We pride ourselves on how quickly you can create an elegant application for editing a physical file, or even multiple joined physical files, in well under an hour in Valence using the Nitro App Builder tool. But what if you’ve got to leave to catch a train in two minutes, and one of your users comes to you with an emergency need to edit the contents in a single physical file? Sure, you could give the user full access to...Learn More

In most cases, grid applications developed with Nitro App Builder have static columns that never need to change. That is, a “Customer Number” column will always hold the customer number or customer ID; a “Product Number” column will always hold the item number or SKU, etc. But in some cases you may have grid columns that, ideally, would have different column headings depending on the type of data being rendered. For example, suppose your company has a file that holds...Learn More

If your company’s ERP system database had its genesis in the 1980s or early 1990s, and it hasn’t “evolved” a whole lot since then, you likely have a number of files where date values are stored inside numeric fields. Whether your dates are parsed into separate year/month/day fields, or held in single YYYYMMDD, CYYMMDD fields, etc., you’re already well aware of the hurdles you must jump over when trying to do otherwise simple things like date arithmetic, filtering, sorting, etc....Learn More

In today’s internet-connected society, just about any kind of information you need to know can be pulled into your system through a web service API. These APIs make it possible to pull public (or private) record sets into your Valence apps from databases that are not necessarily located within the walls of your company’s data center. For instance, you could use the zip code of a customer address to pull in the current weather forecast for that location, which might...Learn More

If you spend enough time handling end user app requests, you’re bound to run into a case where someone wants to see data from a detail level file inside a grid displaying header-level data. For instance, a customer service rep might ask you to integrate a list of line items into a customer orders app that currently only shows header information. Upon hearing such a request, you might respond, “So you want to be able to click on an order row to drill down and see...Learn More

When creating grid apps, it can be tempting to pull in every conceivable column someone in the company might want to see. Consider, for example, the case of a grid of inventory items. You know users in accounting like to see dollars, while warehouse users like to see quantities, people in purchasing like to see dates, etc… Everybody has something special they want to see. While you can certainly leave it to the users to arrange, hide or show columns in the grid apps you create,...Learn More

Since the official Valence 6 release in September, many sites currently using a prior version of Valence face the somewhat daunting task of getting users to change their URLs to the new instance. If you’re not using some sort of an alias or permanent redirect in Apache — meaning the port number for your Valence instance is part of the URL — then you’re looking at potentially hundreds of users needing to update their browser bookmarks to point to a...Learn More

Programs running on IBM i routinely need to retrieve the specific user ID associated with the person executing the code. In traditional interactive 5250 programs, the user ID is often accessed in RPG through the program status data structure, or by making a call to a CL program that uses the RTVJOBA command. These “old school” green screen approaches for obtaining the user ID may need to be tweaked a bit when running within a web environment.   In Valence, the CGI jobs servicing the browser are...Learn More

Imagine going to a buffet and being told you can only choose ONE item for your plate, and if you wanted more you’d first need to take that single-item plate back to your table, consume it, then return for the next item.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could just load up your plate with two, three, four items or more and consume them all at once?   To put that into an IT context, when confronted with a list of filter...Learn More

If you’re creating NAB forms or custom apps that send emails using the VVMAIL service program module, as demonstrated in the “Send Email” utility nested inside the Examples app, you can set up a back-end routine to globally intercept all outbound messages using an exit program. The exit program you create can be used to override the mechanism through which emails are sent, or to store pertinent details in a custom “outbound email log” for auditing purposes.  To set up the exit...Learn More

Even as companies move toward a more paperless workplace, printed documents and paperwork remain an inevitable part of doing business. Whether it be a supplier invoice, a bill of lading, a certificate of quality, a signed contract, a proof-of-delivery or what-have-you, many business transactions are still supplemented with a piece of paper somewhere. For users accustomed to processing the bulk of their clerical duties on a computer, the need to physically place a document into a file cabinet somewhere as part of completing a transaction...Learn More

The coronavirus pandemic and accompanying “social distancing” has created unique business challenges on many fronts.  This is particularly true for companies who weren’t already set up to support large swaths of employees suddenly looking to access their IBM i-based ERP systems from home.   This fundamental change to where users perform their jobs is often not a simple technical task to achieve, particularly when already stretched IT departments need to support the changes en masse.  From security concerns to hardware...Learn More

With the end of the year approaching, most companies find they have a rare opportunity to do some significant system maintenance as users go offline for the holidays.  In addition to, say, upgrading to IBM i OS 7.4, this may also be a good opportunity to rearrange your Valence setup so it’s following a “best practice” configuration.  In a proper setup you can download and test new Valence builds without affecting any of your production or test instances. To clarify, when you downloaded Valence 5.2 or 5.2+ for...Learn More