2009 Annual R:BASE Conference October 17, 18 Monroeville, PA It is my pleasure to once again write the closing remarks for the Annual R: BASE Conference for 2009. I would like to acknowledge the effort that went into making this a successful, lively and informative event: The Memon family; Razzak, Donna and Rafee. Members of the excellent – “if you can R:DREAM it you can R:DO it team” – Aleksy, Alex and John. Co-emcees Bill Downall and Mike Byerley. Jan Johansen and Tom Eldred Project Bundle-Up chairs. Photographers, especially Paul Dewey and son Brock, of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe fame. Before the conference even started Bill Downall and other die-hard golfers had attempted to slog through the course in cold, wet weather. While I don’t know if anybody had beaten their personal best in terms of strokes, it was clear you had to be an avid, dedicated golfer to play in such adverse conditions. I personally, would have been more inclined to be in front of the fireplace at the hotel sipping a drink to warm my innards. Also, the blog at: http://rbasedevcon.blogspot.com contains great photos and a running commentary of the events and demos. Most noticeably the conference name no longer includes the word “developers” as R: BASE Technologies wants to broaden the appeal of the Annual Conference to beyond the developer community. Those who attended the conference might have noticed a conference wide theme. The topics of discussion were: R:BASE V9 eXtreme, R:BASE V9 eXtreme 64, features of R: BASE V9, enhancements of R:BASE V9 eXtreme over the 7.6 and Turbo V8. The presenters showed how R:BASE V9 eXtreme excels as a tool to help implement solutions to solve today’s business challenges. Equally as important, Project Bundle Up took center stage along with R:BASE V9 eXtreme with Jan and Tom not missing any opportunity to separate the attendees from the money in their wallets; sports, politics, cell phones, loud laptops were all fair game for a contribution. There was plenty of information regarding R:BASE V9 eXtreme. Much of the information discussed is contained in the blog. Here are some of my favorites, not necessarily in order: - Enhancements to R:COMPILER V9. RBTI has enabled developers through enhancements to the compiler, to provide a secure distribution for vertical market applications. Forms, reports, labels and external forms can now be embedded inside of the compiler, leaving the four database files containing structure, data and stored procedures. The idea was to make the database files much tougher to reverse engineer. - Enhancements to R: BASE reporting so that within a report EEP, a report can dynamically be canceled. This is useful if the end user did not supply all necessary information. This amounts to a report being a self-contained unit not dependent on external eeps, rmds or cmd files to run. Makes life much simpler for the developer. - Enhancements to R:CHARTS V9. John Minyo did a bang up presentation on the graphing capabilities of R:CHARTS. It is that slick. - R: PDF Form Filler. This plug-in gets my vote for the coolest enhancement, which allows the R: BASE engine to dynamically fill-in standard Adobe PDF forms from the database. - Plug-ins are now embedded within the database executables and a license key will be provided to activate the plug-ins. - Enhanced DB Grid. Additional capabilities to numerous to mention. ‘Nuff said, it will become your favorite weapon within the R:BASE V9 arsenal. Razzak and Rafee also, gave real world presentations of tax property systems running in New York State. We got to see the web portion developed with R: WEB Suite and the client side running with R: BASE V9 eXtreme demonstrated. A very valuable presentation showing the power of R: BASE. The conference memorabilia was top notch with quality shirts, mouse pad, iron on decal, plus some other goodies. However, the best goodie is contained on the 4 gigabyte flash drive. Following the lead set by the last couple of conferences, RBTI uploads conference material to the flash drive. Included in the conference material are fully working beta copies of R: BASE V9 eXtreme 32 and 64. While these copies are set to expire at the end of the year, conference attendees and those who purchase the conference materials, can use and evaluate R:BASE V9 eXtreme. Using the built-in RDCC client, which is more slick stuff, bugs and enhancement requests can be reported and tracked directly to R: BASE support. No Annual Conference would be complete without the Banquet and Awards ceremony. The food was excellent and the catering services were top notch. - Mike Byerley received the Developer of the Year for the 3rd straight year. Congratulations Mike you worked hard to earn it. - Bill Downall received the “Lifetime Achievement Award.” Not to repeat myself, but, congratulations Bill you also have earned the recognition. - Mashahiro Kawata received the “Extra Mile” award. Jan Johansen was the Project Bundle Up auctioneer with Tom lending a helping hand. Jan and Tom did a great job. Frank Taylor, Ken Shapiro, Bill Risano, Tom Eldred, Dawn Hast, Dan Goldberg, Aleksy, Steve Vilella and John Minyo were all winners in this auction. Steve Vilella got the most scrumptious item, which was a seafood dinner including lobster. John Minyo is probably still attempting to figure out how to install the new 500 watt power supply he successfully bid on. The rest of us are (hopefully) enjoying the fine wines we successfully bid on. Total Project Bundle Up contributions by the attendees amounted to approximately $1600 as of this writing. Razzak generously doubles the contribution, so Project Bundle Up will receive about $4800. Some of the attendees went on to the SAT class Monday and Tuesday. There were promises of posting Razzak’s secrets on the blog. Let’s see if the attendees followed through. It promises to be a great ride to the next Annual Conference. Hope to see you there next year. Regards, Ken
