Making Databases Happen

Recent forum postings led us to realise that there's a dearth of OLE reference materials available for the OLE newbie. So we thought we should do something about that.. Feeling hot hot hot...

Helping a client debug some performance issues recently we became aware of the lack of one central resource detailing the logs OpenInsight can generate. Enter the matrix here...

We've recently ran into some obscure issues with osOpen which led to an in-depth dive into how OI handles OS files. Get the details...

On the 40th anniversary of working with Revelation Software it's time for a little introspection. Read the rambling here...

Using the new webviewer control. See how to use it!

Sexy new date time dialog? Don't mind if I do See how to use it!

TCL seems to have been there forever, but what commands are available in OI10 TCL? Discover them here!

Vertical pipes as continuations are useful but watch out for this gotcha! To pipe or not to pipe?

If you've ever wondered what FIXLH actually does, this is for you! When FixLH abends...

You wait months for a blog and then three come along. An exploration of a seriously weird error. 20/20 vision you say?

If you use BTREE indexes on dates make sure that you're aware of this gotcha. 20100 a search oddity...

Tabs within tabs. How using Panels can massively simplify development.Owned...

Authorisation woes in OI 10. You are auth-ful...

Exploring new properties in OI 10. Getting on the Property ladder

Using VERY large index files? Here are some issues to be aware of. Indexing Issues On Large Tables

Have you ever wondered why you run clientsetup and where you ought to run it? If so this little snippet may be of use.Demystifying client setup

We were recently bitten by a very obscure issue with PDISK so took the opportunity to blog to show a simple example of how to use ProcMon for sleuthing.Procmon to the rescue

We're working on an interesting internal project at Sprezz towers that is having a number of interesting spinoffs. The first such is documented herein. Case conversion using DLLs and the new OI 10 UI. Read it and beep...

We recently had great fun extending the system for Martyn at RevSoft. Read all about it here...

We recently realised that QBF in OI is under-documented. Not any more

Our last blog was well received BUT didn't work with Edit Tables. Now it does :).Click here

OI 10 has a plethora of cool features, but this article looks at a worked example of using one of the simplest but most effective.Click here

Featuring possibly one of our best puns in recent history this article tells you how to close OpenInsight before the workstation goes to sleep.To sleep perchance to...

An article to assist tech support people outlining the boot sequence mixed in with a little product history. Boot Sequence for OI

When is a zero not a zero? We found out the hard way...Debugging woes

Want to be able to read from multiple files with the same table name and volume name? We show you how! Open sesame!

A journey into the more obscure side of OI Meta and why we can += some things and not others! Syntactic sugar vs opcodes.

More on UTF-8. Required reading if you're converting an ANSI system to UTF-8. The Magic UTF-8 Check Box.

Moving data from an ANSI environment to a UTF8 environment presents a few obstacles. Our latest blog entry holds your hands through the process.

A departure from style for us. We've teamed up with Martyn at Revelation Software to show the massively increased flexibility of Quick Events in OI X - through a VLog. So click here and enjoy!

With so many new properties to play with, we thought we'd take a look at just those supported by the Window control.

As we continue to play with OI X we're delighted by some of the cute features we're coming across. A case in point is the form designer's use of AMV groups.

OpenInsight X has landed! Officially released yesterday we're pleased to be able to provide a sneak peek!

You wait a year or so for a blog entry and then two come along in one month! Yet again our intrepid developers get bitten by an obscure client self-inflicted issue. The "Execrable" of the title is actually a throw back to a time long ago when the author was in Paris ordering his meal in his best school boy French. Enunciating clearly he placed his order. "Pardon?" replied the server. More slowly and carefully the order was placed again. "Pardon?". Flushed with embarrassment the author tried one more time. The server drew himself up to his full height, surveyed the room and boomed out "I sink it wud be betair eef you ordered in Engleesh your French is so EXECRABLE!" Read on here - Execrable Xlate.

AREV and OI - pretty much the same thing when it comes to debugging isn't it? Well - no - as this most recent blog entry shows.

It has been a very busy 18 months or so at Sprezz Towers so apologies for the lack of blogging. We've just spent a fun time trouble shooting a problem for a US client and thought it'd be interesting to share our experience to show that sometimes you just have to put the legwork in to solve a problem. You can read about our travails here.

Rev have just released some really significant updates to the UD which we talk about here.

The 2016 conference is now sadly just a memory but we recap on Andrew's talk here.

We've been so tied up on new product development (watch this space) that we've forgotten to publish blog entries we've prepared weeks or even months ago. So without further ado we're dropping a slew of blog postings. Enjoy!

