In this case study, we look at the story of one of our earliest users and how he made his custom wordfile to make UltraEdit, quite literally, his own unique editor.

Key Points: 

• UltraEdit can be one of the best editor options for niche languages and/or mature systems that aren’t mainstream.
• Due to its long and rich history, UltraEdit still supports thousands of programming languages usually used by enterprise companies.
• “[Using UltraEdit] makes programming a whole lot better than trying to go through it in the natural system editor.”

Who is the subject?

Marvin Cross has worked as a senior software developer in the healthcare industry since 1983. He currently works for Hampton Roads, Va.-based Sentara Health. Sentara is one of the largest health systems in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, and among the top 20 largest not-for-profit integrated health systems in the country with 30,000 employees, 12 hospitals in Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina, and the Sentara Health Plans division, which serves more than 1.2 million members in Virginia and Florida.

Cross manages thousands of health insurance data interchange files and transaction records. His and his team’s work involves managing these records, verifying payments and transactions using data files, transferring records, and encoding them, as necessary.

Originally, he worked using the Pick OS with a language called UniVerse BASIC before transitioning to UltraEdit, in 2003

The Problem

Text editors, code editors, and IDEs will nominally support mainstream programming languages that are popular globally—but what do you do when a company uses a bespoke language developed four decades ago?

UniVerse BASIC is one of the lesser-known programming languages. It is a component of the MultiValue application platform, primarily used for developing enterprise apps. The base editor included in the Pick OS includes a YAFIYGI interface (a text-command-oriented document editing system as opposed to a WYSIWYG interface).

Furthermore, the files were borderline unreadable as it showed thousands of lines of source code in just two colors—black and white. There was no syntax highlighting or autocomplete—features that we have grown accustomed to today.

Cross used the base editor for years, an ordeal that he said caused “bleeding eye syndrome” because of its unintelligible format. This led to severe productivity hits as he constantly sifted through lines of unformatted and unhighlighted database files.

This is how Marvin reads, edits, and accesses the data files using the UniVerse basic base editor. There are no syntax highlighting and commands are issued via typing.

Why were they using this language/format?

Sentara has many patient records and a disproportionately higher number of data transfers and transaction records. With 12 hospitals in Virginia and northeastern Carolina, and the Sentara Health Plans division, which serves more than 1.2 million members in Virginia and Florida, you can imagine how large the database is for this system. The industry average is 80MB per patient per year—that estimates to about 96TB of text and numerical data for Sentara.

To streamline the process, the healthcare industry uses an exchange system called an electronic data interchange (EDI). This system allows one company to send business-related documents to another company in a standardized digital format.

But more importantly, these transaction records are encoded with the Pick OS using UniVerse BASIC. As with many file exchange formats, these formats nominally work well in their own ecosystem and less in others. Since the highest priority for the company is the security and accuracy of data with a functioning system, there is less incentive to risk a costly migration.

Simply put, the initial overhead requires immense effort and resources to be able to migrate to a new database system. There is simply not enough logistical and financial reason for a full reorganization—especially for a well-oiled machine that has already proven reliable. It may seem counterproductive to limit the tech you use, but most companies will often resort to maintaining whatever system they have as long as it works within reasonable margins.

Solution: Ol’ reliable UltraEdit

Sticking with what works is usually the safest option, but it is usually neither the most efficient nor the easiest way to achieve business goals. The UltraEdit editor, provided Cross the following:

• The flexibility to both use UltraEdit as his main editor and go back to the base editor when necessary
• Full-featured source editing for nearly any interchange format or language
• Unhindered performance regardless of the size of the database

Another advantage that UltraEdit boasts above other editors is its longevity and long history. Tech professionals have trusted UltraEdit for nearly three decades, amassing user-requested features and becoming a time capsule for how the software development and IT space have evolved throughout the years. Accordingly, UltraEdit is one of the few text editors that still works above and beyond other sunsetted tools and software.

UltraEdit also maintains the languages and allows syntax features via its customization features or assistance from community-submitted settings and files. In fact, due to the nature of his work and the straightforward nature of UltraEdit’s code highlighting, Cross was able to easily make custom syntax files for UltraEdit. He then submitted a highlighting word file from the 1990s that is available for the community to download and use for themselves.

With the wordfile enshrined in UltraEdit’s repository, any of Cross’ teammates and colleagues can easily install UltraEdit, download the wordfile, and enjoy the benefits of a rich text and EDI editor with syntax highlighting.

Using a supplementary tool like UltraEdit is both low-commitment and low-effort, with high returns. “[Using UltraEdit],” according to Cross, “makes programming a whole lot better than trying to go through it in the natural system editor.”

Feature Highlight: UltraEdit’s Custom Wordfiles

A wordfile is a plain text configuration file that UltraEdit/UEStudio uses to highlight keywords in source code files. This is mainly used by developers who are working when their default IDE does not support a specific language or when users want to customize the syntax highlighting for a language themselves.

