Peter Weaver wrote:

[snip]
> As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click on
> a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click on
> the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK, there
> are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
> figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns by
> clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
>

You have to specify Array.NUMERIC when you call the sortOn Array method.
for example: myarray.sortOn('item', Array.NUMERIC);
[snip]


JFP

Hi Peter,

Well done! Let's hope more people take up an interest.

Cheers Richard Maher

PS. Apparently those on Bootcamp just paid $1500 to have the IMM team tell
them about a "new" technology called AJAX. Well they were 10 years after
everybody else with Web Services so the time lag is getting shorter :-)
Maybe next year HP/VMS will announce Flex/Flash to the world?

"Peter Weaver" wrote in message
news:02f601c8bc86$041df1d0$2802a8c0@CHARONLAP...
> I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It
is
> not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example.
> Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe
> someone reading this will take the task on.
>
> I took an old Fortran program I had (IIRC it came from DSNLink) that
dumped
> out the ACCOUNTNG.DAT file and modified it to dump the data in XML format.
> Then I created the .mxml file that shows up to 20 rows (depending on the
> size of your web browser's window) of the file in a table.
>
> The Fortran program and .mxml file were both created using plain old
> EDIT/TPU, the .mxml file was compiled into the .swf using the free flex
> program loaded on my IA64 system. The IA64 system can compile the code in
> about 35 seconds, my Alpha 800 5/500 takes over 3 minutes to do the same
> job.
>
> As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click
on
> a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click on
> the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK,
there
> are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
> figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns
by
> clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
>
> Depending on how big my accounting file is it may take a while to load the
> table. I was testing this using a file with over 4,000 records and it took
> 30 or 40 seconds to load on my LAN. Since the XML file for 4,000 records
is
> over 4 MB it may take a while to download.
>
> Just for privacy sake I replaced the first seven characters of the
usernames
> with the characters "private" but that modification would be easy to take
> out if anyone wants to try this on their own system.
>
> If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at
> http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on
your
> own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the
> source code.
>
> Peter Weaver
> www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
> www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com
>
>

Hi JF,

> You have to specify Array.NUMERIC when you call the sortOn Array method.
> for example: myarray.sortOn('item', Array.NUMERIC);

I think the problem Peter's experiencing is on the default Flex datagrid
column sort. (ie. Just clicking on the column header). I don't use the
gratuitous waste of bandwith that is XML myself and am not sure how one
would distinguish a numeric from a string (although if you look at the Adobe
Dashboard example for a while it can't be too hard to figure out as it (with
XML) certainly works there.)

Me? I use the FABridge with Javascript and cast any designated numeric
columns as NUMBER as in : -

function buildEmployee(buffFields,employeeRec){

var newEmp = new Object();
var fieldValue="";

for (i = 0; i < buffFields.length; i++){
fieldValue =
employeeRec.substr(buffFields[i].offset,buffFields[i].size);

if (buffFields[i].numeric) {
newEmp[buffFields[i].name] = Number(fieldValue)
} else {
newEmp[buffFields[i].name] = fieldValue.rTrim()
}
}

return newEmp;
}

I'm sure the dataSource for your grid has column attributes, one of which is
isNumeric (sorry, too lazy to look up the manual at the moment :-) The above
works for me with Salaries in my example so that $12,000 dollars doesn't
come before $2,000.

Cheers Richard Maher

"Jean-François Piéronne" wrote in message
news:48364f5a$0$5856$426a74cc@news.free.fr...
> Peter Weaver wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click
on
> > a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click
on
> > the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK,
there
> > are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
> > figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns
by
> > clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
> >
>
> You have to specify Array.NUMERIC when you call the sortOn Array method.
> for example: myarray.sortOn('item', Array.NUMERIC);
> [snip]
>
>
> JFP

"Peter Weaver" wrote in message
news:02f601c8bc86$041df1d0$2802a8c0@CHARONLAP...
>I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It is
> not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example.
> Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe
> someone reading this will take the task on.
>
....
> If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at
> http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on
> your
> own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the
> source code.
>
> Peter Weaver
> www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
> www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com
>
>

Very Very nice. I immediately see a very good use of it in few of my own
applications, currently writen in pascal and cobol.

