Our VisionX store is now available for selected customers.
It'll be included in VisionX starting with version 2.0.28 and should work out-of-the-box.

The final UI will look like:

VisionX Solution store

We'll offer free applications, modules and addons but also paid content for customers with a valid license. The first application is our Demo ERP which shows the full power of VisionX because it contains reports, a lot of actions, charts, a tree and will run as desktop, web and native iOS application.

The server-side of the store was developed with standard JVx and the client as well, but the client isn't available without VisionX. It's possible to host your own VisionX store in your own environment, but this feature needs a separate license.

Have fun

With the next VisionX release we'll include the Solution Store. It's exactly what it sounds like and even better.

The Solution Store is a place for Applications, AddOns, Modules and other pluggable components for VisionX. The Store will be hosted in our infrastructure and it will be a Store in the cloud. But it will be possible to run your own store in your own infrastructure. The "cloud store" will be public and has special offers for users which owns a valid VisionX license. We'll use the store to share demo applications and other free stuff. It'll be easier for you to install our demo applications because you'll know where they will be.
The Solution Store is seamless integrated in VisionX and is super easy to use.

A first impression:

VisionX Solution Store

The store itself is a JVx application (backend and frontend) but it's not Open Source.

The big advantage is flexibility for you and your suppliers. Your suppliers will be able to add specific versions of an application without changing your VisionX installation. If you have different AddOns or test applications, simply add it to the store and don't loose anything. If you delete an application, no problem it's still in your own Store.

More...

The Store integration will be available with one of our next nightly builds for a small group of customers.

Since VisionX 2.0 we have a feature that checks "application healthieness". This feature is not important for end-users but could be important for developers. If a developer manually changes source code of an application, it's possible that the application has compile problems after next VisionX update. This could happen if an API was changed or a library was missing. If an application couldn't be updated or has other unexpected errors, you'll get following in VisionX

Application check

If you click on the black sign, you'll see all problems. You can export the list and after all problems were fixed, the application sign will be removed. It's not possible to start an application with such a sign because you could destroy parts or the whole application. It's a quality improvement for VisionX and you.

If you have a lot of work-screens in your application, it's not so easy to find the right screen because VisionX didn't offer search functionality in its open-screen wizard. With upcoming releases, VisionX will have such search functionality:

Screen search

The search fields will be visible if you have more than 5 screens!

Another problem with screens is that you can't search for fields or don't see automatically hidden fields, like ID columns. We have another nice search feature for you:

It will be possible to show hidden fields and also the used column name of your database table. The column names are not visible by default, but will be after you've pressed More...

VisionX 2.0 is ready!

We're happy to announce that VisionX 2.0 will be available in the next days. Our last tests were successful and everything is green
The new VisionX is so amazing. It bundles all our open source frameworks in one tool and shows how application development should be - Fast and simple.

You've never created a multi platform application as fast as with VisionX.

VisionX 2.0 is more than just another RAD tool. It bridges the gap between end users and developers. If you're not a software developer, use VisionX like Excel and if you are a software developer, just use VisionX for all the boring stuff like UI design, Documentation, Help creation, Database design, Project setup, ...

Don't waste valuable time - simply use VisionX.

What's new in VisionX 2.0?

We have an uncountable number of new features, but some are

• Your applications will run in modern browsers - with Html5
• Excel reporting
• XML reporting
• Import your reports (offline data capturing)
• Use your application on mobile devices
• Use your application as Liferay portlets
• Live Preview of your applications as Liferay portlets
• Live Preview as Html5 application and on mobile devices
• Create your own VisionX AddOns
• Integrate Custom controls
• More actions
• Developer documentation
• Form validation support
• Tree support
• Integrate any Vaadin AddOn
• New data wizard with simple and advanced mode
• SOAP interface for importing reports
• Mobile API, Designer API
• Seamless Eclipse IDE integration for your applications
• PostgreSQL as database system
• Integrated pgAdmin
• Application template support
• Screen templates
• Support for the new Security mechanism of Java applications
• Your applications will be based on Open Source Software

The list is not complete because we have about 500 Tickets in VisionX 2.0.

More information will follow in the next weeks.

VisionX 2.0 will have another great new feature. It's fast user switching.

An application created with VisionX is always a multi-user application. It has roles and roles can be assigned to users. You can take care of users and roles in work screens, e.g. set filter conditions or hide components depending of the user or role.

To test your screens with different users, you had to logout and login manually. This was cumbersone and not productive. With VisionX 2.0 it'll be possible to switch the user with two mouse clicks:

Switch user

It's the next step to enhance productivity.

Today we've some great news for you!

Our upcoming Release of VisionX will support jar signing.

Global keys

App keys

Jar signing?

This is a long story, but in short: Since latest JDK 1.7 releases, Oracle introduced a new "security feature". The new feature is available via Java ControlPanel, Security tab. There are different security options like Medium, High, Very high. If you're using default setting (high) it's not possible to start Applets in your Web browser or JNLP applications via Webstart. If you change the default setting to medium, it'll be possible to start applets and JNLP applications but a big warning dialog will appear. This dialog contains a lot of security information and bold red letters. Red is always a bad color for users, because it stands for danger.

This new security feature made it impossible to use VisionX' (Java in Broser) live application preview, because no one changed the default security.

We tried to find some workarounds but didn't find a real solution. The best choice was jar signing support directly via VisionX, but end-user capable.

The bad news: It was hard work

The good news: It's working!

VisionX will contain a self-signed Java certificate per default. No worries, you can add your custom/official certificates!
The default certificate is only for application tests and should never be used for productive applications.

Sign information

It won't be possible to use Applets or JNLP Webstart applications with current and upcoming JREs without signing. So the only chance for VisionX was a self-singed certificate.

Our next release of VisionX will contain support for custom AddOns.

What is an AddOn?

It's like a plugin, module, extension, ...
An AddOn can extend VisionX with custom libraries, custom configuration files, custom templates.
It configures YOUR VisionX.

One example is a custom application template. Create your own application and extend new applications from your own template. Use custom Login screens, custom background images and custom security managers. Everything will be possible with AddOns.

A new screen will be available for AddOn management:

AddOns

The feature already is available in our automatic builds!

We made some smaller changes to VisionX that supports developers in their daily work. The first improvement is that database connection messages will be developer friendly (original message) instead of user-friendly (simple language). It'll be easier to debug VisionX applications because we've added debug information to included Open Source projects like JVx, JVx.vaadin, ...

VisionX enterprise comes with source code of our Open Source projects like JVx and JVx.vaadin. The source code matches the binary versions, used in VisionX, and a developer has exactly the same code to debug problems. It was possible to get the source code from our sourceforge project site, but you didn't know the exact revision.

We've also added VisionX API jar and javadoc archives to enterprise VisionX. That makes it easier to develop modules or AddOns (will be a new feature in upcoming releases).

With VisionX 2.0 it'll be possible to access the embedded database directly with an integrated database editor. We use an existing tool with the name pgAdmin (see developer site). It's a very popular tool, especially for PostgreSql users.

Here's a screenshot of the integration

pgAdmin III

The tool will be available in every application and the menu item will be available in Edit menu.

The tool pgAdmin is open source and was not developed by SIB Visions! It was integrated for better database support and for all database lovers.