Besides highlighting, a wordfile can also provide the following features:

• Code folding
• Brace matching
• Function listing
• And more…

UltraEdit has a repository of user-submitted wordfiles where users can get the one they  need, or create their own just as Cross did.

The Result

The benefit of having these bread-and-butter editor features is that users get the experience of a modern development environment on virtually any code or data file. It’s hard to pinpoint how much time this small benefit saved Cross, but imagine working with a default notepad editor for any coding work—it takes exponentially longer and is extremely frustrating.

Using an unopinionated editor like UltraEdit provides developers like Cross with the basic necessities plus leeway to make the editor truly his own. There may be slight differences in EDI formats between companies and industries, but with UltraEdit’s flexibility, this no longer poses a problem. You can freely open and edit any text-based format.

Lastly, the customizable features and shareable wordfiles provided Cross and his team with multiple benefits and a significant boost in productivity.

The post How one company uses UltraEdit for EDI management —an UltraEdit case study appeared first on UltraEdit.

The needs of enterprise users require relatively more flexibility and customizability so the UltraEdit engineers collaborated with the company’s engineering team to find an effective solution.

This is an account of how UltraEdit was able to accommodate a specialized request from an enterprise customer that saved the company dozens of hours on software deployment and configuration. 

Who they are: 

The client in question is a century-old North American financial services company with over 57,000 employees.  They provide investment, credit, and financial services to around 7 million clients across 300 communities.

They operate as a multi-faceted financial institution large enough to house “companies within the company”. As such, they have a varied portfolio in terms of software—all of which require an equally varied number of development tools.

UltraEdit (UE)is one of the tools that the company uses. Many of the company’s developers have been power users of the editor since 2003. With it, they execute a diverse range of tasks such as working on large projects, reading and editing large data files, and writing bespoke applications and source code for the company’s internal use.

An engineer mentioned that performance and large file handling were key for many of their developers’ work such as mobile app development, web platform programs, and some internal development for financial operations among others.

Note: We thank the company for answering our product questions and agreeing to share their use case. We respect their request to conceal the identity of the company for whatever reason they deem necessary.

The problem:

New regulations prompt the company to comply

In June 2022, the local government where the company was based had tightened regulation concerning the availability of language options in software. For context, the province in question had two main spoken languages, and according to the new law, companies and their software should be able to provide both options for its employees.

UE does support both languages but the problem lies in the distribution and installation of software. The new regulation also meant that the company had to redeploy UE in the other language, or at least provide users with the option of doing so themselves.

Traditional UE installers require users to choose a language version to install.

As a large enterprise with over hundreds, if not thousands, of developers, the software procurement and deployment team needed to systematize how software was shipped in an employee’s system.

This presented an important decision for the company. They needed an enterprise solution that was scalable, cost-effective, and must also be manageable and accessible by the IT team whenever necessary.

Finding the optimal solution

Some of the engineers tried to solve the problem internally. They tried working with the traditional UE installer that categorized the product by language depending on the specific user. (e.g. choosing either an English or French version and installing that). 

While this worked, it wasn’t a complete solution because some users preferred one language over the other, and they needed to manually uninstall, reinstall, and configure the language configuration files. This simply wasn’t sustainable for managing thousands of systems. It quickly became obvious that they needed a different approach.

So instead of doing it themselves, they reached out to the product engineers at UE for assistance.

The UE engineers discussed the requirements and concerns of the company. They worked in collaboration to find the most suitable and cost effective solution.

After a few strategy calls and product tinkering, the UE team provided an all-in-one version of the UE installer that was customized to the company’s specifications. It had the following advantages:

• A Multilingual User Interface (MUI) installer
• Automated language detection and selection within the new installer
• A new option to configure language in the tool itself

This allowed the software deployment team to quickly and silently deploy versions of UE that automatically had the preferred language setting pre-selected. Furthermore, some control was transferred to the end user so they can change it when necessary.

Users can select which language is displayed without reinstalling a different version.

Results

Each installation process was now isolated and could be set individually by the software procurement and deployment team. The new installer automated the fix for the language issues during deployment. This solved the scalability issue that the engineers were facing.

Simultaneously, the language setting could also be hot-swapped by the user themselves using the new UI. This solved the flexibility issue.

These seemingly minor changes virtually eliminated 60% of the laborious process, saving dozens of work hours. It also provided a more robust setup that will need less attention from the software management team in the future.

Acquiring other tools is always an option but having a streamlined environment is often preferred, especially for top-down enterprise setups. An analogous set of tools also minimizes the learning curve for new users. Lastly, being able to leverage extensive support for a company’s specific needs is a must-have in today’s fast-paced environment. 

These are just some of the benefits of having software optimized for scalability, as well as the importance of the availability of expert support for business and enterprise users. 

The post Cutting a company’s deployment work hours by 60% – An UltraEdit case study appeared first on UltraEdit.