5. Omnis News
6. Training/Education
7. From Our Partners

Raining Data News
For all of our latest news announcements, please visit the Press Releases page of our Web site.

Raining Data’s Corporate Headquarters is Moving to a New Location.

Raining Data is proud to announce that effective the business day of Friday, November 4, 2005, we will be relocating our corporate headquarters to a beautiful new building at 25a Technology Drive, Irvine, California.

Our Customer Service phone line for phone-in technical support and technician-assisted activations will remain as 949-261-1875. Web activations will be temporarily unavailable from 5:00pm Friday, November 4 through Saturday, 8:00am November 5, 2005.

Raining Data’s main phone line, 949-442-4400, will be available for voice mail and existing company-wide e-mail addresses remain the same. We will promptly address any business, sales, and technical support issues that arise. We apologize for any delays in services you may experience during our move. All Web, telephone, and fax services will be completely established by Monday, November 7, 2005.

We are eager to settle into new offices and look forward to continued business relations with our customers from our new location.

Did you know? A Pick Users Group folder has been added to the Raining Data FTP site which contains downloadable handout materials from previous group meetings.

See us at Spectrum Multivalue Conferences
International Spectrum's Regional events will feature numerous sessions on technical education and new software tools including presentations and exhibition of Raining Data's latest technology. You'll have the opportunity to see us and meet with us on the following dates: October 19-20, 2005 - Holiday Inn Seattle Seatac Airport, Seattle, WA; November 2005 - New Jersey. For further details about these events, please visit International Spectrum at www.intl-spectrum.com.

Omnis Studio 4.1 at Systems 2005
The Systems Fair is one of the leading IT fairs in Europe catering exclusively to the Trade IT and Telecommunication industry. The show takes place October 24 – 28, 2005 in Munich, Germany. Raining Data Germany will be showing demonstrations of the upcoming releases of Omnis Studio 4.1 and version 2 of Omnis Studio for SAP solutions.

New Partners! We wish to welcome the following new Raining Data business partners:

Emmaco, Inc. of New Jersey has established a VAR relationship with Raining Data to resell their newly developed debt collection application on D³. To find out more about Emmaco and their application, please contact Emmaco by calling 973-753-9500.

Highroad Information Technology (HIT), founded by Mark Pick, Mike Parra and Erik Swenson, brings together 40 years of combined experience in the technology, computer and consulting fields. In their partnership agreement with Raining Data as an authorized reseller, HIT provides advanced technical support and services for Raining Data databases running on Microsoft Windows, Linux and AIX operating systems. For more information, please visit www.highroadit.com, or call 949-417-5734.

With a professional staff of experienced Pick veterans and Web and Windows application developers, Sierra Bravo Corporation located in Bloomington, Minnesota, has extensive background with the D³ environment and Web integration. Founders Luke Bucklin, Mike Schmidt and Mike Derheim leverage Raining Data’s development technologies to make the most out of your business application requirements. For more information about Sierra Bravo, please visit www.sierra-bravo.com, or call 952-948-1211.

What's Happening in Your Part of Town?
Raining Data wants to help you get the word out on your success stories, unique implementations, or newsworthy items. Tell us how you've utilized Raining Data products to deliver solutions that are helping achieve either your own or a client's business objectives, or share an unusual Raining Data client site that you've come across. We'll include items (on a space-available, first-come, first-serve basis) in our newsletter. Inquiries should be sent to Marketing. Don't miss out!

Discussion Forums Available
Raining Data's Discussion Forums, delineated by product category, offer a complementary option for you to discuss technical issues, circulate development ideas or raise technical questions for any of Raining Data’s products. Technical Announcements can also be found on these forum pages. For more details and registration information, please visit: http://forums.rainingdata.com.

FTP site
Access to our FTP site allows you to download files and documents or upload information that you wish to share with the Pick database community. Please contact Raining Data’s Customer Support department if you require assistance.

Support Partner Sign Up
The Support Partner Web page is available to all authorized Raining Data Resellers and offers a Web accessible interface to place, monitor and update your support calls from anywhere you have Internet access. End User sites with a direct-access Software Maintenance Agreement (SMA) are also eligible. For more information, please visit our Support Partner Web page.

Tech Tip #1 - File-of-Files Items

Tech Tip #2 - Copying - Pasting D³ Files and Accounts using Windows

Q & A on D³ Linux

Q: How do you suppress logging 'clear-file' history in the file-of-files?"
A: Refer to the File-of-Files Items tech tip.

Q: "Why does performance slow down over time?"
A: 1.) If performance slows down over a period of time, especially Pick BASIC programs, check to see if you are logging to the RUNTIME-ERRORS file. The 'runtime-errors' file, if it exists, logs BASIC runtime errors - the 'non-numeric and variable has not been assigned a value' type messages. 2.) Raining Data has seen a scenario where all of the errors being generated are getting logged to one runtime errors file. It is the file size (modulo) of the runtime-errors file which responsible for slowing you down.

Meet the People - Greg Thompson

Important Marketing Bulletin announcements for Raining Data Resellers
Two new Marketing Bulletins were released over the past months. If you have not received these important reseller bulletins or if you need further assistance, please contact your Raining Data sales representative or e-mail Sales. We don't want you to miss any notifications, so please be sure we have your correct e-mail address and of others within your organization that should be receiving these announcements.

July 7, 2005 – Marketing Bulletin RDCMB200502
End-of-Life Announcement for Older Database Product Platforms
This Marketing Bulletin served to provide notification of our decision to end-of-life certain versions of our database products, effective August 31, 2005, and a special re-hosting offer for these newly announced end-of-life products. In addition, we announced a change in our purchase policy for Power95 databases effective August 1, 2005.

