One of the more important developer features in Valence’s Nitro App Builder utility is the ability to easily wed back-end RPG business logic with front-end data entry forms in the web browser. This concept is most commonly put to work by adding a Save button to your app, then having its click action call a back-end RPG program to process entry fields in the app’s form widget(s).  But prior to clicking Save, there is another mechanism you can utilize to enhance the user experience, leveraging...Learn More

Traditionally, business systems of all stripes are loaded with all sorts of lists, whether it be in the form of subfiles in the legacy AS400 / i5 / iSeries world, or browser-based grids in the IBM i web world (a la Nitro App Builder in Valence). With so many users relying on the information conveyed through these lists, it’s imperative to make them as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. Seasoned RPG programmers found myriad ways over the years to leverage 5250...Learn More

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a multi-row grid with embedded cell images could be worth… millions! Most users are well-accustomed to the humdrum of spreadsheet-like grids loaded with row upon row of text. In some cases overrides to fonts, text colors or cell background shades can effectively draw attention to abnormal or unique values. But your grid cells need not be confined to mere words and numbers alone! If your grid includes a column that can be...Learn More

As seasoned users and developers on IBM i, many of us cut our teeth on the platform back in its hallowed green-screen days. This was an era dominated by heads-down typing, tabs, field exits and function keys. All conveniently at our fingertips. With that interface ingrained in our history, having to physically remove a hand from our trusty keyboard, reach for a mouse and (gasp!) click on something to trigger an action can sometimes feel like an inefficient annoyance — a tangible...Learn More

CNX is pleased to announce that Valence Version 6.2 is now generally available for download. Released as a Beta at the COMMON Expo in Denver last month, production build 6.2.20230515.0 marks the (gasp!) 19th major version of Valence since the original unveiling of Valence 1.0 at RPG World in Las Vegas way back in 2008. Historically, each new Valence release is jam-packed with multiple new features, and Valence 6.2 is no exception to the tradition!  For Nitro App Builder (NAB), many new visual and functional...Learn More

By far the most popular widget for business apps created with Valence’s Nitro App Builder is the Grid, with multiple options for rendering data cells. From simple display features like text alignment, currency/date renderers and conditional cell colors, to graphical images, formulas and conditional if/then logic using basic JavaScript — just about anything on your IBM i system can be depicted in a user-friendly fashion using a Grid, and numeric values can be easily summarized by simply checking a box....Learn More

An active business will frequently find a use case for building an app in which users add or update data in a table or physical file. Whether it be maintaining something simple like a list of locations, or something more complex involving multiple linked tables, an application to handle this can be built and deployed super fast using the edit grid widget in Nitro App Builder. An edit grid app can be configured so users either maintain the records directly...Learn More

Requests for new business applications often begin with basic lists of data — a perfect use case for a Nitro App Builder grid widget — then grow from there. In some cases a requirement may entail allowing users to click on multiple records in the list, then take an identical action against all the selected records at once. For instance, your marketing department might be seeking a list of active customers, from which a user would select a bunch of...Learn More

As your repository of data sources, widgets and apps created in Nitro App Builder grows, you’re likely to encounter situations where you need to move NAB objects from one instance to another, or even deploy entire NAB apps to another IBM i system or partition altogether. Likewise, you may occasionally have a need to retrieve a prior version of a data source/widget/app in order to “undo” some recent changes. All of these tasks can be achieved with NAB’s built-in import/export...Learn More

In your never-ending quest to make your Nitro App Builder-based apps as user-friendly as possible, reducing the amount of typing and clicking required for users to get to the data they’re seeking can go a long way. If you know your users will be routinely setting a grid filter to, say, a specific date or date range relative to the current date, or a specific department based on where they work, etc., there are many ways to save them the...Learn More

Assembling multiple columns of business data into a grid using Nitro App Builder is so quick and simple that developers can easily overwhelm or even intimidate their users with apps containing huge walls of data. For the most optimal user experience, it’s important to present large lists of information as cleanly and clearly as possible. There are many ways to organize a large volume of grid widget data in an intuitive fashion, such as by activating grouping, incorporating drill-down behaviors,...Learn More

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in business the most fundamental expression of that saying comes in the form of charts and graphs. To that end, Nitro App Builder offers a wealth of configurable chart widgets that can be used to effectively summarize data and trends from any IBM i system. Keep in mind that the principle of “less is more” often applies when showing data in a chart or graph. Placing too...Learn More

This week brought news of an exploitable hack to which certain applications executing Java may be vulnerable. Specifically, any applications using the popular Apache log4j logging tool may, under certain circumstances, be exposed to hackers executing nefarious code on their servers. This includes applications running on IBM i. While Valence does include a version of log4j for logging JDBC connection info when accessing remote databases through Nitro App Builder or the vvOut_execSQLtoJSON RPG Toolkit procedure, the log4j version Valence uses, 1.2.17, predates the exploitable functionality introduced...Learn More