RevMedia

Mr Perry discussed the forthcoming releases, 2.1 and 2.11 in detail. He also indicated directions in which he felt the product would be moving in time. Although timescales were quoted at the conference, they were not given for publication. He discussed current advertising spend in the US (currently $50,000 per week in journals such as PC Week, Data Based Advisor and Infoworld) and spoke with animation of the SQL Server release. Some of the futures seem hopeful given the size of the current development team but the information given below is repeated without critical editorial judgement.

Release 2.1

Query By Example - A beautifully presented version of QBE (remarkably similar to that developed by Paradox) was shown. This started by prompting for the primary data table then displaying all of the columns available for query within a VSPACE window, not dissimilar to that employed in table mode but without the bottom of the box. The user is able to choose the fields to report on by "ticking" (with an ASCII 251), to sort by flagging with an up or down arrow (depending on whether the sort is to be ascending or descending). These operations are accomplished using function keys. Additionally selection criteria may be specified. It is further possible to indicate that a joined table report is required - this presents a popup of alternative tables and the user can flag the columns joining the two tables (ie say which field in one record is the key to the other). Once a join has been chosen the user can then tag the fields in the joined table in a similar way. Once all selections have been made, the F9 key causes the SQL sentence built by this process to be executed.

Printer Drivers - Printer Driver support will be available in new @Variables, and system routines will be modified to be aware of this. Developer applications will now be able to refer to standard places for printer driver information defined by the user. This is a logical step now that all i/o information is stored centrally.

Windows - AREV will be made multi-tasking under Windows 3.0, ie locking will be supported under Windows, thus removing the problems currently experienced with GFEs when running multiple copies of AREV under Windows.

Indexing - The !INDEXING file will be removed and information will be posted directly to the respective bang files. This will eliminate the network contention found with the !INDEXING file currently and hopefully cut down on the amount of GFEs/lost links et al found on large networks.

Miscellaneous - There will be a Banyan Vines Lock Server and Oracle Server bond.

Release 2.11

Navigation Tool - to further aid users/developers, the <HOME> key will display ALL available menu options and permit the user to move to any option without having to work through all of the corresponding menu trees.

Security - This will be addressed more thoroughly although specifics were not mentioned.

Bonding Kit - Will be made available at last and will include the source code to the ASCII bond so that developers may see how a well structured bond ought to be written.

Futures

BACKUP and RESTORE will be implemented enabling users to have data security and developers to move applications around more easily. AREV will be made available with a GUI (EG a proper Windows version). Mr Perry indicated that five people are currently working on this at RevTech although the development is not well advanced yet. AREV will be made into a true "bonding engine". That is, it will be made front and back end independent. The user will be able to choose the front end (be it Windows, Presentation Manager, XWindows et al) and the back end (be it Linear Hash, Oracle, DB2 et al). AREV will be able to accept as well as generate SQL Server requests and will thus become another SQL Server, able to be accessed by other systems in the Open Systems Environment. A visual report writer will be provided similar to Paint but permitting the definition of multi-pass reports so that Cross Tabs, Stats and the like will be available. This will be similar to those implemented in Nomad, Focus et al.

The conference then broke into assorted training sessions for two days with a final third day's training for the remaining delegates. Proceedings are available from Julie Tung at Cogent who may also be able to sell you training materials from the four courses given (Advanced Indexing for Developers, Modifying Filing Systems for Creative Minds, Window Processing for Revelation Wizards and R/BASIC Techniques and Tool Development).