One of the most common requirements in a modern business application is the need to present users with easily digested summaries of data in list form.  The ability for inquiring minds to quickly and easily drill down into that summarized data to glean specific details where needed is an added bonus.

The tried and true IBM i Query Utility (as accessed via STRQRY or WRKQRY) is mainstay in many IBM i shops.  But it goes without saying that the user interface associated with the configuration and the output of an IBM i Query leaves a bit to be desired. This is particularly true when users must navigate through the query's definition to change selection or sort criteria.

As we prepare for next month's release of Valence 5.1, we thought it'd be both interesting and useful to summarize some of the blog post contents in a single, categorized list.  From customizing the look and feel of the Valence Portal to tips on back-end and front-end development, there's likely to be at least one or two blog posts to pique your interest. Without further ado, here's a categorized breakdown of the more useful blog posts from the past few years: 

With every user action in the browser that results in a call to a Valence instance running on your IBM i Power Server, a wealth of data about the user's session is sent to the integrated Apache Server.  This information can be accessed by your back-end RPG programs to potentially alter how they respond to the front-end. Want to know what URL is on the user's browser page?  Or what type of browser is being used?

The Nitro Query app included with Valence is designed to quickly take large volumes of IBM i data and make it easily accessible to your users in the form of a dashboard or query.

The latest version of Valence 5 (5.0.20170120.0 as of this writing) makes it significantly easier and more convenient to develop Valence apps using Sencha Architect.  Specifically you can now:

In a typical Valence app you have a myriad of front-end UI logic working in tandem with back-end RPG programs that process AJAX calls and perform functions to retrieve or update IBM i data.  Whenever something goes wrong on the front-end, you can typically zero in on the issue by peering into the browser's console.

By far the most popular UI component in the Valence modernization framework is the subfile-on-steroids known as the Ext JS grid.

Sometimes the best way to get a business point across to someone, or get them to look at something at all, is to make it insanely easy for them to get where they need to go with a single click.  The Valence 5 portal makes it possible to do this with just about any app or Nitro Query you've got set up.  Simply construct a special URL and email it!

AutoCode apps generated with Valence 4.2 use Ext JS 4.2 -- the fact that these are the same version numbers iwherever possible it is recommended that you just regenerate the app using the new autocode that comes with valence 5.  However, if you've made enhancements to AutoCode apps generated in Valence 4.2 then regeneration from scratch isn't a very viable option.  

One of the most powerful widgets available in Nitro Query is the Edit Grid.  Traditionally queries are read-only, but with an Edit Grid you can actually allow users to update records in a single-file data source — right from within the query itself!  In some cases you may find you can simply create a query for data entry in lieu of coding an actual app, saving yourself a ton of time and effort.

In order to provide data to more intricate UI elements in Ext JS such as trees or collapsible grids with nested lists, you will often find it necessary for your RPG programs to create JSON strings containing arrays within arrays.

One common trait we see at companies small and large is that users have a seemingly insatiable appetite for queries, dashboards and Excel downloads. Fortunately, the Nitro Query app included with Valence provides a great mechanism for quickly whipping out these kinds of apps without any programming.  

If you missed the show this year, here are some pictures from the Conference and of the Valence team in action.

Educational Sessions

Rob Swanson from CNX gave a few sessions at this event, including:

CNX Announces General Release of Valence 5

When working with dates on IBM i you will often need to deal with null date values of 0001-01-01.  Depending on the display format you’ve chosen, in a Valence UI designed with Ext JS a null date field will be rendered like this: When the user clicks on the date selector trigger here, a calendar pops up based on the year and month specified in the field.

The VVOUT spreadsheet procedures were enhanced in Valence 4.2 to support the generation of Excel spreadsheets in .xlsx format.  You can see a practical example of these procedures in action by clicking on the download button on any of the entities in the Portal Admin app (the corresponding backend RPG code is located in various VVADM*** source members). The procedure for applying styling to cells in these .xlsx-based spreadsheets is a bit different from the old .xls formatting used in prior versions of Valence.  

You already know that installing Valence on IBM i and using it internally within your corporate network is fast and easy.  Your company’s employees should also be able to access your Valence instances through a standard VPN connection when they are located outside of your company’s physical network.  But what about when you need to provide secure access to Valence apps to the outside world directly through the Internet?

Note: This month's tip is an update to a blog post originally made a few years ago, when integrated record locking functionality was first incorporated into the Valence RPG toolkit (in version 3.2.20130912.0).