This morning's column will be very short, as I'd been scrambling to post
a new version of the SQR debugger
while working around a problem with the web site hosting. All has now been
resolved.
First, it seems that the product hinted at as
Dave's Next Move is now called "Workday" (www.davesnextmove.com).
There still aren't many details on the site, although I note
that they now have a "chief HCM strategist."
I enjoy receiving comments and suggestions from the readers of
this column and from users of the debugger. (But I didn't receive
any hate mail over my App Engine columns—does that mean you
agree?)
One suggestion led
to the changes in the latest version of the debugger. It seems that a cable TV
network has started calling the debugger directly from UltraEdit,
a well-known text editor. The users like the syntax recognition
and other editing features of UltraEdit and wanted to be able to integrate
the debugger with it, so they built a very creative solution: a
batch (.BAT) file that creates the debugger's configuration settings
(.SQD) file on the fly and then executes it. The debugger version posted
today supports another approach: call the debugger using an .SQD
file name and optionally an .SQR file name. This invokes the
debugger with all of the saved settings, while overriding the
SQR program name. The TV network's approach is much more
flexible but requires a little setup time.
Users at a university had also previously suggested some more
options for invoking the debugger, so hopefully this will be
a useful feature for many. All of the options
for invoking the debugger are now listed on a new page in the help file.
While the debugger is in no way an IDE for SQR—that's not its
purpose—it can now be linked to your other favorite tools in
various ways.