
Letter from the President
Welcome to the September/October issue of the ASNA newsletter, ASNA Edge. This month’s issue of ASNA Edge features important information about compatibility between ASNA Visual RPG, Visual Studio and Windows Vista that you'll want to be sure to check out.
We've also included a great article by Tim Jannsen about using the AVR Upgrade Assistant to convert your AVR 4.1 applications to AVR for .NET. Those of you running AVR 4.1 apps won't want to miss this enlightening and essential article.
Click here for the rest of this article.

Anne Ferguson, President, ASNA
Important Announcement Regarding Compatibility
ASNA Visual RPG, Visual Studio, Windows Vista
As you know, the Microsoft development efforts for Visual Studio, Windows, and various other Microsoft products are distinctly separate efforts. Microsoft endeavors to ensure compatibility and interoperability across the various product lines, but this often necessitates compromise. As Microsoft prepares to ship Windows Vista, we are just now becoming aware of the challenges Microsoft faces with compatibility and we want to share that information with our customers as it becomes available to us.
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Mid-Continent Group
Using AVR to solve premium auditing headaches
The Mid-Continent Group IT team used ASNA Visual RPG for .NET to create a new insurance auditing system in only four months (two less than planned).
This new system provides a more accurate editing process and has enabled the reassignment of more than 25% of the employees previously involved in premium auditing to other tasks. Since the AVR- based system’s implementation, Mid-Continent Group has seen a 12% increase in the processed auditing process workload which translates to nearly $2,000,000 in additional premiums collected.
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Moving AVR Classic Applications to .NET
with AVR 4.1 Upgrade Assistant
Rather than re-write existing applications, AVR Upgrade Assistant provides a manageable ramp-up to .NET. Similar in function to Visual Basic’s Upgrade Wizard, the role of AVR’s Upgrade Assistant is to preserve both fixed-format and free-format application logic while adapting the COM execution model to .NET’s execution model. Incidentally, AVR for .NET is completely free-format, so the Upgrade Assistant nicely converts fixed-format (as illustrated at the end of this article).
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Introduction to ASNA Monarch, Part 11
Monarch 3.0: Supports Prototyped Calls, Activation Groups and More!
One of the main strengths of Monarch has been in the ability of the RPG migration agent to migrate from RPG to RPG rather than from RPG to VB, C# or Java. ASNA has teamed up ASNA Visual RPG for .NET 8.0 with the Monarch 3.0 Framework to support a number of new features, including Prototyped Call, Activation Groups, /FREE, data structure objects, custom button text, Local Data Collection, and more.
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Getting to know…
Michael D. Blattenberger II,
Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency
From time to time, ASNA Edge features customer profiles. The intent of these customer profiles is to show a more personal side of our customers. Let's take a minute to get to know Michael D. Blattenberger II.
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ASNA International Update
with Derek Cooper, ASNA UK
Greetings from ASNA's European office! Our 2006 European distributor meeting was a resounding success with 14 people attending the event held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain on Saturday 7th October.
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ASNA Edge AVR for .NET Windows Tech Tip
Using config files with AVR for .NET 8.0 Windows applications
Windows programs have the built-in ability to read from a config file, in a fashion very similar to that of ASP.NET applications. To read from a configuration file is very simple--it only requires a couple of lines code. The configuration file itself is an XML file that must reside in the same folder as the program's EXE.
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ASNA Edge AVR for .NET Web Tech Tip
Setting default buttons on an ASP.NET 2.0 page
ASP.NET 1.x was substantially hindered by the lack of the intrinsic ability to set a default button for a Web form. Yes, there were JavaScript tips and techniques for solving this problem, but everything we did remained a kludgy work-around. ASP.NET 2.0 more than rectifies this situation. It provides the ability to set a default for each Web form as well as set a default button for each panel (a System.Web.UI.WebControls.Panel).
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ASNA Education Schedule and One-day Technical Seminars
NEW! 2007 dates and locations now available
We've got a few 2006 seminars left that you can attend this year. Be sure to book your spot right away as space is limited. Click here for dates and details on our complete 2006 and 2007 seminar schedule.
We've also planned several of our one-day technical seminars coming to a city near you in 2006 and 2007. These exciting seminars show you the powerful solutions you and your team can create with ASNA's .NET technologies. Click here for dates and details on our one-day seminars.
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