This website uses cookies for visitor traffic analysis. By using the website, you agree with storing the cookies on your computer.More information

Category: News

Workflow Engine for Oracle Forms

I'm happy to announce that our Workflow Engine will work with Oracle Forms.

The current state is beta but we'll release our Workflow engine in the next days. We found some time to test the integration in Oracle Forms and the result is soo cool. It works like a charm.

So it will be possible to embed our Workflow engine in your oracle Forms. It'll be possible for your users to design custom flows and processes. The engine itself is database driven and will work with your Oracle Forms application.

More details will follow in the next days, but here's a first impression:

Workflow Engine - Oracle Forms

Workflow Engine - Oracle Forms

It's a standard Oracle Forms window/canvas with our Workflow Designer, embedded as Java Bean.

Feel free to ask your questions ;-)

MacOS Swing Look and Feel

We improved the support for standard MacOS LaF in our Swing UI and VisionX. The LaF has a lot of rendering problems. We tried to use another LaF implementation but had other problems. So we decided to keep the standard Java MacOS LaF.

The problems

  • The InternalFrame border problem
  • The field border problem
    Field border problem

    Field border problem

    A simple JTextField has a 5 pixel focus border. This is horrible because the focus is about 2 pixel. The other problem is that a JTextArea wrapped in a JScrollPane doesn't have the 5 pixel border. This makes it hard to create nice looking layouts.

    We fixed this problem:

    Field border without gap

    Field border without gap

    Looks better. One problem is that the JScrollPane doesn't paint the focus if the JTextArea has the focus. This is a LaF problem and we didn't find a workaround for this problem.

  • Application Menubar

    Standard Java appliacations show the menubar in the same frame

    Application menu

    Application menu

    If you set the system property:

    System.setProperty("apple.laf.useScreenMenuBar", "true");
  • the menu will be placed in the menu bar of MacOS:

    macOS Menu

    macOS Menu

    We fixed the problem that setting the menu to null will keep the menu as it was.

  • Comboboxes

    The height of Standard Comboboxes is wrong:

    Combobox wrong

    Combobox wrong

    We fixed the problem as good as possible:

    Combobox fixed

    Combobox fixed

  • VisionX Toolbar height

    The toolbar height was wrong because of layout calculation problems:

    Wrong Toolbar height

    Wrong Toolbar height

    We fixed the problem and the toolbar height is correct:

    Toolbar fixed

    Toolbar fixed

  • VisionX Wizard gaps

    The image gaps in VisionX wizards was not recognized:

    Wrong gaps

    Wrong gaps

    It looks better without gaps:

    No gaps

    No gaps

  • Wrong button rendering

    If you had a button without an image and a button with an image, the height of the button without image was higher than the button with an image. This is a LaF rendering bug:

    Wrong size and font

    Wrong size and font

    The fonts are also different. We didn't know why there has to be such a difference, but we fixed the problem in Swing UI:

    Button with correct size and font

    Button with correct size and font

All changes are available in our nightly JVx builds

VisionX 5.0 will be available this week

The next big update of VisionX will be available by the end of this week.

We have awesome features for you and your applications.

Some impressions:

Web Elements

New Web Elements

New Tutorial Apps

New Tutorial Apps

More Web Settings

More Web Settings

FontAwesome Support

FontAwesome Support

New Web Menubar support

New Web Menubar support

More details will be available in the next days :-)

VisionX CSS Styling feature

The upcoming release of VisionX will support CSS styling. We'll show you a first impression with a short video:

Vaadin AddOn for VisionX

The editor supports autocompletion and syntax highlighting:

VisionX CSS Editor

VisionX CSS Editor

We did integrat the RSyntaxTextArea for this. If you want to know how this works, check the documentation.

Screen Embedding AddOn for VisionX

We have a new AddOn for all VisionX users. It's the Embedding AddOn.

The new AddOn makes it possible to embedd one work-screen into another work-screen. Simply re-use screens in other screens.

Get an impression

Vaadin AddOn for VisionX

The AddOn is commercial and not included in VisionX. Contact our sales team to get more information!

JVx REST interface update

Our generic REST interface of JVx got an update.

The REST services are a powerful feature of JVx and built-in. Usually you would implement your own REST services, but JVx has the concept of lifecycle objects and the powerful action mechanism. It would be ugly to implement another layer on top of JVx just for REST services. This is a framework feature.

We had this powerful feature for a long time and it is still in use for different use-cases:

AngularJS 4 with VisionX and JVx REST services
AngularJS with JVx in action

Our REST interface just works and you are able to create microservices very fast and efficient.

But the interface has a problem with some kind of parameters because they are also generic. Suppose you have the following method:

public IFileHandle createReport(ICondition pFilter, SortDefinition pSort)

The result type (IFileHandle) isn't a problem because JVx will send the bytes in the REST response, but the parameters: pFilter and pSort are specific types and not base types like String, Array, int, float.

It wasn't possible to call such methods without wrapper methods like:

public IFileHandle createReport(String pFilter, String pSort)
{
   return createReport(createCondition(pFilter), createSort(pSort));
}

Still not hard to solve, but parsing the filter and sort definition weren't trivial tasks. In fact, it was annoying.

We now have support for such parameters and much more. It's not super modern but an awesome solution!

