Valence 2_0_20090818_0_RC1

[richard.milone]

This is the first "Release Candidate" of Valence 2.0. If you are currently trialing a previous version of Valence, or if you had a previous version on trial that has expired, you may download and install this release candidate of Valence 2.0. Existing Valence customers may also install this new version to begin working with it, which should have no effect on your current Valence installation. For those of you with "live" deployed applications, please do not port them over to this release candidate of Valence 2.0 except for testing purposes. The final Valence 2.0 version will be released by the first week of September with an installation process that will overwrite this release candidate. To download visit http://www.cnxcorp.com/valence/try. This version is encoded to automatically expire on November 30, 2009.

Version: 2_0_20090818_0_RC1

Release Date: 2009-08-18

System Requirements:

• Any hardware running the IBM i operating system V5R3 or higher.
• If at V5R3, then 5722-AC3 Cryptographic Access Provider is also required. V5R4 or higher, Cryptographic Access Prover is not required.
• A personal computer running Windows XP, Windows Vista, MacOSX or Linux (for installation only).
• A compatible browser on client computers. This version of Valence has been extensively tested with Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and Safari 4. Google Chrome is also very likely to work fine, but we do not currently QA test Chrome with Valence.
• If you would like to use the new PDF or Email capabilities of Valence 2.0 then you need 5722JV1 *BASE and option 6, Java Developer Kit 1.4. This is installed on most newer systems by default. After installing this version of Valence, just try to run the PDF and email examples. If they work then you know for certain your system has the correct configuration. Note that even though Java is required, you do not need to know or use Java to develop PDFs or send emails. You will use the Valence RPG Toolkit procedures, but these procedures use certain Java functions behind the scenes.

New Features:

• Enhanced SQL integration – Programmers can now route the results of an SQL statement straight to the browser with one line of code.
• New Valence “AutoCode” module – Helps programmers kick-start the front-end and back-end coding for new applications.
• New Valence RPG Toolkit procedures – Construct and send emails, create elaborate PDF documents and more by using new ILE RPG procedures.
• Improved back-end support – Library list overrides, user swapping and security validation are now virtually transparent to the programmer.
• Valence Portal improvements – Enhanced aesthetics and usability, including new icon support, navigation tree filtering for finding your program option quickly, the ability to automatically log in and launch a program option from url parameters, the ability to launch program options into a configurable popup window instead of a portal tab and the ability to communicate easily between your programs.
• Updated front‐end Ext JS framework – Updated to Ext JS 3.0.0 from 2.2.1, adding numerous front-end widgets and other features.
• New Valence manual - A new Valence manual is available with tons of great information at http://www.cnxcorp.com/downloads/pdf...anual2-0-0.pdf. This is the best place to get started whether you're a new or experience Valence developer.
• New examples - Many new example programs categorized by function.

Migrating from a Previous Release

Valence 2.0 significantly alters the development methodology of Valence programs as well as changes the names of all the Valence RPG Toolkit procedures to be more closely aligned with their function. The benefit of this is that developing applications with Valence 2.0 will be faster and easier, but the downside is that existing applications developed for Valence 1.X will not run under Valence 2.0 without significant changes. In addition, because of the new design there is no automated way to migrate your Valence Portal data from a previous version of Valence to Valence 2.0. The CNX development team will assist licensed Valence customers who are current on maintenance to port their existing Valence applications and Valence Portal data to 2.0 at no charge. At this time our plan is to make all future versions of Valence backward compatible with with your Valence 2.0 applications wherever possible.

Support:

If you need assistance with installing this release please email support@cnxcorp.com.

[Captndjc]

WOW!!! What a change from the earlier versions. This looks great. Even if we do have to retro fix our old development, I'd say this is a winner.

[RPG-Animal]

Man, I'm totally blown away by what you've added to this release. You guys keep up the great work!