Best, Gorazd

>...
> As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click
> on
> a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click on
> the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK,
> there
> are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
> figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns
> by
> clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
>...

I added in some code so the numeric columns should be sorted correctly. The
date still will not sort correctly if you click on it, but the rows are
sorted by date when the data loads.

> If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at
> http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on
> your
> own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the
> source code.
>...

It is nice to see that there is some interest in this, I had a few requests
for the source so far and about 50 unique IP addresses have looked at the
program running.

I meant to mention in the original posting that one of the reasons I worked
on this was to once again demonstrate that VMS does not just mean VT
terminals. Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
their system. When the request started going up the management chain someone
above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is text
based and can not be used by a browser .

Peter Weaver
www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com

On Sat, 24 May 2008 07:24:09 -0700, Peter Weaver
wrote:

>
>
>> ...
>> As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click
>> on
>> a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click
>> on
>> the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK,
>> there
>> are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
>> figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns
>> by
>> clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
>> ...
>
> I added in some code so the numeric columns should be sorted correctly.
> The
> date still will not sort correctly if you click on it, but the rows are
> sorted by date when the data loads.
>
>> If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at
>> http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on
>> your
>> own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the
>> source code.
>> ...
>
> It is nice to see that there is some interest in this, I had a few
> requests
> for the source so far and about 50 unique IP addresses have looked at the
> program running.
>
> I meant to mention in the original posting that one of the reasons I
> worked
> on this was to once again demonstrate that VMS does not just mean VT
> terminals. Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
> their system. When the request started going up the management chain
> someone
> above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is
> text
> based and can not be used by a browser .

Very nice. Using WASD we also created the equivalent of the Windows
explore command, allowing full authenicated access to the cluster file
system.

>
> Peter Weaver
> www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
> www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com
>
>



--
PL/I for OpenVMS
www.kednos.com

On May 22, 11:35*pm, "Peter Weaver"
wrote:
> I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It is
> not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example.
> Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe
> someone reading this will take the task on.

I quickly (very quickly) browsed through a Flex reference at the
bookstore today, and didn't spot anything obvious about how to connect
Flex to back-end data. So, what is used to grab data from VMS and
make it available to Flex? You describe sending XML data, but is the
interface SOA or something else?

Hi Peter,

> I added in some code so the numeric columns should be sorted correctly.

I'm curious as to what code you added. I had a quick look at the dashboard
example and the Datagrid, ArrayCollection and Array classes and couldn't see
an easy way of setting the column attribute to numeric when in the
resultHandler of an mx:HTTPService. Is that what you're using, or do you
load one array and then reload that into a second datasource whilst casting
to numeric?

> The
> date still will not sort correctly if you click on it, but the rows are
> sorted by date when the data loads.

Have a look at
http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/inpr...dashboard.html could
help.

> Since the XML file for 4,000 records is
> over 4 MB it may take a while to download.

I re-read this in your original post and have to say I'm impressed! Any idea
of the ratio between data and metadata? Any issues, concerns here?

Does your VMS Flex compiler have the qualifier for production -vs- debug
versions of the SWF? With FlexBuilder I was getting ~50% size reduction with
the production export.

> was testing this using a file with over 4,000 records and it took
> 30 or 40 seconds to load on my LAN.

I'd imagine if the file contained a lot more than 4K records or the user's
selection criteria went a bit skew-whiff then it might be worth while having
some cancel/abort functionality, or maybe start delivering the rows/records
one at a time so that an certain amount of parallelism could be achieved
with the Flex/Javascript enriching the data on the client while the server
pumps out the data? Perhaps a record-count so the user could see what
they're up to? Sound familiar :-)

> Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
> their system. When the request started going up the management chain
someone
> above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is
text
> based and can not be used by a browser .

