Missed last week’s conference? It’s not too late to register for the Chicago conference June 24-26.

“Go! You won't be disappointed. … Fantastic conference, best ever. The Android stuff was fun. The relational database stuff was cool -- Synergex have always been a very accommodating partner and the way that ancient code still works is fabulous.” - Josh Burnett

“A must attend event, the subject matter is very much 'looking to the future', and if you come away with a third of the inspiration I have, you'll have had a great conference.” - Mark Roke, Ibcos

Attendees at last week’s Synergy DevPartner Conference in Birmingham, UK were wowed by the latest features in Synergy/DE and the possibilities for their applications. Don’t miss this invaluable education opportunity! Join us next week in Chicago for the U.S. Synergy DevPartner Conference. Over three action-packed days you’ll receive a comprehensive education that you can immediately apply to your Synergy applications. You’ll watch informative sessions covering a wide range of topics, and then you’ll get to try out the new features during hands-on workshops. And, you’ll get to watch two customers demonstrate how they have advanced their applications with the latest features in Synergy/DE.

For more details and to register, visit conference.synergex.com.

By Penelope Perkins, Senior Technical Writer

Users who have clamored for a multi-user Repository for years, your wait is over! It’s here! And it’s been here since the release of Synergy/DE version 10, which supports multi-user access of structures, files, templates, formats, and enumerations. Now, one user can edit a template while another edits a structure. Or, multiple users can edit different structures simultaneously. Even if you are the only one who modifies the repository at your company, this new feature still provides benefit because it allows you to run multiple instances of the Repository program and switch between them, editing different definitions in each window. As multiple users add and delete records, definition lists will change. You can quickly refresh the definition lists for structures, files, templates, formats, and enumerations by pressing F5 or selecting List > Refresh from the menu.

With multiple users modifying your repository, it is inevitable that at some point two of them will bump into each other. If you try to edit a record that is locked by another user, you’ll see a “record locked” message and be given the option to view the definition instead. You might also see a “record locked” message when you attempt to save changes to the definition you are editing. If this happens, you will have to either wait for the other user to finish or cancel your changes. These conflicts occur because locking takes place at the record level. When you commit a change, all affected records are locked. This means, for example, that even a minor template modification could lock hundreds of records, because it would also lock any structures that include fields using that template, any child templates associated with it, and so on. (On OpenVMS, you may need to increase your Enqueue quota [Enqlm] to accommodate this.)

A simple conversion will make your version 7, 8, or 9 repository ready for multi-user access in version 10.  When you open a repository and select a definition for editing, you’ll be prompted to convert. In the unlikely case that you are still using a repository from version 6.1 or 6.3, you’ll need to convert it yourself using the rpscnvt utility. You can find detailed instructions on using rpscnvt in the version 10 Repository release notes.

Once a repository has been converted, there’s no going back. A version 10 repository cannot be accessed by pre-version 10 Repository or by other pre-version 10 Synergy/DE programs and tools, such as Composer, Workbench, and the compiler. If you really need to access a converted repository in an older version of Synergy, you can generate it to schema in version 10 and then load the schema into the older version, as long as you have not added any version 10 features, such as new file definition attributes or new field and key types.

For most of you, conflicts with your co-workers—at least when it comes to editing the repository—will be rare. We think you will find that multi-user access in Repository makes your work flow more efficient and that the wait was well worth it. 

Question
On my employer's recommendation, I enabled Windows Firewall on my laptop, so that I have better protection when I'm out of the office. But now I get a "Cannot access network license server" error when I try to run Synergy/DE applications. I disabled the firewall, and everything is fine again. What's going on?

Answer
In version 10, Synergy/DE introduced IP-based licensing, which means the license server uses a port (2380, by default) to communicate with license clients. If there is a firewall (any firewall—including Windows Firewall) between a license server and a license client, there will need to be a firewall exception rule for License Manager. The stand-alone licensing on your laptop is, in effect, serving licenses to itself, which is why you got a licensing error when you turned on Windows Firewall. What you need to do is permit inbound access through the firewall for License Manager (synd.exe).

You can manually create a rule, but if you are on 10.1.1c, you can take advantage of a change we made that creates a Windows Firewall rule for you. The rule is enabled when you configure licenses, so it will be enabled on a new installation or on an upgrade from a previous version of Synergy (because you need new license keys for a major version change), but not when you upgrade to 10.1.1c from an existing version 10 installation. In that case, just go to a command prompt and run the command “lmuelevate” to activate the rule.

To verify the rule was enabled, select Windows Firewall from the Windows Control Panel, select Advanced Settings in the left pane, and then click Inbound Rules to display the list. You should see a rule named “Synergy License Server.” The port is set to “any” so that it will work even if License Manager is on a non-default port.

Note that this new feature to create a rule automatically applies only to Windows Firewall; for other firewalls, you'll have to create the rule manually. Also, if you have Windows Firewall completely locked down, such that all incoming connections, including those in the allowed list, are blocked, License Manager requests will fail.