Top FAQ's for OpenEdge Architect

Your Exchange sessions on OEA are always interesting, even for those of us already using it, both because your systematic review puts things together into context and because you seem to keep coming up with new things to show off.  I would think, though, that the bigger need was to somehow transfer this knowledge into a form where it was more readily and obviously accessible to a person trying to use OEA.  Only so many people will see an Exchange session and only so many more will think to look for it in response to questions they might have to get started, so the bigger need is for something embedded with OEA itself ... tutorials which will guide people through basic setup and design questions, searchable FAQs for common question, good searchable help with rich interconnections, etc.

tamhas wrote:

Your Exchange sessions on OEA are always interesting, even for those of us already using it, both because your systematic review puts things together into context and because you seem to keep coming up with new things to show off. 

Thank you.

tamhas wrote:

I would think, though, that the bigger need was to somehow transfer this knowledge into a form where it was more readily and obviously accessible to a person trying to use OEA.  Only so many people will see an Exchange session and only so many more will think to look for it in response to questions they might have to get started, so the bigger need is for something embedded with OEA itself ... tutorials which will guide people through basic setup and design questions, searchable FAQs for common question, good searchable help with rich interconnections, etc.

We have been thinking and executing along the same lines you are suggesting. For example:

- We have put out (detailed - I might add) tutorials for getting started with OEA - ones that were presented at Exchange in the past years

- We have been writing various white papers on different topics

- We have started OpenEdge Dev Corner sessions to provide additional information about OpenEdge products including OEA,

- We have started putting out short video's on different features of OEA to help get started and learn more about different features in OEA

- We have added a few and in future will continue to add more cheat sheets on different features - these are available in the product

- Of course, the documentation in OEA provides things like what's new and the features in OEA

If there are other topics you would like me to cover, please me know. Thanks

Sunil.

I know you have a number of resources ... probably been through most of them.  But, mostly these resources are separated from OEA itself.  They need to be searched for and found.  What we seem to see on these forums is people sitting down in front of this new-to-them tool and wondering:

1) How do I map my existing development workflow on to this environment (or should I?)?

2) What does one do with projects and workspaces anyway?

3) How do I get started?

4) What are all the setup options I might want to know about and where are they?

5) What does this mean?

etc.

An answer which is only located by going to PSDN and *maybe* finding a document as a result of a search is too far away.

Good point.

Video's etc... may inflate OEA install size. Does current OEA welcome screen (or one with addtional links and pointers) help address some of these concerns?

Sunil.

I suppose you need to ask a newbie to test the welcome screen ...

Videos might swell install size, but links wouldn't.

sbelgaon schrieb:
Good point.
Video's etc... may inflate OEA install size. 

Every additional minute waiting for a download from the ESD is much better spend than days, weeks, ... fishing in the dark.

How about an additional option (one you can't miss) in the OpenEdge Installer. When selected the download starts. Video's don't need to be in HD!

Or, even a separately downloadable piece of "extended documentation"?

There's a welcome screen?

Whenever I see a video start to download I kill it.  I hate videos.

My #1 FAQ suggestion, that IMHO ought to be front and center for any newbie who happens to be a living fossil (like me) would be "how do I shut off all of these 'helpful' features and get a nice, simple text editor?" so that I can focus on writing code?

• No color-coding.
• No upper casing of syntax.
• No auto-indent.
• No auto-complete.
• No suggestions about what you think I might be typing.
• None of that junk that makes my screen jump around and which distracts me from writing code.

After I shut all that gunk off then I can start to learn what a "project" is and I might stand a chance of learning to use this monster.

My #2 FAQ would be, "Now that I have completely screwed up the ideas of workspace and project with my first efforts how do I copy the useful parts of my code to a new, properly configured workspace and project?"

chuimonster schrieb:
My #1 FAQ suggestion, that IMHO ought to be front and center for any newbie who happens to be a living fossil (like me) would be "how do I shut off all of these 'helpful' features and get a nice, simple text editor?" so that I can focus on writing code?
No color-coding.
No upper casing of syntax.
No auto-indent.
No auto-complete.
No suggestions about what you think I might be typing.
None of that junk that makes my screen jump around and which distracts me from writing code.

