Recital

Login Register
Recital 10 introduced the ARRAY( ) functions. This function operates in the same way as the PHP ARRAY( ) function. It can be used to declare a dynamic or associative array and optionally initialize it with elements.
// declare an empty dynamic array
a = array()

// declare a simple dynamic array
a = array("barry", "recital", "boston")
foreach a as value
    echo value
endfor

// declare an associative array
a = array("name" => "barry", "company" => "recital", "location" => "boston")
echo "length of a is " + len(a)
foreach a as key => value
    echo "key=" + key + ", value=" + value
endfor
Published in Blogs
Read more...
Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. This plugin is required in order to use the recital eclipse workspace.
Published in Blogs
Read more...

The Openfiler NAS/SAN Appliance (NSA) is a Storage Management Operating System / NAS Appliance distribution. It is powered by the Linux 2.6 kernel and Open Source applications such as Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target. Openfiler combines these ubiquitous technologies into a small, easy to manage solution fronted by a powerful web-based management interface. Openfiler allows you to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance, using industry-standard hardware, in less than 10 minutes of installation time.

Building upon the popularity of server virtualization technologies such as VMware, Virtual Iron, and Xen, Openfiler can also be deployed as a virtual machine instance or on  a bare metal machine.

This deployment flexibility of Openfiler ensures that storage administrators are able to make the best use of system performance and storage capacity resources when allocating and managing networked storage in a multi-platform environment.

Openfiler is ideally suited for use with High Availability Recital applications as it incorporates:

  • Heartbeat cluster manager
  • drbd disk replication
  • CIFS
  • NFS
  • Software and hardware RAID
  • FTP
  • rsync
  • HTTP/DAV
  • iSCSI
  • LVM2
  • Multiple NIC bonding for High Availability
  • Powerful web-based GUI

 

Published in Blogs
Read more...

In this article Barry Mavin, CEO and Chief Software Architect for Recital, details how to work with Triggers in the Recital Database Server.

Overview

A trigger is a special kind of stored procedure that runs when you modify data in a specified table using one or more of the data modification operations: UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE.

Triggers can query other tables and can include complex SQL statements. They are primarily useful for enforcing complex business rules or requirements. For example, you can control whether to allow a new order to be inserted based on a customer's current account status.

Triggers are also useful for enforcing referential and data integrity.

Triggers can be used with any data source that is handled natively by the Recital Database Engine. This includes Recital, FoxPro, FoxBASE, Clipper, dBase, CISAM, and RMS data,

Creating and Editing Triggers

To create a new Trigger,  right-click the Procedures node in the Databases tree of the Project Explorer and choose Create. To modify an existing Trigger select the Trigger in the Databases Tree in the Project Explorer by double-clicking on it, or select Modify from the context menu. By convertion we recommend that you name your Stored Procedures beginning with "sp_xxx_", user-defined functions with "f_xxx_", and Triggers with "dt_xxx_", where xxx is the name of the table that they are associated with.

Associating Triggers with a Table

Once you have written your Triggers as detailed above you can associate them with the operations performed on a Table by selecting the Table tab.

The Tables tab allows you to select a Trigger procedure by clicking on the small button at the right of the Text field.

Types of Triggers

As can be seen from the Tables tab detailed below, The Recital Database Server handles 6 distinct types of Triggers.

Open Trigger

The Open Trigger is called after is a table is opened but before any operations are performed on it. You can use this trigger to record a log of table usage or provide a programmable means of checing security. If the Trigger procedure returns .F. (false), then the table is not opened. You can use a TRY...CATCH block around the associated command to inform the user.

Close Trigger

The Close Trigger is called just prior to a table being closed. In this trigger you may find it useful to get transaction counts by using the IOSTATS() built-in 4GL function, and record these values in a transaction log.

Update Trigger

The Update Trigger is called prior to a record update operation being performed. You can use this trigger to perform complex application or data specific validation. If the Trigger procedure returns .F. (false), then the record is not updated. You can use inform the user from within the Trigger procedure the reason that the data cannot be updated.

