I'm going to try and blog here more often, like every couple weeks or something. Things might not be directly ORPUG related, but they will be Progress related. Here are a few things.
Since many people will NOT be going to Exchange in Paris, Progress is looking to have some kind of event here in the US. No official word on if they will, when it will be or what it will be. I will keep you posted.
Progress hired someone to work on Progress.com. He is looking to bring it into the web 2.0 world. He has lots of cool ideas and when some are ready I'll let you know. He has put some photos and video out on Flickr and YouTube. Search for "progresssw".
Our last meeting went really well. I shared my experiences so far in choosing WebSpeed over other web technologies (like PHP), and AJAX. In summary, WebSpeed is less expensive with OE10 than it was with v9 and it's VERY easy since you are programming in the 4GL/ABL with just a few minor changes. If your people don't know the other web technologies, they will have to take time to learn them BEFORE they can actually produce something. With WebSpeed, they can produce something very quickly. AJAX isn't hard. I thought it was very complex and a lot of code. It's not. It uses XMLHttpRequest in Javascript. There are a lot of things you can do, but making your web page load just a part instead of refreshing the entire page is easy. I created a WebSpeed/AJAX example that displays the schema from a database. It lists all the tables alphabetically, click on a table to view the fields, indexes, etc, click on a field to see which tables have that field, click on a table to see that tables details. The AJAX part is clicking the field, it shows the tables by moving down the other fields and not refreshing the page. I realize I didn't create a way to easily go back to the list of tables, and I didn't have time to hide the tables that have that field when you click on the field again. This was more of a proof-of-concept/demo. I think I'll post the code on my website so others can play with it if they want.
I don't have a schedule for the 2009 meetings yet, but our first meeting will probably be the 2nd Thursday in March. When I get the schedule I'll let everyone know.
I want to start charging dues for two reasons.
- I would like to have our meetings in other places. In the past we had them at a McMenamins. People liked that a lot because they could get some food and drink. I'd like to do something like that again, but that requires money. Most places have a minimum charge, like $200. If your group doesn't order $200, you own them the difference. If they order $200 or more you don't owe any extra.
- I'm thinking of people pay to join or their companies pay, they might be a little more likely to show up. If you pay for something, you might want to get your monies worth by showing up. And for a company, their boss might say, "Isn't that ORPUG meeting today? We're paying for it so you're going, right?" I could be wrong. Other PUG's don't charge and say if they did no one would show up. How much? I'm not sure yet, but it won't be that much. First I have to figure out how to keep the books - others have said to do a LLC so I'm going to check into that.
Later!