What's DWORD?. A neat trick to help you when debugging OLE errors in OI.

We're making changes to our phone systems at Sprezz Towers as it's a very quiet time of the year. If you need us urgently please call 0208 912 1003 rather than our main switchboard. Thank you and Merry Christmas to all.

Using CFG_CTO with AREV32. All current (and some future) options documented.

RevSoft's new website is live and it looks really nice!

Rev 2015 Conference Report.And it's no April Fool!

Sometimes the most obscure issues bite you the hardest!

You wait weeks for a blog then two come along at once! - DEP and UDH!

OI X on Windows 10 - how excited are we?

We've been playing more with AREV32 at client's site and we've made some interesting discoveries about the differences between cataloging in AREV32 versus AREV. We document them here, along with some other handy tips.

In common with the rest of the UK, Sprezz Towers will be closed on Friday and Monday for our long "Bank Holiday" weekend. Emails will be monitored and our US office will be open on Monday but responses may be tardier than normal.

With the world and his wife moving to newer operating systems, the "Not Responding" message in the Caption bar is becoming increasingly intrusive. Our latest blog article provides a few solutions.Mission R/List: Ghost Protocol.

If you've ever needed to work with HTTP headers and OECGI3 and been baffled as to how to go about it we have the perfect article for you! Check out our latest blog.

The OpenInsight Coding Standards document referred to in our last blog entry is now available to download from our Whitepapers page.

Make sure you're not bitten when using @rm delimited property arrays check out our warning blog article now!

Both Technical Bulletins on the structure of non-compiled and compiled OI Window structures are now available for free download as part of the lead up to Sprezz's 25 year anniversary coming up next year!

Konami code installed on home page ;)

We continue to add to our blog - don't forget to check it out!

Fresh back from RevCon 2013 we though we'd blog the experience!

Another exploration of an undocumented feature that may be of use if you have a dynamic application. Check out our blog entry here

We've been trouble-shooting some weird errors recently. We've blogged about it here

We're pleased to announce that we have a new version of S/List that tackles speed issues head on. We've blogged about it here

Recently a question was posted on the Rev fora asking about the new feature RTI_DIFF. In the absence of documentation for it we thought we'd document it here

We've been developing in O4W lately and we've come across a few wrinkles. We've documented them here

And as a follow on from the last blog on Popups - another on how to add your own program callbacks into a popup. Check it out here

Far be it from us to blow our own trumpet but we've just published a blog article that squares the circle in popup programming terms. Check it out here

We've just published a bunch more of the missing SENLs to our Library so feel free to browse. Coming before Xmas a new blog entry that will answer several people's prayers about the use of POPUP

Conference seems like weeks away now but what a great event it was. For those of you who weren't able to get there why not come along to the EMEA RUG & O4W days?. You'll get to see Mike Ruane of Revelation show some of the new features of 9.3 - and there are tonnes! You'll also get to see Andrew McAuley of Sprezzatura revisit his Vegas presentation on tips for sexing up your User Interface. On day two you can learn some practical O4W skills in a deeply discounted training day. We hope to see you there!

For this summer in addition to our East Coast presence Sprezzatura has expanded with a presence on the West Coast of North America until after conference - so if you've been thinking about getting some consultancy help there has never been a better time. Contact Martyn Phillips for details of our special late summer rates!

Yay! A new blog to follow.... Dave Harmacek of HDS has started his blog at http://harmacek.com/?page_id=20 - was it really 25 years ago that we wrote to Ira and Dave with our tip on how to tell if a printer was offline from Rev E?

With plans for the next Rev conference well under way our thoughts turn to suitable subjects for presentations. Internally we've got more ideas than slots but if you've got a subject you'd like to see given the Sprezz touch then let us know and we'll include your idea in our internal discussions. We're not guaranteeing anything but nothing ventured nothing gained!

We're pleased to announce the release of version 1.2.1 of S/SMTP, our freeware SMTP client for OpenInsight, which you can find here. This version fixes a bug when connecting to a mail server over SSL.

More details on S/SMTP can be found in this blog post.

We're very pleased to announce that from September 7th Aaron Kaplan will be working back out of our Philadelphia office. This means that we'll be able to provide more localised support to our US clients.

OpenInsight 9.2 released! The latest version of OpenInsight is now available for download from the WORKS area of the Revelation Website.

Revelation have announced their one day EMEA RUG meeting to take place on the 13th July 2010. Mike Ruane will be presenting just some of the features packed into the next release of OpenInsight 9.2

In addition if you weren't able to get to Vegas you'll be able to see Sprezzatura's very own Carl Pates revisiting his Vegas presentation on using the Web Browser control from within OpenInsight. If you want an easy way of vamping up your user interface then you can't afford to miss this. We look forward to seeing you there. You can register at Revelation's web site.

