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Is anyone deploying in V9?

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    Is anyone deploying in V9?

    Have been following this thread

    http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=76121

    regarding problems with V9. Although I own V9 I have yet to deploy it on my one major commercial application or any of my little "own use" apps. I guess the dialogue in the thread above begs the question (for me, anyhow): Has anyone upgraded or deployed a major app in V9?

    Are the problems above and elsewhere just the usual growing pains and minor bugs, or are they more? They seem to be more. There are some features of V9 I would like to incorporate into my commercial app, but frankly, to date I'm afraid to go there.

    Anyone care to reassure me as to V9?

    Bob Arbuthnot

    #2
    Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

    Originally posted by Bob Arbuthnot View Post
    Have been following this thread

    http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=76121

    regarding problems with V9. Although I own V9 I have yet to deploy it on my one major commercial application or any of my little "own use" apps. I guess the dialogue in the thread above begs the question (for me, anyhow): Has anyone upgraded or deployed a major app in V9?

    Are the problems above and elsewhere just the usual growing pains and minor bugs, or are they more? They seem to be more. There are some features of V9 I would like to incorporate into my commercial app, but frankly, to date I'm afraid to go there.

    Anyone care to reassure me as to V9?

    Bob Arbuthnot
    Bob:
    we've "deployed" 2 major applications in v9 using build
    1581_3193 as we did whatever 'work arounds' were necessary for the applications. We are currently converting 3 other major projects to version 9. We did do some upgrades on our development computers, but rolled back to to newly introduced bugs, problems, etc. We always keep our users on the original build until "all" bugs have been worked out because we know that build works. As we test newer releases, we upgrade after fully testing on our developlment computers.

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      #3
      Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

      Bob,

      Like you I have held back and still been using V4.5 Runtimes (Although I purchased all V5, V6, V7 and V8, I skipped these)

      I have recently taken the plunge with a complex V4.5 application converted to V9 using the latest build and all seem OK, I cannot fault anything as yet. I am of the opinion that all the minor and major bugs have now been sorted.

      Michael

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        #4
        Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

        Try zipping your data base to deploy an upgrade and see if you get error of failing to close files and is unable to zip the data base.

        Go to Tools and zip data base.

        posted in another thread this problem.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

          Bob and others,
          I have to say I haven't seen any particular problems with v9 other than a few small bugs in the newer features (like active link tables), which Alpha has fixed every time I've found one. We've been using v9 for probably half a year on 12 computers; the only one that ever acts up is the one running Windows Vista which occasionally reports an error a button script when it hits a certain table.external_record_content_get() statement. Clickingn the button again makes the script run properly the next time. It's clearly a problem with Vista and some sort of network timing issue, and it's so insignificant and so occasional I haven't bothered to try to come up with a workaround. Our application does a lot of Xdialog, a lot of reporting, some emailing, uses ActiveX controls for scanning, connects to MySQL for some of its data storage -- so I think it overall does a good job of testing v9's capabilities. That said, there's only a couple of forms in the whole application, nearly all the data entry is in Xdialog, so if you're experiencing problems with browses and forms I can't comment on that.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

            Hello, Dr. Wayne.

            I'm curious why you chose to use xdialogs for nearly all your data entry?

            -- tom

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

              Tom,
              I'm just a control freak about data entry. You can completely control data entry with Xdialogs, e.g., you can store the entered data in variables and do whatever sophisticated checking you want to do before saving the record(s). For example, in a typical bill, there's an invoice header and multiple detail items. In a form-based Alpha Five application, the header is saved as soon as focus leaves the last header field, and if the user then backs out of the detail items, there's a childless invoice header saved to the database. With Xdialogs, you can enforce transaction control: you can run consistency verifications ("field rules") on all the detail items as well as the invoice header and then either abandon the entire transaction or save everything at once.
              Even in single-table entry, I think it's easier to control the user with Xdialogs -- controls and buttons can be activated and deactivated easily. And it's easy to incorporate ActiveX controls into Xdialogs.
              - Peter

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                #8
                Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                Thanks.

                Are you using a grid / browse control that you might care to recommend?

                -- tom

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                  Tom,
                  I don't use browses for data entry at all. We used them for years and it just caused problems - people made typing mistakes and didn't always see them. When I need to do detail entry I pop up an Xdialog with the fields for the detail and we have far fewer errors.
                  - Peter

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                    Thanks, this is intriguing. Do you use a listbox to display groups of related detail records, or some other control?

