In this issue....

It’s time. Synergy/DE 12.0 has arrived
When It Comes to Legacy Systems, It’s Hip to Be Square
Calling all license admins
Tech Article: Test-Driven Development
Synergex Professional Services at your service
Tech Tip
And more

It’s time. Synergy/DE 12.0 has arrived

For the last several months the Synergy development team has been building out the features and functionality for the next version of Synergy/DE, including the not-insignificant task of adding support for Microsoft .NET (in addition to .NET Framework) throughout the product. We are now ready to start sharing some of that work with you.

We are implementing a new release strategy involving two types of releases: long-term support (LTS) releases and feature releases. Synergy 12.0 is a feature release, providing early access to some of the features and enhancements that will be part of the Synergy/DE 12.1 LTS release early next year. You can read about the new release strategy on the Synergex website.

Synergy/DE 12.0 is available for download in the Resource Center now. We also have a new Synergy DBL Integration for Visual Studio (SDI) release available for download now (SDI 2021.09.3450).

When It Comes to Legacy Systems, It’s Hip to Be Square

By William Mooney, President & CEO

I talk to a lot of CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs who feel pressured to replace legacy (aka proven) applications that have served their multibillion-dollar organizations faithfully for 30 or 40 years or more, in a quest for “modernization.”

My advice, more now than ever, is never touch a hot stove, and please don’t burn your house down. Some say it’s a build versus buy question. I say it’s a built versus buy question: those legacy applications are already built and running. Yet I’ve encountered C-level executives who just two months after joining a company have made hasty—turned disastrous—decisions to throw out the old in pursuit of the new. You can put an attractive front end (and please do) on anything, through the use of web services and other modern technologies. But it could take years, perhaps decades, to capture and recast the real-life business logic sitting in that legacy code.

Calling all license admins

We recently held a webinar for Resource Center license admins that provided an overview of key licensing processes and features available within the Synergex Resource Center. We went over how to order products online using the product order form, view and manage licenses from the Licenses section of the Resource Center, and determine which licenses can be moved to REV11 licensing.

If you missed the webinar (or just want a refresher), you can watch it on our YouTube channel.

Watch now

New to the Resource Center?

The Synergex Resource Center has been the go-to place for Synergy developers for years, whether you want to make your voice heard in the Ideas forum or get some help in Answers. It’s the best way to get the most out of your Synergy developer community!

The Resource Center has undergone some big changes lately (like our revamped KnowledgeBase and the updated licensing admin section), so we've put together a series of tutorials to guide you through the updates.

Visit the Resource Center

TECH ARTICLE

Test-Driven Development

By Ryan Britton, Software Engineer in Test

Test-driven development (TDD) is a process wherein you write test cases (usually unit tests) for any features you are going to add before implementing them.

After that you make small, incremental changes to your code and rerun the tests to verify they continue to pass. This is particularly useful when adding new features.

The basic steps to TDD are:
1.   Write a test
2.   Run all tests and see what fails
3.   Write code changes
4.   Run tests
5.   Refactor
6.   Repeat

Known causes of file corruption

Support is often contacted by customers whose problem is ultimately found to be due to a corrupted file, and the natural questions are “What caused my file to become corrupt?” and “What steps can I take to ensure it doesn’t happen again?” While it is not always possible to know the exact reason for file corruption, even when the file is examined in depth by an expert, on Windows and Unix, the first step should always be to use the most recent version of the isutl utility to attempt to resolve the issue. Use isutl -v to detect corruption and isult -r to repair files. (The most current version of isutl [and other DBMS utilities] is available in the DBMS Utilities Downloads area of the Synergex Resource Center. We highly recommend that you always use the latest version available.)

Here are some things that are known to corrupt files:

• Killing a Synergy process in the middle of a store/write/delete operation with Task Manager or an equivalent utility such as kill -9 on Unix

• Rebooting a system or experiencing a crash in the middle of a store/write/delete operation

• Storage system errors

• Copying another version of the .ism (index file) and .is1 (data file) parts of a Synergy ISAM file over an existing ISAM file opened by other programs

Fun Fact

On average, there is only one reply per 12 million spam emails sent.

Industry News & Articles

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