Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Alpha Web App review - documents using XSLT

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Alpha Web App review - documents using XSLT

    This Friday (Noon Pacific time, March 13, 2009) I invite anyone to join a special Friday Webinar. I want to review an Alpha Five web application I have in the works. It's a re-work of an application I built in A5V6, one of the very first Alpha web apps in production.

    "Special" because I want to also show integration with a 3rd party utility that takes XML output from my Alpha application, merges it with a template and creates output in RTF, PDF, and HTML.

    That 3rd party app is called StyleVision from Altova. It is a WYSIWYG document template utility that generates "XSLT" files which I use on my server to generate the final documents from client-generated XML output.

    In addition, I will show how to use WatchDirectory (a file watch program) on my server. This program fires the merge process "off-line" so it will happen sequentially even if dozens of users are merging docs at the same time. It also avoids me having to implement a more rigorous API process where a command-line utility is available.

    I'm no expert in the XSLT world, but I will do my best to show the following:
    • data-entry and basics of my Alpha web application
    • exporting XML from my Alpha application
    • my very flexible XML output model
    • creating the document template in Altova StyleVision
    • writing the XSLT file
    • what's an XSLT, what's an XML Schema, what's an XML
    • setting up the server to create client documents on demand
    • setting up WatchDirectory to fire the command-line "XSLT" process for the merge

    I consider being able to create complex merged documents out of Alpha as the Holy Grail. I've tried for years to create an all-Alpha solution, but this Altova product is a very nice companion and the process is "industry standard".

    TO JOIN: Go to my website a few minutes before (Friday, Noon Pacific) and click Webinars and click JOIN for the appropriate date. There is no advanced sign-up - my webinar software allows 12 max visitors, so I will tape it if more than that show up and want to view.

    Maybe send me an email, or reply here so I have an idea about the numbers.
    Steve Wood
    See my profile on IADN


    #2
    Re: Alpha Web App review - documents using XSLT

    Hi Steve,
    If I can I will be there...a bit up in the air right now as there is no way I can know how long a couple of meetings will take prior to your webinar. Sounds interesting for sure though.
    Mike
    __________________________________________
    It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
    It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
    Henry David Thoreau
    __________________________________________



    Comment

    Working...
    X