ASNA Newsletter 2026 - Quarter 2

June flowers poppin' in Indiana

Summer flowers are blooming all over the US right now. This is a shot of them at Yellow Creek Lake, in Indiana.

This issue includes an introduction to PowerShell, a handy utility to access a localhost URL on the Internet, and how to export and import DataGate Database names.

Stop ignoring PowerShell!

CSS scoping

Windows PowerShell is 19 years old and it’s very likely you don’t use it. In fact, there is probably a fair number of you reading this that don’t even know what PowerShell is.

General Windows users probably don’t need PowerShell, but if you are a programmer, you should definitely have PowerShell in your programming kitbag.

PowerShell is an automation and scripting tool that ships with Windows. It includes a command line shell and a powerful scripting language. While there is some overlap between what you can do with PowerShell and DOS, PowerShell’s extra capabilities make it shine for many programming-related tasks.

Read more about PowerShell and what it can do for you in this article.

How to expose a localhost port to Internet

CSS scoping

Did you ever want to quickly demo your AVR ASP.NET application to others, but didn’t have enough room in your office to crowd everyone around your desk?

CloudFlare has a handy, secure tunneling utility that exposes a localhost URL publicly on the Internet—with an HTTPS connection. Fire it up, then have your meeting in your conference room where you can publicly get to your project.

How to import and export DataGate Database Names

Technical debt bomb

This article applies only to .NET and .NET Framework Database Names. The COM Database Manager does not support exporting or importing database names.

Before you deploy your Monarch or Visual RPG application, you first need to ensure that a DataGate Database Name is present on the production server or PC. You could use the DataGate Monitor to manually create a database name on the target machine, but there is an easier way.

Both the DataGate Monitor and the DataGate Explorer in Visual Studio let you export and import Database Names. This feature ensures correctness and avoids any issues you might have encountered trying to copy Database Names

Read about to export and import DataGate Database Names in this article.

Need help with your Visual RPG applications?

ASNA can help with any aspect of your Visual RPG portfolio

We’ve talked to a few customers lately who no longer have any employees with ASNA product knowledge. Most of these are due to either retirement or business acquisitions and/or employee reassignment. Even the simplest things, like applying a new license, are sometimes challenging to do without ASNA talent available.

Is your shop running low on Visual RPG talent? Do you need some help with your ASNA Visual RPG application? ASNA’s Services Team can help you with:

• Upgrades. ASNA Upgrades are usually pretty straightforward, but challenging to do without any ASNA experience. Our Services Team can help you with your upgrades.
• Program fixes and maintenance. Our Services Team can make ongoing program changes and enhancements needed.
• Migrating your application’s database. In some cases, you might want to retire your old ASNA application and migrate its database to another platform. Our Services Team can help migrate that old database to a variety of modern database platforms.
• Migrating the app. If your application needs to be migrated to a new environment, the ASNA Services Team can also help with that. Our team has extensive .NET, C#, and IBM i programming experience.
• Long-term application lifecycle support. If your programming team is maxed-out on other tasks and your AVR applications need ongoing care and feeding that they aren’t getting, the ASNA Services Team can take over and manage the entire Visual RPG application development lifecycle for you. For program fixes, licensing issues, maintenance and enhancements, and deployment, we can be your remote Visual RPG programming team.

Email us at info@asna.com to arrange a time to discuss how the ASNA Services Team can help you.