Sunil, please don't pay too much attetion to that ! We're not all CHUImonsters.... Life's grey enough, so we like colour and at least a computer doing part of the codign for us once in a while!

My #2 FAQ would be, "Now that I have completely screwed up the ideas of workspace and project with my first efforts how do I copy the useful parts of my code to a new, properly configured workspace and project?"

You probably know this, but (just in case) project code doesn't have to be under the workspace's directory, and a project can appear in multiple workspaces. So if you spectacularly mess things up, you can just delete the entire workspace directory and start again without losing any code (I tend to work this way: my code lives under c:/code and workspaces (ie the definitions of the projects, settings, et al) live under c:/workspaces).

-- peter

No, we aren't all like me.

But we aren't all like you either.

If you're coming to OEA from a character development background it is an extremely frustrating environment.  I have spoken to quite a few people who have tried it and quit in frustration.  IMHO the #1 thing that can be done for these people is to eliminate all of the supposedly "helpful" things that it tries to do for them and just quiet the thing down.  Then, when they are comfortable, they can turn that stuff back on.  In it's default state it is an extremely "noisy" environment.  And if you start it up on a small screen (anything less than 1920x1200) all you get is a teeny tiny window into your code.  Maybe I'm wierd but I happen to think that the code is the most important part of what I opened OEA for and I would usually like to be spending some time working with it.  Not trying to figure out where it disappeared to and why parts of it that I'm not working on keep changing!

A simple way to defang the beast, or easy to find instructions for doing so, would be a big help for beginners.  (As you know, it worked for me!)

Decent printing would be nice too.  (Stop wasting half the page with ridiculous margins, headers, footers and huge fonts.)  Copying code to wordpad so that I can print it is sort of lame.

My #1 FAQ suggestion, that IMHO ought to be front and center for any newbie who happens to be a living fossil (like me) would be "how do I shut off all of these 'helpful' features and get a nice, simple text editor?" so that I can focus on writing code?
No color-coding.
No upper casing of syntax.
No auto-indent.
No auto-complete.
No suggestions about what you think I might be typing.
None of that junk that makes my screen jump around and which distracts me from writing code.

Tom,

i think you posting isn't a joke?

I knows IDE since VB 3.0 until .NET 2008 (C# and VB) and i like it.

I like the first good IDE from Progress, i like everything you don't want to have, i am still missing much in the OEA (10.2A)

Do you know? You can download MS .NET SDK for free and use the editor of your choice.

But if you like a simple text-editor you shouldn't take Architect or any other IDE.

In the OO world you have hundreds of properties and methods for one object.

I like to get suggestions with a short description for every parameter (not avail in OEA until today)

I think you can switch off every comfort but then you are back in 1984.

BTW: Do you still have a green colored monitor and a black/white TV at home?  

Stefan

I never did like green screens -- I went with amber or white whenever possible.  These days I use PuTTY so I have a fairly wide array of color options when I'm in character mode.

It is not a joke.  It is a comment specifically related to making OEA usable for people who have not previously used such things.  I'm sure that there are lots of other living fossils coming from character editor backgrounds who will find my suggestions useful.  It simply does not work to take such a person and drop them unprepared and unsupported into OEA.  If you want them to be successsful you need to take some steps to help them out -- I was lucky in that Mike Fechner had some spare time and a whole lot of patience to indulge me and make me successful.

Defanging the beast was the first necessary step for me to be able to start to use it.  In the spirit of being helpful I've explained what I needed to do in order to become comfortable using OEA.

Now that I have became reasonably comfortable some of those features are re-enabled.  (Some of them, however, will never be to my liking -- upper casing of keywords and OEA's ridiculous ideas regarding indentation for example...)