At the end of the "new features" week, we'll introduce another great VisionX feature. It's the export of an application as desktop application.

What does desktop application mean?

VisionX usually creates 3-tier database applications. The GUI is separated from the business logic and decoupled from the database. The GUI usually runs on client machines, the business logic on application servers and the database could be on the same machine as the application server or could be a different server machine in your network. If you use our HTML5 launcher, the GUI and business logic will run on the application server. This means that the application seams to be 2-tier (Client/Server), but no worries the applications are always 3-tier.

A desktop application should/could work without an application server because it's overhead for some use-cases. This means that the desktop application contains the GUI and the business logic. It directly uses/connects to the database and you could say that such an application is a 2-tier Client/Server application. A desktop application needs manuall "installation" and manual updates. If you have small departments and/or don't have a lot of infrastructure/servers, a desktop application might fit perfectly.

VisionX?

All applications, created with VisionX, have an ant build file that makes it possible to create war files and do deployments. It's an easy task, for developers, to create a desktop application from the created files. It's enough to define the classpath that contains all libraries, use the right main class and add important start parameters. The steps are the same as for any other Java application.

But our applications have some additional features like an application help. This help can be created with VisionX and it's an online help based on vaadin. The integration of an online help into a desktop application makes the task a little bit tricky.

VisionX does all necessary steps for you and your desktop application will be ready after some seconds. The application is packed into a zip archive that contains an executable jar file (start via double click), a bat file for windows, a sh script for linux/mac and an exe file for windows. The installation is very easy because every modern OS is able to extract zip archives without additional tools.

The next great feature of JVx is the customizable focus order.

The focus order defines the navigation between components via Tabulator or Enter. If you press Tab in an Editor with index 1, the focus will jump to the component (e.g. an Editor) with the next higher index. If you didn't define an index, the default focus order of Java will be used.

We introduced

in IComponent. This makes it possible to easily configure the focus order. We also have support for this new feature in VisionX. It's really helpful:

Set focus order

The designer shows the focus index and it's possible to set the index via customizer.

All our applications have a menu and a toolbar. This is great for backend applications but not always good for web frontends. Our web UIs have a different menubar, styled for web, but it's always visible. If you have simple web forms, you won't use a menu. We did some changes and have new options for applications without menu and toolbar

Some impressions with standard (backend) Desktop application and as (frontend) web application:

Backend application

Frontend application

It's very simple to hide the menu. Simply set an application property via application.xml or directly via launcher - that's it. We changed our web menu and allow access to internal panels and components. It will be possible to hide buttons, change layouts, etc.

It's still possible to create your own, custom, application frame or extend our pre-defined frame. The new feature will be available in the next VisionX update.

We have another useful VisionX feature for you in the queue. It's the support for popup menus. It'll be possible to create and use popup menus for UI components. We had to change JVx to support this feature. It's now easily possible to work with popups because UIComponent got a new method: setPopupMenu(IPopupMenu).

The feature will be easy to use for end-users because it's not rocket science and we re-used existing VisionX concepts. Here's a first screenshot:

Popup menu integration

If you're an Oracle Forms user and think about a different technology for your applications, watch following screen cast. It shows how we use VisionX to migrate FMB (windows) to Java, in seconds. Simply watch 90 seconds and it's done

Another use-case is the integration of a Java screen, directly in your Oracle Forms application. See our solution in action:

The first video shows our record navigion similar to Oracle Forms and of course, we have a solution for Forms' Enter query mode.

Great news for all VisionX users!

The current update release 2.0.121 is available for download. Please check your download area.

The release is more than just an update release. It contains all currently available features. We wrote about some of them:

Repeating frames
IDE integration
QR Codes
Features for developers
Ready made solutions

It contains current JVx, ProjX libraries and source code.

If you miss some features after upgrading, please contact our product support because previous versions provided features without valid license. If the features are already licensed, no worries.

We have a product and feature overview for you.

We have a really cool new feature for you. It's comparable to repeating frames of Oracle Forms. It's more or less a free-form table. Every row is a panel with custom components and every row shows the same components but bound to our DataBook.

A short video will demonstrate how it works:

We use the name ComponentTable for the control. It'll be available in one of the next VisionX nightly builds but will be limited to our OracleForms license option.

We want to tell you some fantastic news from our RnD team: The next big step for VisionX will be an IDE integration feature.

Our team is working very hard to reach the goals. The result will be an Eclipse plugin that connects to VisionX and allows bidirectional communication. We won't embedd VisionX in Eclipse because it makes no sense for us, but we'll use the whole power of the IDE.

What will be supported?

• Event links (Eclipse)

  A click on an event action string will jump to the right method.

  databook.eventValuesChanged().addListener(this, "doValuesChanged");

  The click on doValuesChanged will jump to the method in the work-screen.

• Call links (Eclipse)

  A click on an action/object call will jump to the right method, in the right life-cycle object.

  getConnection().callAction("getLicenseInformation");

  The click on getLicenseInformation will jump to the method in the life-cycle object.

• DataBook links (Eclipse)

  A click on the name of a databook will jump to the storage definition, in the life-cycle object.

  RemoteDataBook rdb = new RemoteDataBook();
  rdb.setDataSource(dataSource);
  rdb.setName("users");
  rdb.open();

  The click on users will jump to the DBStorage definition, in the the life-cycle object.

• Auto completion (Eclipse)

  We'll offer auto completion for table columns, event methods, action/object calls, ...

  databook.getRowDefinition().getColumnDefinition("DESCRIPTION").getDataType().setCellEditor(VisionXUtil.MULTILINE_EDITOR);

  It'll be possible to get a list of all available columns, like DESCRIPTION.

• Column checks (Eclipse)

  We'll check if all column names are valid and will show compiler warnings/errors.

• Jump to Eclipse

  It'll be possible, with VisionX, to jump to the source code of e.g. actions, component definitions or databooks in Eclipse. We'll introduce some new Buttons in VisionX, for that feature.

  

  VisionX E-Plug

• Jump to VisionX

  It'll be possible, with Eclipse, to highlight selected GUI components directly in VisionX.

No worries, we have more features for you!

The IDE integration will be available as optional VisionX module.

We have a new feature for you!

It's an API to generate QR codes. The API is available in ProjX and you can easily create custom Contact, Phone number, Text, E-Mail and Geo Location QR codes.

We've some new actions for QR code generation in VisionX to easily use the new API.

It's a cool new feature and we've a new example application in our Solution store, but be careful because you need VisionX 2.0.85, or newer, for this feature.

Here's a screenshot from the application:

QR code generation

Create your own QR codes in seconds!

This new feature is especially for all Oracle Forms developers

It will be possible to configure existing DB storages and create new storages. The feature will be added to the data area of VisionX:

Storage edit button

The new wizard will show the default SQL statement and it'll be possible to change the statement:

Edit DB storage(s)

This new wizard is not useful for end-users because only developers should change SQL statements. Because of that, it won't be available for all VisionX users - it depends on the license.

The new wizard has some additional features like moving a DB storage from screen-level to session level which is like a global storage. You can create DB storages without creating a RemoteDataBook. Such storages will be available as source for drop-downs in the data edit wizard, like Views or Tables.

The new feature-set will make you happy!