                    I built a phone message / phone log app using only xdialog back with vers 7, and found it to be quite a bit of extra work. I wanted to emulate a form based on a single table, including navigation buttons, enter, edit, delete, save, cancel, and so on. I succeeded and learned a lot in the process, but it was a lot of trouble. Haven't gone beyond that to experiment with multi-pane xdialogs, or cascading dialogs. Haven't tried to use listboxes or other controls within an xdialog. Guess I'll have to get your book out and get busy!

                    Thanks again.

                    -- tom

                    PS. Hope the BoSox fans in your office won't hold a grudge against our Rays, at least not for long!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                      We have a moderate-size application -- about 35 tables and same number of sets, 45 forms, numerous operations & scripts, etc. -- which we have deployed to about 45 locations. We started with version 7, upgraded to 8, and then quickly upgraded to verson 9 because problems we were seeing in 8 were fixed in 9. In my opinion, version 9 is by far the best of the three versions. It does not seem to have the parsing errors displayed in version 8, and it is faster than version 7. Once we got people upgraded and got all the indexes properly rebuilt, we have found version 9 to be very stable. I believe that none of the problems called in by our users in the past 30 days were the fault of A5. Instead, they were typically operator and (sometimes) application related errors.

                      I recommend upgrading to version 9 as quickly as is practical, but the more versions you must upgrade from, the more difficult it probably will be.

                      -- Dick James

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                        John & Dick,
                        Good to hear that your apps are functioning well.

                        Peter, thank you for responding - you're way ahead of those of us that are still wedded to forms and browses! But good to hear you've not experienced problems.

                        I'm a little underwhelmed by the response here, though. I'm surprised that more haven't responded enthusiastically to forge ahead with V9, but maybe that's just human nature. Cal Locklin just mentioned in another thread that he has 2 V9 apps out working well enough, and a 3rd that's giving him problems.

                        I think I failed to mention in my initial post that my commercial app was begun in V7 and brought forward into V8 as soon as V8 was released, so I'm not looking at a V5 to V9 jump, just a V8 to V9...

                        Any others care to chime in?

                        Bob Arbuthnot

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                          Bob:

                          I have an older app that I built at a former employer for managing a small warehouse. I recently purchased v9 to resue the app and maybe get it on the web, thinking that the development time would be a bit faster, but I have to say I am not a happy camper.

                          Bugs have turned up that make this unstable, IMO, and the application I'm running is not that complex. On v6 & v7 it worked perfectly.

                          On v9:
                          I have the dreaded "A_CASE" bug in the calculated fields. There is a workaround - fix the code then shut down and restart A5 - but WTF?

                          On all of my lookup dialogs (using action scripting, not Xbasic) I've always had the dialog close after the lookup was done. Now after the lookup, the entire form closes! I have to make the dialogs modeless, which leaves the dialog open. I can just picture what a client would think of that.

                          My screen blinks like a disco light when A5 is running. It does stop when I restart A5, but a video issue now? BTW, my PC is a Pentium Dual Core, 2GB of ram, and 256 MB of video memory. It's as good as it gets at this level, yet earlier versions of A5 ran better on hardware 1/5 the muscle of this machine.

                          I'm a long time user of Alpha products, going back to A4 v1 in DOS. Each release of A5 seems to introduce bugs. I'm not a professional developer, so I don't have any more exposure than my own needs, but if this happens on these fairly lightweight apps, then, if I were developing for clients, I would be loathe to install a new version until it was completely vetted.

                          Yes, I'm writing this and it's late and I'm a bit grumpy, but nothing is exaggerated.
                          Ed Merritt
                          UniversalWorkshop.com

                          Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.
                          e.e. cummings



                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Is anyone deploying in V9?

                            Originally posted by Ed Merritt View Post
                            Bob:
                            My screen blinks like a disco light when A5 is running. It does stop when I restart A5, but a video issue now? BTW, my PC is a Pentium Dual Core, 2GB of ram, and 256 MB of video memory.
                            I recently purchased a copy of v9 for home use. Nothing major, just order tracking and inventory for one of the bowling alley pro-shops in town that I help out in and drill balls, do repairs whatever...but I had the same disco ball problem when I had first installed it. I went and updated the driver for my video card and it seemed to clear it up. Might wanna try that. The system was an AMD(cause theres no other way to be imo) quad core system, with 4GB ram and a 1GB nvidia(also the only way to go imo) vid card. I built the system for gaming mostly but it handles v9 like a champ. Just thought I would chime in about the disco comment. :)
                            Joel Domen
                            Material Resources and Planning Manager
                            NAFCO Industries

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