Day two of the conference again began with a good breakfast in David’s Club and then Bob and Kevin kicked off the formal part of the day with a look at the benefits of deploying OpenInsight applications using Remote Desktop Services. This is a very informative session with lots of notes being taken and the interest in this session was highlighted by three of the attendees taking the microphone and sharing their successes with Citrix and 2x.
We then split into two groups for the first time. The choices being Don Bakke’s (SRP) presentation during which he took an in-depth look at using OpenInsight as a REST API Engine and he explained very clearly what developers really need to know when adopting this technology and the benefits that can be obtained if done properly. The other session option was taken by Dave Hendershot’s presentation on connecting to the web using the O4W API. Both of these were a little too technical for me and i bounced between the rooms to get some photographs.
The technical track remained split as we headed up to the lunch break with Andrew McAuley taking an OpenInsight developers view of getting started with the OpenInsight 10 Alpha that all of the attendees went away with. This was a hugely popular presentation that I really wished that I had sat in on because of the content and because it was pretty much ‘all live’. I guess that I’ll have to tie Andrew down whilst in London for an hour sometime and have him run through his presentation with me.
Up against Andrew was Bryan Shumsky with his usual lively presentation skills taking a look at the OI 10 and O4W User Management changes that are coming. This looked at user authentication in some depth and how OI10 has new functionality to better manage users and how standards, like those set by Stamford, can be implemented into our systems without code.
After lunch, the sessions remained split with Bob Carten taking a look at the OpenInsight Data Source Designer and something that I just knew would go over my head. For that reason, I headed of to listen to Bill Reynaldos talk in which he gave us an update on his progress with the brand new R/BAND Designer and how that is interfacing with the reporting tools for nicely banded reports direct from TCL.
Bryan rounded out the day with another entertaining presentation during which he looked at the O4W Form Designer that is coming in OpenInsight 10. This was one that I was really looking forward to because I’ve done some real O4W development and I felt a little frustrated by the two column approach and the inability to place content where I wanted. There is always going to a compromise on the web using tools like O4W (rather than hard coding and fighting divs) but the new 12 column drag and drop interface is just superb and I can not wait to get into O4W development again using these new tools.
Again, all of the presentations today were a mix of PowerPoint and live use of the tools. Mike had explained at the opening session that Revelation are using OI10 to build OI10 and this is now really showing through some very nice presentations with surprising few issues given that this is early alpha software.
The final evening was spent socialising around the hotel’s formal pool with an amazing BBQ fit to suit anyone’s tastes. The food during this conference has been just brilliant and this was just a wonderful way to round out the fun side of the event. For me, it was a chance to grab a few last photographs before heading up to my room for a few hours of processing and video creation – I’ll know in a few hours whether it was worth the trouble.
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