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XBasic Question...

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    XBasic Question...

    So I'm trying to wrap my head around XBasic...I bought the books, videos, and read a ton on the forum. I think I made myself more confused.

    Everything seems to start by "Dimensioning" something but nowhere have I found a clean clear explanation of what a "dimension" is. Why p? Why c? is that something that there is a list of choices for?

    Another piece that seems to escape me is when/why use XBasic or Java...is there a rule of thumb?

    Thanks
    Joe
    Never take a ride to the edge of your mind unless you've got a ticket back - Jon Oliva - Savatage.

    #2
    Re: XBasic Question...

    This may be helpful if you haven't found it:

    http://wiki.alphasoftware.com/Xbasic+Reference+Title

    We (mostly) use either Xbasic or javascript - not java.

    Xbasic is for server-side efforts. Javascript is executed in a client's browser.
    -Steve
    sigpic

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      #3
      Re: XBasic Question...

      Joe,

      The word "dimension", in the context of XBasic, is the XBasic reserved word that allocates memory for a variable you want to delclare and associates a data type to that variable. The "p" or "c" you are referring to is the data type of the variable you want to declare; "P" is a pointer variable (memory address), "C" is a character data type, "N" stands for numeric. A variable "dimensioned" as type "c" would store alphanumeric characters whereas as one declared as "N" would store numbers. There are other data types as well such as "D" which is a date data type and stores dates.

      XBasic is the server side programming lanauage that Alpha Five uses. It is most similar to Microsoft Visual Basic (either .NET or non .NET). You will use XBasic typically whenever you need to perform any processing that cannot be done on the client, such as database manipulation and lookups, accessing/setting session variables, etc. The programming language used on the client is Javascript and this language runs within your browser. Note that Javascript is not the same as Java. Javascript is a client side programming language that runs in your browser whereas Java is a server side programming language. Javascript is normally used whenever you need to manipulate HTML DOM (document object elements) that are rendered by the browser.

      Note that if you are developing A5 Desktop applications, the only programming language you are using is XBasic and there is no "server" per se involved as the application you develop runs on a client desktop.

      I hope this helps.

      Ed

      Comment


        #4
        Re: XBasic Question...

        Thanks guys...

        Steve...I did not see that link but have gone through a lot of pages on Alphapedia.

        Ed...that clears up a lot. Are P,C,N, and D the only data types? or those are the most commonly used.

        Question...if it is stored in memory could that cause performance issues?

        Joe
        Never take a ride to the edge of your mind unless you've got a ticket back - Jon Oliva - Savatage.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: XBasic Question...

          Joe,

          There are other data types as well. This includes "L" (logical, true/false), "B" (BLOB-binary large object). This link will show you the XBasic data types: http://wiki.alphasoftware.com/Understanding+Data+Types

          Variables consume memory and the more memory that is consumed, the less is available for other XBasic operations/tasks. Certain types of functions that operate on certain data types can be slow such as string manipulation and concatenation but it would take a lot of them and they would need to be fairly large to see issues. Database queries created in XBasic code using A5 recordsets will also consume memory depending on the number of columns in the query and the number of rows as queries are stored in the web server's memory.

          Ed Steckert

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            #6
            Re: XBasic Question...

            I have done a lot with xbasic (mostly using genies) so that I have various operations that run on the "server" side when I am running things from the desk top. I do not understand how, when I move things to web design, to have a grid event (such as submitting a row) trigger the xbasic on the server.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: XBasic Question...

              I do not understand how, when I move things to web design, to have a grid event (such as submitting a row) trigger the xbasic on the server.
              The technique is called Ajax Callback. It allows you to write a client-side action that executes xbasic/SQL code on the server and returns one or more values to the browser. In addition to returning values, the Ajax callback can include javascript functions that fire on the browser when the callback code is finished.
              Steve Wood
              See my profile on IADN

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