To be fair to your customer, he does seem to have the facts on his side and
those facts aren't all that historical :-( How many GUIs have you seen
front-ending VMS applications (browser-based *or* stand-alone)? With the
last ten years of VMS middleware development effort going into Bridgeworks,
SOAP/Toolkit, WSIT, AXIS2, gSOAP, a.n.otherSlushFund, there simply hasn't
been the funding for anything worthwhile and most tragically, the
opportunity-cost has been enormous. And yet customers are still screaming
out for someway, anyway to put a GUI on (and/or web-enable) their VMS 3GL
applications :-(

You like the pure Flex/WASD|Apache/Perl|PHY|Python|Ruby strategy, and so
will many others, it's a broad church and I don't see why pluralism can't
play it's part, just as long as VMS is the winner. Once again well done!

Cheers Richard Maher

"Peter Weaver" wrote in message
news:043501c8bda9$d61a2720$2802a8c0@CHARONLAP...
>
>
> >...
> > As far as using the program goes, it should be fairly easy. If you click
> > on
> > a row then the details of that row are shown below. You can also click
on
> > the tops of each column to sort the records based on that column (OK,
> > there
> > are still problems here since it treats every number as text, if anyone
> > figures that bug out then let me know) and you can add or remove columns
> > by
> > clicking on the boxes in the detail area.
> >...
>
> I added in some code so the numeric columns should be sorted correctly.
The
> date still will not sort correctly if you click on it, but the rows are
> sorted by date when the data loads.
>
> > If you want to try it on my system then point your browser at
> > http://www.weaverconsulting.ca/accountng.swf. If you want to try it on
> > your
> > own system or try to make it better then send me an email asking for the
> > source code.
> >...
>
> It is nice to see that there is some interest in this, I had a few
requests
> for the source so far and about 50 unique IP addresses have looked at the
> program running.
>
> I meant to mention in the original posting that one of the reasons I
worked
> on this was to once again demonstrate that VMS does not just mean VT
> terminals. Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
> their system. When the request started going up the management chain
someone
> above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is
text
> based and can not be used by a browser .
>
> Peter Weaver
> www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
> www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com
>
>

Hi Frank,

> You describe sending XML data, but is the
> interface SOA or something else?

There's heaps of Flex stuff on the web! A couple of references: -

http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/index.html
(It's like Javadocs)

The true beauty of Adobe Flex in my eyes is it allows you to specify
whatever datasource you like! Ajax, XML, SOAP, Hard-coded, or populated via
some external source (in my case a Socket. (Flex also has it's own
sockets)). Microsoft's Silverlight on the other hand not only forces you to
use Ajax, but their specific version of Ajax :-(

Cheers Richard Maher

"FrankS" wrote in message
news:f7018598-f1d0-459a-b467-6d9c7c53b5de@y21g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
On May 22, 11:35 pm, "Peter Weaver"
wrote:
> I finally got enough free time to play with my Flex experiment again. It
is
> not fully polished but it is good enough (I hope) to show as an example.
> Maybe someday I will get more time to play with it and polish it, or maybe
> someone reading this will take the task on.

I quickly (very quickly) browsed through a Flex reference at the
bookstore today, and didn't spot anything obvious about how to connect
Flex to back-end data. So, what is used to grab data from VMS and
make it available to Flex? You describe sending XML data, but is the
interface SOA or something else?

Peter Weaver wrote:
> I meant to mention in the original posting that one of the reasons I worked
> on this was to once again demonstrate that VMS does not just mean VT
> terminals. Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
> their system. When the request started going up the management chain someone
> above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is text
> based and can not be used by a browser .

VMS is an excellent web server platform.

It is much worse if they ask to run the browser on VMS ...

