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I currently don't have a license, but I figured I would post some thoughts I had on enhancing the Nitro App Builder.
Before I begin, I want to thank all of you at CNX for your efforts and devotion for making Valence 3.1 happen. I personally think it's a great tool to have at ANY IBM i shop (especially for the cost of the product!). You've gone above and beyond with helping people for free (free beer) and I can foresee this product taking RPG programmers to the next level of providing rich web applications as software solutions.
So here are two ideas I thought about (something tells me you guys are already working on it):
1. editable grid widget (with filtering)
I see that the file editor is "almost" at this point. However, the file editor ONLY allows editing of ALL fields (no field protection). In my case, I'd only want to give the users access to edit non-keyed fields (unless they are adding or deleting records of course). Plus, I'm not seeing a way to limit which users have access to certain views. As it stands, if you create a view in the file maintenance utility, everyone who has access to the utility will have access to all views. I get the hint that this utility was meant more for IT staff to maintain records within Valence (in lieu of using DBU, DFU, WRKDBF etc etc). However, it would be nice to see this utility come out as a widget to add to an app.
2. record maintenance panel widget (with tabs for multiple files)
In some cases, the users will want to maintain a record in a separate panel (not directly inside the grid). Some sets of data span multiple files (I would venture to guess that LOTS of DB data sets span multiple files). It would be nice to have a form panel that contains tabs for each set of data.
Overall, the Nitro App Builder looked incredible! My hat off to CNX for making it happen.
Before I begin, I want to thank all of you at CNX for your efforts and devotion for making Valence 3.1 happen. I personally think it's a great tool to have at ANY IBM i shop (especially for the cost of the product!). You've gone above and beyond with helping people for free (free beer) and I can foresee this product taking RPG programmers to the next level of providing rich web applications as software solutions.
So here are two ideas I thought about (something tells me you guys are already working on it):
1. editable grid widget (with filtering)
I see that the file editor is "almost" at this point. However, the file editor ONLY allows editing of ALL fields (no field protection). In my case, I'd only want to give the users access to edit non-keyed fields (unless they are adding or deleting records of course). Plus, I'm not seeing a way to limit which users have access to certain views. As it stands, if you create a view in the file maintenance utility, everyone who has access to the utility will have access to all views. I get the hint that this utility was meant more for IT staff to maintain records within Valence (in lieu of using DBU, DFU, WRKDBF etc etc). However, it would be nice to see this utility come out as a widget to add to an app.
2. record maintenance panel widget (with tabs for multiple files)
In some cases, the users will want to maintain a record in a separate panel (not directly inside the grid). Some sets of data span multiple files (I would venture to guess that LOTS of DB data sets span multiple files). It would be nice to have a form panel that contains tabs for each set of data.
Overall, the Nitro App Builder looked incredible! My hat off to CNX for making it happen.