hello, all I am new to the clarion world. I am an IT admin at a small company. we have a very old clarion application that was developed a very long time ago. it was last updated to clarion version 8. it has mostly been patched and maintained but nobody who truly knows how the thing was written is around anymore. I am wondering if it’s possible to upgrade to clarion 12. I am also wondering if it makes sense to upgrade as well as how to do it. I have no idea it’s as easy and downloading clarion 12 and clicking an upgrade button or if the whole app is going to need to be rebuilt. sadly, we are a tiny not for profit company with almost no money to spend on things like this. any guidance or help would be greatly appreciated.
there are a few things required for an upgrade.
There are 2 files that end in .app and .dct they are the big ones.
There may also be a number of 3rd party templates that you will need to install in your new clarion version.
Once you have all the templaters installed, upgrading should just be a matter of opening the .app file. you’ll get a message saying that this is an old version would you like to upgrade. hit yes. it will also do the dictionary.
That should be about it. Clarion is really good in that regard
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A question is why you want to do this.
Getting rid of technical debt is usually a good thing, granted.
I don’t think you’ll get a substantially better looking app (Clarion 8 already supported TrueType fonts).
Although I agree with Sean about it being generally straightforward, there are things that can need to be dealt with (such as the change in enforcing doubled << in some string expressions, etc.)
How important is the app to your business? How often does it need to be changed to continue being useful? What are the downsides to continuing with what you already are using?
As Jane said, what is your reason for upgrading?
You will not be able to upgrade without a Clarion developer because your code might stop working. If you need to make changes to your code you will need a developer, but you might not need to upgrade.
Do you have a copy of the Clarion 8 development program and do you have all the source code - the source code is usually found in .app and .dct files. If you don’t have the source code you might be out of luck?
Your best bet is to find a Clarion developer in your area who can have a look at what you have and where you hope to go in the future.
The thing that Sean says about 3rd party addons is especially important to review as well, because it could be possible that there are black-box DLLs/Libs included, which would not be compatible with the latest version. If those addons are no longer available, then it would definitely change your strategy, and gets back to needing a Clarion programmer to get it working.
So the main thing is deciding WHY and how badly you need this upgrade before exerting too much energy on it. 
Where abouts in the world are you located?
so we do have all the development files we do maintain the program and add some features we just are not experts. this program is a crucial part of our business and we work on it every day. we are hoping to add some features to help our remote workers out. currently they run the .exe right from our file server which is very slow. we do have a few users who run it through a remote desktop server which makes it faster but its not perfect. as far as i know the program doesnt use any 3rd party plugins. and although our application is running on clarion 8 it runs and works as if it we were still on windows 3.1.
we would also like to look into using something else as the database. currently we use a topspeed file but we would like to move to something more manageable like mysql for example. but that’s a separate issue i don’t need answers on now.
we are located in milwaukee wisconsin usa.
Hmm bit far from Australia. So I can’t help too much
Speed issues are most likely due to networking. Do make sure all your switches etc are working at I assume 1Gbs. I have occasionally found some wiring has caused a switch to go to 100Mb or less.
Other than that you’re bound by the speed of your file server. If thats slow, everything will be.
PS If you go to SQL I would suggest PostgreSQL.
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The most important step has already been taken: not having the applications in C6.x. From there, all changes are easier.
My recommendation is to first look at the plugins and see which ones are really necessary and which ones aren’t.
Eliminate those that aren’t necessary and/or you don’t use and keep the application clean; this will save you a lot of problems in the following steps.
Then, look at the plugins that are closed and try to replace them and/or see if there are any updates.
Changing the database can be done during the migration process.
Whether or not it’s advisable to switch to C12?
My answer is yes, especially because the IDE is more stable.
according to the addin manager in clarion i dont have any addins installed. does that mean our solution/application does not use any addins/3rd party plugins. im assuming that makes our migration much simpler.
we do have 1 gb switches and they are operating at full speed the issue seems to be when users connect to it remotly through our vpn. its just too slow and unusable.
“Addin Manager” won’t tell you whether or not you have third-party templates or libraries.
These are usually found in “Edit Template Registry,” where you’ll find Clarion’s standard templates and third-party templates.
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it wont let me post a screenshot or upload a link but i dont know how to tell if these are 3rd party.
also how can i find out if any of them are being used. i dont believe any 3rd party addons are even being used in our program.
If it’s an ISAM driver like TopSpeed file driver and you have the app on your local machine and connect to your database on the file server via VPN connection it will always be slow unless you have 1Gbit internet speeds at both ends of the VPN, which is rare. Upgrading to the latest Clarion won’t improve anything unless you change the driver to SQL driver. That however requires Clarion developer to fix any issues.
The way I handle remote users is I set up remote desktops for them where they can connect while on VPN and run the application locally. This worked even with apps written in Clarion 6 and earlier. If you have just a few users you can let them rdp to their office desktops and if you need more you can set up a machine (Windows desktop or server) with same rdp server supporting multiple concurrent connections. There are many, the one popular amongst Clarion developers is TSPlus https://terminalserviceplus.com/ , also much cheaper than Citrix or Microsoft solution. It also allows your users to access tour clarion app via browser and restrict access only to your specific app.
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You can also have a log at this http://www.thinstuff.com/products/xpvs-server/ and this GitHub - stascorp/rdpwrap: RDP Wrapper Library
This forum requires a few posts before it allows links and uploads. So you’ll probably be able to do so soon.
With the amount of basic questions you’ve got, it might be worthwhile to join the ClarionLive Connect webinar next Wednesday on Zoom. It’s at 8AM Pacific time.
we are using a topspeed data file as our database. we intend to move this to a postgress or mysql database. we also do use ts plus for a few of our users but we are hoping with a few changes to our clarion application we can run it serverside on our cloud provider making it so we have no need to connect to our office servers as we are slowly migrating away from our onprem servers.
i will be watching that as i just found those this past week.