Arne

FrankS wrote:
> I quickly (very quickly) browsed through a Flex reference at the
> bookstore today, and didn't spot anything obvious about how to connect
> Flex to back-end data. So, what is used to grab data from VMS and
> make it available to Flex? You describe sending XML data, but is the
> interface SOA or something else?

SOA is not a specific protocol, but a way of organizing your systems.

There are plenty of possibilities.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/art....html#itemA-29

Arne

Peter Weaver wrote:
> the .mxml file was compiled into the .swf using the free flex
> program...

Any reference to that "free flex program" ?

Jan-Erik.

Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Peter Weaver wrote:
>> the .mxml file was compiled into the .swf using the free flex
>> program...
>
> Any reference to that "free flex program" ?

Only Peter can tell what he means, but my guess would be
that he means:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...flex_sdk_3.zip

Arne

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> Peter Weaver wrote:
>>> the .mxml file was compiled into the .swf using the free flex
>>> program...
>>
>> Any reference to that "free flex program" ?
>
> Only Peter can tell what he means, but my guess would be
> that he means:
> http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...flex_sdk_3.zip
>
> Arne

Yes, probably, I also found that after some search.

Another thing...

I think that Peter uses the "secure server" (Apache),
I'm a long time OSU user. Would it work just as well ?

From what I understand, Flex doesn't use any special
featurs in the web-server itself, apart from setting
up an access rule to the EXE file (or using the
default "/cgi-bin/*" (or whatever) rule...).

Jan-Erik.

Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> I think that Peter uses the "secure server" (Apache),
> I'm a long time OSU user. Would it work just as well ?
>
> From what I understand, Flex doesn't use any special
> featurs in the web-server itself, apart from setting
> up an access rule to the EXE file (or using the
> default "/cgi-bin/*" (or whatever) rule...).

I am far from an Adobe/Flash/Flex/AIR expert, but my
understanding is that it is pure client side technology.

You use the tools to produce the code. That code is
served to the browser as a chunk of bytes. The browser
actually runs the code.

If the stuff needs to get dynamic stuff from the server,
then there need to be something on the server. Adobe
sells a Java EE based server side product. But if you
use something HTTP based, then any server side technology:
CGI, PHP, servlet can be used. If plain socket is used,
then it can even talk to a non-web app.

Arne

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> I think that Peter uses the "secure server" (Apache),
>> I'm a long time OSU user. Would it work just as well ?
>>
>> From what I understand, Flex doesn't use any special
>> featurs in the web-server itself, apart from setting
>> up an access rule to the EXE file (or using the
>> default "/cgi-bin/*" (or whatever) rule...).
>
> I am far from an Adobe/Flash/Flex/AIR expert, but my
> understanding is that it is pure client side technology.
>
> You use the tools to produce the code. That code is
> served to the browser as a chunk of bytes. The browser
> actually runs the code.
>
> If the stuff needs to get dynamic stuff from the server,
> then there need to be something on the server. Adobe
> sells a Java EE based server side product. But if you
> use something HTTP based, then any server side technology:
> CGI, PHP, servlet can be used. If plain socket is used,
> then it can even talk to a non-web app.
>
> Arne

OK. Seems to be my picture of it also. Thanks.

Jan-Erik.

> I'm curious as to what code you added. I had a quick look at the dashboard
> example and the Datagrid, ArrayCollection and Array classes and couldn't
> see
>...

I used the code Phil posted on
http://flextricks.wordpress.com/2007...ues-in-a-flex-
datagrid/ then added sortCompareFunction="sortCompareFunc" to every data
column that I wanted to sort numerically.

>...
> I re-read this in your original post and have to say I'm impressed! Any
> idea
> of the ratio between data and metadata? Any issues, concerns here?

The .XML file for 4100 records was 4.77 MB, if I take all the XML code then
the actual data is 1.42 MB. So there is a lot of overhead but using XML was
an easy way for me to get the data without a lot of programming or learning.
This whole thing took about 4 days of work spread over three months with
absolutely no knowledge of Flex at the start. (OK, to be honest I still have
almost no knowledge of Flex, but I can cut/paste examples ).