March 1, 2005 – Marketing Bulletin RDCMB200501
New Omnis 7 Deployment License Upgrade Policy
This Marketing Bulletin announced the reduction in cost to upgrade Omnis 7 deployment licenses to Omnis Studio technology for Omnis 7 developer partners currently in the Omnis Developer Partner Program (ODPP).

New Product Status Sheets Online
Raining Data maintains a product life cycle status for its products. The product status influences several factors including the purchase price, availability of support options, new system purchase and license add-ons, and the degree to which engineering maintenance services such as patches, updates and upgrades will be made available. The current status of each of Raining Data’s core products (Current, Retired or End-of-Life releases and platforms) can be found on our Web site at: http://www.rainingdata.com/products/statussheet/index.html.

Latest Product Releases
By delivering updates to our product suite, Raining Data preserves your existing investment and skill sets, and adds value to your solutions. As we continue to build solid software products required to effectively run your transaction-based applications, your applications become easier to integrate and interoperate with emerging GUI and Web technologies. Partners and end-users will benefit from the major enhancements in functionality and open connectivity that we’ve been hard at work developing into our software. With more on the way, check out the latest released versions of our products below. Contact your local Sales representative if you wish to update or purchase new licenses.

August 1, 2005 – Pick Data Provider for .NET 3.0 Product Release Announcement
Pick Data Provider for .NET 3.0 provides a key feature by including ADO.NET fully embedded in the development and deployment options. This implementation is consistent with the specifications delineated by Microsoft’s ADO.NET interface. As a result, the ability to build transactional-based applications reliant on effective Pick data management event handling can be easily achieved through Visual Studio .NET. Developers unfamiliar with the Pick database can utilize consistent queries, data retrieval, and transactional update of Pick data files via standard Microsoft ADO.NET data access.

July 25, 2005 – Omnis Studio 4.1 Upcoming Release
Omnis Studio, version 4.1 is scheduled for general availability Fall 2005. Omnis Studio 4.1 will introduce many new features, enhancements and a small number of fixes included in two different versions of the product, increasing the integration, productivity, and flexibility of the Studio product range. Read more…

April 11, 2005 – Omnis Studio 4.0.3 Product Release Announcement
This current version includes a small number of enhancements and fixes and we recommend that all customers using Studio 4.x update both their development version and their runtime versions to the new Studio 4.0.3 Patch release, especially for customers using Web Client and multi-threading. Studio 4.0.3 contains all fixes including the Studio 4.0.2 Patch release. Therefore, if you are updating from Studio 4.0.1 you only need to apply this patch. Existing 4.x serial numbers are still valid. Read more…

March 24, 2005 – mvDesigner 3.0 Product Release Announcement
mvDesigner 3.0 delivers significant improvements in open connectivity, and the new features and functionality take advantage of the powerful Omnis Studio 4.0 object-oriented rapid application development environment for faster, more efficient creation of Enterprise and Web solutions, and increased developer and user productivity. Read more…

Studio Tech Tip
Did you know? When defining a list using list.$define(param1,param2,...) you can specify up to 255 parameters, that is, you can define a list with up to 255 columns using this method. Using parameter 256 will reset the list definition back to zero columns and any further parameters will restart from column 1. However, it is possible to define a list that has up to a maximum of 400 columns using the $add() method against the $cols group of the list to define each column in turn. The $add() method is specified as follows:

Do list.$cols.$add(columnname, Data_Type,Data_SubType, Data_ SubLength)

For more Omnis Tech notes, visit: http://www.omnis.net/develop/resources/notes/technotes.html.

For the latest in other Omnis News and Events please visit: www.omnis.net/news.

Keep up with the latest Omnis Technical News.
Sign up for the Omnis Technical Newsletter to be the first to know what's new in the Omnis community.

US Training
Check out our Training class schedule and bookmark the Training and Education section of our Web site for up-to-the-minute class listings and schedule.

UK Training The free Technical Thursday training seminars continue with success in the UK Sales office. To attend any of the seminars, please contact the UK sales office at uk_sales@rainingdata.com. Check out our Training class schedule for additional classes and sessions being offered in the UK.

Customers Access Online Application
Servall Company, headquartered in Center Line, Michigan, is a supplier of appliance parts out of 13 locations in Michigan and Ohio. Servall maintains their own D³-based distribution package on an IBM RS/6000 through a small network of independent programmers. With the assistance of Raining Data consultant Sierra Bravo, Servall was able to incorporate the features from the online customer access application into a new Web-based solution developed using the D³ FlashBASIC programming language. By using the native programming environment, Sierra Bravo was able to preserve the existing business logic to ensure that the business rules would function on the Web site as they do in the character-based application. Click here for more on this story.

Case Study
"Landmark Healthcare - Management Provider Brings Pick Data Online" - Landmark Healthcare's member and claim data was held in a Pick database running on an HP 9000 server. The only access to this data was through bulk file transfer. Landmark developed a Microsoft Visual Basic .NET application that interacts with the Pick database in real time using a data driver from Raining Data. The new application can achieve 1,000 data requests per second.

(If you do not wish to receive future newsletters, reply to this e-mail with 'Remove' as the subject and your name will be promptly removed from this list. Thank you!)

Raining Data Corporation • 17500 Cartwright Rd • Irvine • CA • 92614 • Phone (949) 442-4400 • Fax (949) 250-8187