SIRxs in Review aka The Joys of XS Presented at SIR-UK Conference Dublin, Ireland, June 2008 ©Tom Shriver, DataVisor 2008

SIRxs in Review Presented at SIR-UK Conference Dublin, Ireland, June 2008 ©Tom Shriver, DataVisor 2008 Photo Rights Alex Comfort, M.D.

SIRxs in Review The Joy of XS Presented at SIR-UK Conference Dublin, Ireland, June 2008 ©Tom Shriver, DataVisor 2008

Progress of this Presentation First, a Show of Hands: Who’s converted to SIRxs? Lots of new features I/we haven’t tried Please join in with your experience For the Un-Converted: What are you afraid of? Thursday should be a good time to explore details of conversion and potentials of SIRxs

Personal Experience Using for special work since 2005 Import & CSV Save File for long header names Converted First Production database 2007 At DCC / Columbia U. New Databases being developed in SIRxs Slow (methodical) conversions of existing databases 13 Total SIRxs databases 7 New 6 Converted 35 To Go DataVisor Conversion of Generic Products: Occassional Surprises

Long & Special SIR Names At Columbia still Standardizing on 8 char names Controlled Testing on New databases Conversions from other db formats (eg Access, SAS) DataVisor Long names for Output; Short for Database operations DV Products: DVPainter & DVSchema help enforce standardization on 8 char names General Experience Good but not extensive Amazing number of dependencies (eg PQL) in local “utility” programs

String Length New “Default” STRING LENGTH is 32 Sometimes affects existing application definitions Similarly: Treatment of String System Globals SIR2002 global DBNAME padded to 8 characters SIRxs global DBNAME trimmed

Master During our Transition Period Found several “bugs” Mostly regarding new Journaling Capabilities Received several Master Updates December-May Still Awaiting “File Based” Concurrency Manager

Journaling in SIRxs The Change I was most anticipating Later Presentation & Discussion

SIRxs User Environment Settings SIR.INI Now (Windows) stored in \Documents & Settings\... Great improvement for end users viz a viz permissions Additional Settings Sizes of things (eg dialog lists)

Schema in XS Common Var Definitions Automatic I/O Column Assignments RECORD SCHEMA 0 CIR Automatic I/O Column Assignments WRITE SCHEMA by Variable BDI “BLANK as UNDEFINED” Saves a User Defined Missing Value New Date Formatting: “E” for “Exact” on input DATE MYDATE (‘EMMiDDiYYYY’) Standard Vars Encryption

PQL Enhancements (1) As always, many enhancements PQL Output Procedures Standardization of options Long Names & “AS” for output names XML PROCESS CASE with expressions (e.g. COUNT, SAMPLE) Functions Mostly to support new Features SYSTEM(81) hot off the press “Corruption Flag On?” CLIPSET(string_to_copy_to_clipboard) Interactive Debugger PQL Forms Some added functionality

PQL Enhancements (2) PQL Dialogs & Controls Demonstration: Many new Object Types SLIDER, TREE, SPIN, ComboBox, PROGRESS Font & GUI object color control (EDIT, LABEL, LIST, etc) BUTTON with IMAGE rather than text prompt IMAGE: FILL & CENTER Demonstration: Color Coded Fields on Data Screens Multi-Line Prompts in Screen Tabbed Page Navigation

PQL Enhancements (3) WINDOW (MainMenu) PQL SERVER New Look/Feel to some SIR MainMenu Options TIMER Control (hot off the press) ENABLE TIMER n DISABLE TIMER Timer Message ID is -999 No MESSAGE TIMER block (as in PQL dialog) PQL SERVER