>
> Does your VMS Flex compiler have the qualifier for production -vs- debug
> versions of the SWF? With FlexBuilder I was getting ~50% size reduction
> with
> the production export.

I think that is an added feature in Flex Builder, but I may be wrong on
that. A quick look at the command line options doesn't show anything about
debug/production compiling.


> > was testing this using a file with over 4,000 records and it took
> > 30 or 40 seconds to load on my LAN.
>
> I'd imagine if the file contained a lot more than 4K records or the user's
> selection criteria went a bit skew-whiff then it might be worth while
> having
> some cancel/abort functionality, or maybe start delivering the
> rows/records
> one at a time so that an certain amount of parallelism could be achieved
> with the Flex/Javascript enriching the data on the client while the server
> pumps out the data? Perhaps a record-count so the user could see what
> they're up to? Sound familiar :-)

Sounds like a nice enhancement, maybe the next time I feel like playing with
this.

> > Recently I was talking to a potential customer about managing
> > their system. When the request started going up the management chain
> someone
> > above said that the plan was to shutdown the VMS system because VMS is
> text
> > based and can not be used by a browser .
>
> To be fair to your customer, he does seem to have the facts on his side
> and
> those facts aren't all that historical :-( How many GUIs have you seen
> front-ending VMS applications (browser-based *or* stand-alone)? With the
> last ten years of VMS middleware development effort going into
> Bridgeworks,
> SOAP/Toolkit, WSIT, AXIS2, gSOAP, a.n.otherSlushFund, there simply hasn't
> been the funding for anything worthwhile and most tragically, the
> opportunity-cost has been enormous. And yet customers are still screaming
> out for someway, anyway to put a GUI on (and/or web-enable) their VMS 3GL
> applications :-(

Right, management keeps complaining that their VMS apps are too old
fashioned, programmers scramble to learn new technology so they can get new
jobs programming PC applications but nobody thinks of applying these new
technologies to their old VMS apps.

> You like the pure Flex/WASD|Apache/Perl|PHY|Python|Ruby strategy, and so
> will many others, it's a broad church and I don't see why pluralism can't
> play it's part, just as long as VMS is the winner. Once again well done!

I also like PHP. I run Ilohamail on my system so I can get to my mail via
the web. I also have a family genealogy file that started life on a Rainbow
using a DECUS program then was migrated to a Windows PC running Family Tree
Maker but now lives on VMS using PHPGEDView so anyone in my extended family
can add/update information via the web. I have another half dozen PHP
packages that I have installed that I got running but then lost interest in.

Peter Weaver
www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com

>...
> Any reference to that "free flex program" ?

You can get the "Flex 3.0 SDK for all Platforms" from the link at the bottom
of http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitle...m?e=flex3email. The page
also has a link to download Flex Builder (which is what Richard used to get
his pie charts on the example he did) but that download is only good for 60
days. I did not bother with the Flex Builder since I know there is no way I
can justify the cost of the full Flex Builder.

Peter Weaver
www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com

>...
> > http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...flex_sdk_3.zip

Looks like the same file as the other link I just sent.

>...
> I think that Peter uses the "secure server" (Apache),
> I'm a long time OSU user. Would it work just as well ?
>
> From what I understand, Flex doesn't use any special
> featurs in the web-server itself, apart from setting
> up an access rule to the EXE file (or using the
> default "/cgi-bin/*" (or whatever) rule...).
>...

AFAIK OSU should work just fine, I just put the .EXE in the Apache cgi-bin
directory and installed the file so it has enough privilege to access
ACCOUNTNG.DAT.

Peter Weaver
www.weaverconsulting.ca www.openvmsvirtualization.com
www.vaxvirtualization.com www.alphavirtualization.com