Assume you have following code in one of your lifecycle objects:

public DBStorage getAdrData() throws Throwable
{
        DBStorage dbs = (DBStorage)get("adrData");
       
        if (dbs == null)
        {
                dbs = new DBStorage();

                dbs.setDBAccess(getDataSource());
                dbs.setWritebackTable("ADDRESS");
                dbs.open();
               
                put("adrData", dbs);
        }
       
        return dbs;
}

The DBStorage class offers a public method:

public IFileHandle createCSV(String pFileName, String[] pColumnNames, String[] pLabels,
                             ICondition pFilter, SortDefinition pSort) throws Exception

This method creates a CSV report (address data in this example). It has some parameters for the expected filename, optional column names which should be used for the report, optional labels for the column names, the filter condition and sort definition.

To call this method as REST service, simply send a post request with following information:

e.g. URL:

http://localhost/jvx/services/rest/demo/Address/object/adrData/createCSV

(demo is the application name, Address is the lifecycle object name, adrData is the object name)

Body:

["test.rtf", null, null,
 "{j:new LessEquals('NR', 10)}",
 "{j:new SortDefinition(new String[] {'NR', 'STAIR'}, new boolean[] {true, false}}"]);

The body contains Java Code :) (in the JSON string).

W00t?

JVx got support for executing simple Java code. We introduced the new utility class SimpleJavaSource. It's a backport from our commercial product VisionX. The SimpleJavaSource is able to execute the given parameters and creates real Java objects. It doesn't support conditions or loops, so it's really simple - but powerful!

With our new SimpleJavaSource and the support for parameter Code, it'll be possible to call most methods without additional wrapper methods.

The SimpleJavaSource class is now included in JVx and ready to use. It's simple but powerful:

SimpleJavaSource ssj = new SimpleJavaSource();
ssj.addImport("javax.rad.model.condition.*");

String sEqualsCode = "new Equals('ID', 0).or(new Like('NAME', '%john%'))";

ICondition cond = (ICondition)ssj.execute(sEqualsCode);

The new features will be available with our next JVx release and are already available via nightly builds.

JVx with Vaadin 8.1 - Milestone 1

What a great Monday :)
All our Vaadin 7 projects were migrated to Vaadin 8.1 successfully. First snapshots are available and we also have nightly builds for you.

We use the v7 compat layer in our first migration phase because we want a smooth and not an all at-the-same-time migration. Everything works so far and we started the next phase of our migration plan: Cleanup.

We'll replace the v7 compat layer and use v8 features wherever it makes sense and is possible. This will take some time because we expect some hidden problems, but we'll solve the little problems for you :)

VisionX Update Release for 2.4

We have awesome news for you. We'll release the 2nd update of VisionX 2.4 by the end of this week!

The update will come with some new features and many bugfixes. The most important feature is that all open source libraries were updated. You'll have access to new APIs and new feautres of all libraries. VisionX itself got some bugfixes regarding the visual designer. A great new feature is the support for AddOns with access to VisionX. It'll be possible to customize VisionX for your needs.

We also have some new AddOns and Demo Applications e.g. the VaadinAddOn which enables you to create your own vaadin widgetset/theme in seconds.

The 2.4 release of VisionX will be the last version with Vaadin 7 because we already work with Vaadin 8.1 in our development branches.

We'll also change the version number of VisionX with our next release. Instead of 2.5, it'll be 5.0.

Why?

Because VisionX is very mature and the version number 2 doesn't fit. The next release will be a major change because VisionX will contain Vaadin 8.1 and this library requires Java 8, so also our VisionX projects will require Java 8. This isn't a big change, because VisionX itself comes with Java 8. The difference is the project configuration for your IDE.

All planned changes shouldn't be a problem for you, because Java 9 is out and Java 8 is the Java version you should use for your projects. The Java version won't make any difference for our Oracle Forms users because our JVx library will be built with Java 6 - no changes for you.

JVx Vaadin UI and Vaadin 8.1

Our JVx Vaadin UI is based on vaadin 7.7.9 right now. It works great but vaadin moves forward in big steps. The latest 8.1 release contains many new features and bugfixes. Not all fixes were backported to vaadin 7. This is bad but clear for us.

So we should switch to vaadin 8.1?

This isn't an easy task because vaadin 8 has some new APIs and vaadin moved some parts like FontAwesome to new AddOns. The ContextMenu AddOn was compatible up to vaadin 7, but 8 needs the new official ContextMenu AddOn. The data bindings will work with 8 but needs a compatibility layer.

But anyway, we decided to start the migration and will do everything step-by-step. The first task will do the update of all our vaadin projects to Java 8 and vaadin 8.1. The next step will do the integration of v7 compatibility layer and the following tasks will fix all other problems like ContextMenu, FontAwesome, changed APIs. It's a bigger project and we hopefully will be finished by the end of October.

This blog post is a notice for our vaadin UI users!

We'll keep you up to date :)

Vaadin AddOn for VisionX

We have a new AddOn for all VisionX users. It's the Vaadin AddOn.

The new AddOn makes it possible to integrate Vaadin AddOns from the official Vaadin AddOn Directory. It makes the integration super simple because we solved the technical problems. The AddOn does all the hard work for you and after two button clicks, everything is done.

With our new AddOn, we introduced more new VisionX features. In the next update release, it will be possible to create AddOns which have access to VisionX itself. Use the internal DataBooks or the Designer, the WizardManager and all other APIs. It'll be possible to create your own VisionX based on VisionX!

Also new is the automatic restart feature. It's possible to restart VisionX after installing an AddOn or Module with a simple button click. This feature is the base for automatic VisionX updates. Currently, we don't update VisionX automatically, but we think it will be nice for one of the next versions.

Get an impression

Vaadin AddOn for VisionX

The AddOn is commercial and not included in VisionX. Contact our sales team to get more information!