Delete Trigger

The Delete Trigger is called prior to a record delete operation being performed. You can use this trigger to perform complex application or data specific validation such as cross-table lookups e.g. attempting to delete a customer recortd when there are still open orders for that specific customer. If the Trigger procedure returns .F. (false), then the record is not deleted.

Insert Trigger

The Insert Trigger is called prior to a record insert (append) operation being performed. You can use this trigger to perform such tasks as setting up default values of columns within the record. If the Trigger procedure returns .F. (false), then the record is not inserted.

Rollback Trigger

The RollbackTrigger is called prior to a rollback operation being performed from within a form. If the Trigger procedure returns .F. (false), then the record is not rolled back to its original state.

Testing the Trigger

To test run the Trigger, select the Trigger in the Databases Tree in the Project Explorer by double-clicking on it. Once the Database Administrator is displayed, click the Run button to run the Trigger.

Published in Blogs
Read more...

Recital is a dynamic programming language with an integrated high performance database particularly well suited for the development and deployment of high transaction throughput applications.  Recital 10 further enhances Recital with extensive features and functionality to facilitate its use in fault tolerant high availability systems. Much of the development of Recital 10 was concentrated on performance optimizations and cluster aware functionality to provide an application platform that can be scaled as needed without any application changes. 

Key features of Recital 10 include:

  • Cluster aware database engine that works transparently with drbd, heartbeat, glusterfs and samba
  • High degree of fault tolerance with self healing indexes
  • Massive performance improvements 
  • Extensive internals overall and modernization with superior object-oriented capabilities
  • Chronological data versioning with database timelines
  • SmartQuery caching
  • Database Administration Tools
  • Code and Data Profiling
  • Better integration with unix/linux command shell
  • Incorporates a range of new built-in functions compatible with those in the PHP core libraries
  • Built-in support for outputting data in HTML, XML, and JSON format
  • Seamless SQL command integration into the Recital scripting language
  • Much improved Microsoft FoxPRO language compatibility
  • Numerous extensions and improvements (see below for details)
  • Very large file support (2^63)
Published in Blogs
Read more...
There is a good article here this describes agile software development techniques. This is what we have always been doing but it's nice to see it defined formally.

We use this technique ourselves on our development portal.
Published in Blogs
Read more...
Recital 10 introduced the PIPETOSTR() function. This function operates in a similar fashion to the FILETOSTR() function but it can be used to capture the output from externally executed operating system commands. e.g.
// determine how many Recital users are on the system
nusers = pipetostr("ps -ef | grep db.exe | wc -l")
Published in Blogs
Read more...
For Recital to run correctly on 64bit Linux you require the ia32 shared libraries.

The 64bit port of Recital requires these libraries to allow access to 32bit Xbase and C-ISAM data files which are 32bit.

If you do not have these libraries installed you will either get a "can't find db.exe" or an "error loading shared libraries" when trying to run or license Recital.

Installing the ia32 shared libraries

Redhat EL 5 / Centos 5 / Fedora 10

  1. Insert the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary CD, which contains the ia32el package.

  2. After the system has mounted the CD, change to the directory containing the Supplementary packages. For example:

    cd /media/cdrom/Supplementary/

  3. Install the ia32el package:

    rpm -Uvh ia32el-<version>.ia64.rpm

Alternatively: Note you must have the required repo's enabled.
 yum install ia32el

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Published in Blogs
Read more...
And apparently IE9 will support rounded corners.
http://kbala.com/ie-9-supports-corner-radius/
Published in Blogs
Read more...
Hdparm can be used to view or set many hardware characteristics of IDE or SATA drives including optical drives (and even some SCSI drives).  For example, the read-lookahead feature can be enabled or disabled.  Also of interest is that the on board write caching can be disabled.  This may or may not be of use when trying to optimize the writing of data to the drive especially when the operating system and/or file system itself may also perform write caching.

Some options of hdparm are dangerous and are generally listed as such in the man page.

Hdparm is available from SourceForge and there is even a version for Windows.
Published in Blogs
Read more...

Copyright © 2025 Recital Software Inc.

Login

Register

User Registration
or Cancel