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Tip of the Month
Traditionally, business systems of all stripes are loaded with all sorts of lists, whether it be in the form of subfiles in the legacy AS400 / i5 / iSeries world, or browser-based grids in the IBM i web world (a la Nitro App Builder in Valence). With so many users relying on the information conveyed...
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In the legendary fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, little Hansel comes up with the novel approach of laying a trail of breadcrumbs to help them find their way back home from unfamiliar territory. You can now do the digital equivalent to this in Nitro App Builder apps — minus the risk of the breadcrumbs being...
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, a multi-row grid with embedded cell images could be worth… millions! Most users are well-accustomed to the humdrum of spreadsheet-like grids loaded with row upon row of text. In some cases overrides to fonts, text colors or cell background shades can effectively draw attention to abnormal or...
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As seasoned users and developers on IBM i, many of us cut our teeth on the platform back in its hallowed green-screen days. This was an era dominated by heads-down typing, tabs, field exits and function keys. All conveniently at our fingertips. With that interface ingrained in our history, having to physically remove a hand...
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It’s tricky to think of every possible data element a user can mess up during, say, order entry. Fortunately there are a number of front-end mechanisms to gently coax users into getting the correct values entered into your various fields before they click the Save button. One such element involves a new configuration on the...
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By far the most popular widget for business apps created with Valence’s Nitro App Builder is the Grid, with multiple options for rendering data cells. From simple display features like text alignment, currency/date renderers and conditional cell colors, to graphical images, formulas and conditional if/then logic using basic JavaScript — just about anything on your...
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Every IBM i system generates spool files in one way or another. From job logs and compile listings to old-school inventory lists and sales reports, spool files can be quite prevalent. Many companies use tools to convert their spool files into PDFs that can be easily emailed or displayed, and Valence is no exception. The...
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An active business will frequently find a use case for building an app in which users add or update data in a table or physical file. Whether it be maintaining something simple like a list of locations, or something more complex involving multiple linked tables, an application to handle this can be built and deployed...
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Requests for new business applications often begin with basic lists of data — a perfect use case for a Nitro App Builder grid widget — then grow from there. In some cases a requirement may entail allowing users to click on multiple records in the list, then take an identical action against all the selected...
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Hard as we may try, it’s almost impossible to guarantee error-free execution of programs after promotion into a live environment. Even with a crack QA team doing in-depth testing beforehand, inevitably some program will eventually do something unexpected in production that requires debugging. And when such a problem happens in a multi-threaded CGI environment like Valence,...
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