, one in Osaka, serving the Kansai region of Japan, and one in Tokyo. We follow a slightly different program for the Japanese market, where we have a shorter program without the usual 9.6 workshops, which we are looking at doing as a separate event. Japan is an interesting country from a business IT perspective (it's an interesting country anyhow!). Despite being very technically advanced, it's also a culture that is quite conservative when it comes to business technology and business apps. For example using old versions of Uniface connected to old versions of databases and we even have one customer who is still using a deployed application on Windows NT 4! So

(Original creator: _baterfly) Title: November 4th 2012 Amsterdam Productcamp ProductCamp Amsterdam is the first and only unconference for product managers, product marketing managers, entrepreneurs and others with passions for product, online and IT, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ProductCamps are held regularly all over the world. In Amsterdam there is a yearly unconference and multiple meetups, drinks & seminars. Uniface Client Manager Ton Blankers will participate in the keynote presentation about company mergers and share his experience from the Compuware/Uniface merger. Start Time: 9:00 Date: 2012-11-4 End Time: 18:00

(Original creator: bolarotibi)Guest contributor, Paul Herzlich from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting (In Pursuit of Sustainable Legacy Modernization (Part 1)) (In Pursuit of Sustainable Legacy Modernization (part 2)) As discussed in Part 2, the black box modernization strategy is popular and has architectural limitations and negative side effects on IT processes, but despite the potential shortcomings, this form of providing ‘modern’ computing features without actually modernizing applications has allowed many companies to extend the life of legacy systems. However, as the gap grows between new and old technologies – and the costs grow of maintaining legacy technology in parallel with newer platforms for wrapper applications – this strategy loses its potential to provide any competitive boost. In our research we find that organizations that have waited until now to modernize are risk averse and are highly satisfied with their existing ap

(Original creator: chillebrink)Enterprise Application Modernization

(Original creator: bolarotibi)Guest contributor, Paul Herzlich from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting (In Pursuit of Sustainable Legacy Modernization (Part 1)) Although discussions of modernization often center on a world of technically dazzling possibilities, the reality for many organizations is much less exciting. Long before they consider their ambitions to be state-of-the-art, they have to confront the fact that their applications are probably lacking or are even incompatible with only moderately recent technologies that would allow them to participate in the interconnected world of composite applications, like object orientation, SOA, web services and XML. Forget about whether they can make use of the latest shiny technological tricks. They realize that living outside the technological mainstream is costing them in a whole host of ways:They’re at risk while they depend on obsolete hardware and unsupported system software, databases, and middleware.Th

(Original creator: chillebrink) It is always great to hear feedback from our customers and from the sounds of it, the North American Uniface User Group (NAUUG) event held last week in Las Vegas was very well received! Next up: Netherlands, France and Japan. "Thank you for hosting us. The NAUUG was very informative and timely. The sessions devoted to 9.6 gave us a great idea of what is coming and we are excited to see that Compuware is adapting and innovating for the 'now' term. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to talk with and hear from other Uniface users and find out how other folks in the market are leveraging the tool. What can I say...the social aspect of the conference was amazing! You were great hosts and I plan to become a repeat attendee! I highly recommend the NAUUG to all developers and product managers working with Uniface." Jenny Bunch, CourtView Justice Solutions "First, thank you again for patient and repeated invitations to attend NAUUG 2012 ev

(Original creator: adriang) The primary theme for the NAUUG was modernization of apps, and it’s clear that within the Uniface community, there is a fair amount of interest in the topic. We had an interesting discussion over breakfast at the event, I think it was on Wednesday, and it was all round the topic of what is a ‘good user interface?’.  It was quite interesting to gauge various points of view, and what specifically influenced our VAR partners who resell their applications which are built in Uniface. Now I don’t have the answer to this, I don’t claim to be particularly creative, but it was fascinating to pick up some of the points of view.  For example, somebody shared a story about their product manager being completely hung up on a windows look and feel that is as close to a MS application as possible, and during one of their discussions, showed a screen shot from an iPAD app! (gotta love Product Managers!). Over the past year or s

(Original creator: bolarotibi) Guest contributor, Paul Herzlich from analyst firm Creative Intellect Consulting The term ‘modernization’ is one of those buzzwords that gain a lot of currency at a particular moment. Clearly the idea is not new. We’ve always had to maintain and upgrade our systems to keep them ‘up-to-date’. In the 1980’s software conversion or migration was a popular solution. In the 1990’s, it was often termed ‘re-engineering’. What more do we mean by the term modernization? A few things stand out: The internet for global access was a revolution that has made it possible to reach customers, employees and business partners directly and at low cost. The resulting boon in self-service applications, access anywhere and shared services has eliminated huge business processing costs. New technologies – mobile devices and Big Data are examples – make it possible to offer new

(Original creator: adriang)I’ve spent a couple of days in Las Vegas at the NAUUG (North American Uniface User Group).  It’s an interesting event, as we run it over three days. The US is a big place, so if we have customers jetting in, we always make sure that there is a full agenda, both in the day and also in the night. Probably the most impressing starting point would be the excellent venue, the Vdara hotel, great for conferences, and they were very accommodating to our needs, which grew and grew as the attendance went up to over 60 attendees which was really good news. The agenda has been pretty busy, the usual business and product updates, which were well received, and Maarten van Leer also gave a couple of presentations, firstly on Uniface 10  which gave lots of positive feedback, good reinforcement that we’re in the right direction (phew!).  Maarten’s presentation on how we use agile in the development of Uniface was also interesting and it

(Original creator: admin)Welcome to the renewed site. Our goal for the new site is to implement the functionality based on your feedback and wishes for the Uniface community site. We leave it up to you how well this has been accomplished. The mot important update is the Uniface blog, where several contributors throughout the Uniface world will share their knowledge, views, opinions and thoughts on Uniface topics and IT trends. The Uniface team starts Blogging as of this week. Enjoy the posts and feel free to comment on them. Most of the information from the previous site has been migrated but some work still has o be done in the coming days:Complete User profile information like pictures and websitesWish list application plus data.If you find anything else missing please let us know. One of the benefits of the new website is that we can implement your wishes much quicker than with the previous one, so we look forward to your feedback in the forum and reactions to this blog. Kind regard

(Original creator: admin) The German Uniface User Group UBG (www.c-b-g.org) had its yearly conference on September 13 and 14 2012 in Neu-Ulm. The UBG yearly conference is always a very nice mix between of sharing Uniface user experiences, plans from the Uniface Team and cultural entertainment. At the kick off presentation Mr. Arnd Ohlenbusch (AHP) announced that the official name of the user group was UBG again. After the kick off Deniz Yugnuk and myself explained the Uniface plans for the coming year. With Uniface 9.6 planned to be released in December 2012 the German audience was happy to see a large number of What’s New items in the Windows GUI region of Uniface. The Uniface Roadmap presentation showed what was planned last year for Uniface 9.6 and explained what users will actually get this year, which is a lot more! Daniel Iseli also gave a life demo of the new Uniface 9.6 Windows GUI capabilities which opens up an enormous amount of new types of GUI elements like Rib