Following on from the success of O4W at conference Revelation have indicated that O4W can now be used with earlier browsers than previously thought - thus opening the market to a lot more users. These browsers include Firefox 2 and IE 6. For more details see here..

May the 4th be with you. The conference is over for another year and it went very well. For a few of the highlights checkout our blog.

Martyn at RevSoft strikes again - this time with a cool iPhone/iTouch/Smartphone app for Rev Users to keep up to date with all the news that counts. Check out his video explaining it here.

Not long now until RevCon 2010. Sprezz will be there with two presentations - one on troubleshooting OI using a multiplicity of logs and one on advanced UI techniques. More to follow

Sprezzatura will be closed on Friday 25th December, Monday 28th December and Friday January 1st. Between these dates we will be open as normal but with a skeleton staff so for prompt response please use email in prefence to phone

WARNING! The European RUG meeting on the 27th October is nearly over subscribed. If you want to attend then register here

Revelation have announced the release of a patch to OI 9.x to correct errors with Quickdexes and Rightdexes whereby duplicate keys are returned. If you're in the Works program you can get the update here. If you're not contact your reseller

Revelation have announced that during the forthcoming visit of Mike Ruane, the American CEO, there will be a special roundtable exclusively for European developers who are affected by I18N issues. During the day Revelation will seek your input on I18N issues with a view to making the next release the most compliant yet. If you'd be interested in attending then drop Revelation a mail at this address

We're pleased to announce the release of version 1.1 of S/Encrypt, which now includes CBC block cipher mode support. S/Encrypt provides the following encryption and cryptographic hashing schemes:

• Blowfish
• DES
• Triple DES
• AES
• RSA
• MD5
• SHA-1

Contact us for more details.

SRP have announced the release of SRP Utilities 1.2. It includes three new methods designed to make life easier for the OpenInsight developer: SRP_Com, SRP_Extract_Xml, and SRP_Save_Screenshot. For more details see here

OpenInsight 9.1 released! The latest version of OpenInsight is now available for download from the WORKS area of the Revelation Website.

Monday the 31st of August is a Public Holiday in the UK (what we call a "Bank Holiday") so the offices will be shut all day. Clients with Support Level Agreements including Public Holidays will already have their out of hours contact details. If for any reason you have not yet received them then please contact info@sprezzatura.com

We've uploaded a number of earlier SENLs. We know there are issues with formatting on some of them and are addressing them but if you come across any errors do feel free to let us know.

We're pleased to announce a new release of our free SMTP Client for OI. For details see our blog.

Revelation have announced that version 9.1 of OpenInsight will be made available on 9.1 - or the 9th of January as we Europeans say. Oh wait, they probably mean the 1st of September... ;)

Revelation have announced that the Revelation Conference will be returning to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference dates are Tuesday, April 27th - Friday, April 30th, 2010. Details here. Plenty of time to save up so we hope to see you there!

Revelation have announced that the Universal Driver 4.6 has been released. Click here for more details.

Revelation have announced that OpenInsight 9.1 is now in Beta. Yes we said 9.1, not 9.01 as previously mentioned - with over 4000 changes and some major enhancements to the product Reveletion felt that a .01 increment just didn't do the release justice!

Sprezzatura are pleased to announce the relaunch of their web site. We've been so busy on web work for other clients that we've neglected our own site - something about cobbler's children and shoes springs to mind. The new site design is intended to be a work in progress, being added to as we progress. This is especially the case with some of the technical reference materials. If there's anything you're particularly missing from the old site then drop us a line and we'll see what we can do about accelerating the conversion.

One feature we're particularly happy with is the inclusion of a blog - this is designed to take the place of our SENL journal - more about that in the blog!

Sprezzatura are pleased to announced the release of version 1.1.4 of S/SMTP our freeware mailing client. This new version includes several HTML enhancements to better support embedded images. If you'd like a copy just drop us a line.

Sees the release of OpenInsight 9.01, a small increment for such a large feature set. There are too many features to enumerate here but our favourites include code templates in the Editor++ and a number of EditTable enhancements. But by far and away our favourite feature is the ability to include graphics and textual separators in menus!

Looks like being the date of the next Revelation User Conference - once again back at the Rio Suites in Las Vegas. With so much notice you've got plenty of time to start pestering your budget holders for permission to be there! We look forward to seeing you at the show.

ch notice you've got plenty of time to start pestering your budget holders for permission to be there! We look forward to seeing you at the show.