Bruce Barrington - Clarion's Bright Future

by Tom Moseley

Published 1997-09-01    Printer-friendly version

Bruce Barrington had everyone in the Commodore West room of the Radisson on the edge of their seat today as he showed his vision for the future of Clarion. As always, his talk was informal and Bruce was delightfully entertaining. The vision he showed us...

Automating the Art of Programming

That really sums it up. Bruce told us how automation can be acheived through abstraction, and how the pieces (or models) that comprise projects give Clarion developers that abstraction. Now, this abstraction is nothing new. The "Data Model" is the Clarion Data Dictionary, but Bruce examined how that model, along with the Application Model (App File), Procedure Model (Template), and Component Model (Control Template) work together to aid in automating the art of programming. Like I said, nothing really new here, but the fact that TopSpeed is recognizing the importance of these models and approaching them in these terms is refreshing and bodes well for future development of the system.

Internet Connect

Clarion's Internet Connect (which the rumor mill says might be renamed before shipping) is a way for Clarion developers to do easy web publishing of database applications. It's not useful for wholesale HTML management (like of Clarion Online), but if you want to give your users the ability to use your data from the web, TopSpeed claims this is it.

Bruce told us that the Internet Connect extension templates (another bit of abstraction) add DDE "receptors" to the procedures in your application. These receptors intercept calls from the Application Broker, and send out code that the client's web browser uses to construct an appropriate interface. Since internet browsers don't have all of the controls available in their forms technology, Internet Connect comes with a few dozen controls, installed as Java classes, that represent the gamut of Clarion controls.

Bruce likened an application running through Internet Connect to a thin-client application, similar to X-Windows, with the client software called a "terminal". He wants us to think of the Java classes as an application terminal, and the application itself as an application server. The compressed size of the application terminal is 100K.

Clarion 4

This is what everyone was waiting for, and Bruce's view of the product was well received. Some of the more important and well received bits of news and features in Clarion 4 include

• Clarion 4 is code (nearly) complete, and this version (beta 2) was given out to DevCon attendees
• The new Application Builder Classes generate code that's 75% smaller than 2003 template code
• The Procedure Wide Embed Editor (PWEE) is now called the embeditor
• The Application Converter has been designed to help speed 2003 to Clarion 4 transitions
• Local Derived Methods have been added, so that the methods for an object instantiated in a procedure share the procedure's scope
• The EXECUTE statement now has an ELSE section
• You can declare data in a routine. This has the unfortunate effect of making "Code" a reserved word, which is bad news for legacy data with a lot of "Code" fields.
• The accelerated ODBC driver, with unlimited usage, is going to bundled with Clarion 4
• The Enterprise Edition (scheduled to go gold in December) will now include unlimited licenses of the MS SQL and SQL anywhere drivers.
• TopScan, TopMatch, and TopFix give you "Scanner", "Filer", and a repair facility for TopSpeed files.

Clarion 5

While Clarion 5 is still on the drawing board, here is some of the wishful thinking that Bruce shared with us...

• An optimizing 32-bit compiler that creates standard Microsoft objects
• Dot property syntax for control manipulation
• Entity inheritance, so windows, reports, and other structures can inherit the contents of other structures. Bruce's example was that all reports can inherit a common report header.
• The IDE will be 32-bit, with non-modal applications, new window and report formatters (Yes!) and property inspectors instead of, or maybe in addition to, the tabbed property dialogs in Clarion for Windows.

Reinventing TopSpeed and Clarion

It's no surprise to anyone that TopSpeed hasn't been advertising (or marketing) Clarion for a while. Apparently, that's about to change, and that isn't all. TopSpeed has hired a new marketing company, so you can expect to see changes in the Product Name, graphic theme, and the logo. This last announcement was met with a great deal of applause as Bruce announced "The  foot is gone!"

The new marketing plan includes active Public Relations, Advertising, Trade Shows and Road Shows.

Summary

Bruce showed us a great deal of new and exciting possibilities. It seems as if the future for Clarion developer's is bright and exciting.

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942