19 replies to this topic

[Chris Pepper]

There are a few things that concern me. Hopefully some VIP users can enlighten me on one of these.

The company I work for don't use the ProIV GUI. We moved away many years ago when it really was not a sensible option for complex client side development, so we just use ProIV for the server side (which just means standard reports and updates). As a server side tool ProIV is still pretty good - it covers lots of operating systems & variants and databases and gives acceptable performance - the only thing I'd like is extra workspace.

Perhaps they could do us a ProIV Lite!

Currently the developers can run multiple terminal emulation sessions, with a couple of sessions on the main VMS development environment, another on to a different Unix box looking at any changes for Oracle, a fourth on to another region where I can pull back the code of the actual version a particular client has implemented and a fifth where I can be monitoring a set of ProIV routines pulling back source code from the code management system for the versions on a different customer site. This all runs fine on my conservative spec pc & down a standard 49.2Kbps dial up session.

Does VIP run from the ProIV GUI or is it a separate client? Do I need separate clients to access multiple systems... is it even possible? How many sessions is it feasible to have? How much bandwidth does it need?

Any pointers?

[Rob Donovan]

Hi Chris,

VIP runs in the normal client, its just ProIV code.

However, it also links to Forms Designer that is written in C (I think).

You would have to load up a separate client for each ProIV system.

On my system (Win XP) each ProIV Client uses about 12mb of memory once loading up a function in VIP. I guess there is no 'limit' on the number of clients you can start, and it does not use that much memory per client.

I've found that VIP uses alot more system resources from the server than other development envs. One place I was at thought they would have to upgrade their servers, just to cope with VIP running.

I would not think that it would be feasible to use it over a dialup, since there is alot of data going between the client & the server all the time.

Rob D.

[Rob Donovan]

And FYI....

My ProIV IDE editor...

Is all written in one language, standard & style.

Multiple functions, files etc from different systems can be loaded at once.

It does use slightly more memory, 14mb, and then about 1mb per function loaded. So if you edit multiple functions overall its less.

It loads the function once, in the background, and then no network or server load is used until a save or gen is done. And then, only the changes are saved back, not the whole function.

It works quickly over a dialup..

Rob D.

[Mike Lowcock]

We have just moved from 2.2 to 5.5 of PRO-IV. I have developed over the last 10 years in Pro-Aide. We were just about to abandon PRO-IV completely because of it's lack of GUI functionality.

The GUI functionality is what our end users want. Easy integration with Outlook, Excel etc. When first shown GUI in PRO-IV we said no. It was graphical but it wasn't Windows.

But PRO-IV is moving on. ActiveX is beginning to give PRO-IV the functionality to produce modern GUI based applications. We only devlop for our in house users but software houses out there developing applications to sell alongside VB / Delphi developed applications must surely want a modern look and feel to their applications.

The latest version of VIP has a proper tree structure object on the Structure tab to allow you to navigate around the function. The new logic editor is a big improvment on the current version. There's a pop-up screen showing properties of the object name you are defining when you type in the ".". You can split the screen to see 2 views of the same logic - look at the top while adding code to the bottom.

I have just seen the contents of an Outlook .pst in a PRO-IV paging screen. You can access the inbox, contacts, task lists. It will fire off a standard e-mail screen or you can now program your own. MS Outlook fully integrated into PRO-IV.

I don't think PRO-IV is dead I think it's just coming back to life

I'm 53 and for me VIP is great. It has a recent's list. It remembers what I was doing yesterday, in fact it remebers what I was doing 10 minutes ago which at my age is more a problem .