This is an offer that Alpha Software Inc. is making to existing Alpha Four users:
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Don't get us wrong: Alpha Four is a great product. But for one reason or another, you may want to transition to Alpha Five.
We'd like to make the transition as painless as possible for you.
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Here is the proposal:
Purchase our recently released Windows-based software, Alpha Five Version 5 Home Edition for $99.
Continue to run your Alpha Four application, until you have created your Alpha Five application.
When you are ready to transition all of your users over to an Alpha Five Version 5, we'll be happy to apply the $99 as a credit towards your purchase of the Alpha Five version 5 network pack.
Why is this a good deal? Your initial investment would only be $99 and you will receive this credit when you purchase the Alpha Five version 5 network pack.
A Message Forum dedicated to transition issues has been established, and is staffed with a moderator who has experience with A4 and A5, and who can offer assistance and guidance. Other members of the Alpha Forum Community who have transitioned (or currently are in the midst of transitioning) have been invited to offer advice and make suggestions as well.
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A 30-day FREE trial of Alpha Five Version 5 Home Edition is available: http://www.alphasoftware.com/promo/trial/default.asp
It is always recommended that you make a backup of your database before introducing a new version.
Differences between the Alpha Five Home Edition vs. the Full Version can be found by viewing: http://www.alphasoftware.com/products/a5v5/homefaq.asp
***
FAQs
What portion, if any, of my Alpha Four application will make the transition to Alpha Five?
All data will make the transition. Browse screens, reports, forms, labels, indexes and scripting will have to be recreated in Alpha Five. There are however literally hundreds of Genies in Alpha Five to make script writing and form/report design, etc. very simple and effortless.
Alpha Features and Advantages
Editors of PC Magazine, CNET and PC PRO all gave our Windows-based Alpha Five 5 stars (their highest rating.)
If you are an end-user:
Alpha Five has action scripting, which automates over 200 different actions! The Script Genie allows you to create highly customized, fully-automated applications in an entirely menu and prompt-driven fashion. No knowledge of Xbasic, Alpha Five's programming language, is required to use the Script Genie.
Reporting -- font and graphic selections are much more varied than in Alpha Four , as is the selection of print and formatting options (Acrobat PDF, Rich Text, HTML or plain text.)
Alpha Five has powerful, fully-integrated e-mail capabilities. The e-mail capabilities can take advantage of either your existing e-mail client, or the built-in Alpha Five e-mail client. You can now send and receive e-mail directly within Alpha Five, as well as e-mail reports and merge data from tables into e-mail messages. Using NetMailer you can also send highly personalized mass email-merges from an Alpha Five database.
A Quick Export to MS Excel that can be executed directly from the toolbar is included
Automated mail merge with MS Word is included.
Data encryption is part of Alpha Five
An integrated backup and restore capability allows you to take �snapshots� of your database at various points in time. You can now zip tables, sets and entire databases from within Alpha Five and even e-mail them.
An Audit Trail feature is included, which keeps track of changes made to a record and when the changes were made.
Spell Check is available throughout the program.
Searching, Filtering and Querying are extremely powerful in Alpha Five using the flexible and easy using the Query Genie System
Forms can have Smart Fields that, when you click on them, open up a pop-up a calculator, a calendar, your e-mail client or your web browser.
The help system is extensive and you can add custom help to the applications that you develop in Alpha Five
Network optimization allows for rapid performance across networks.
And much more.
If you are a developer:
Alpha Five offers a complete and highly developed programming language, xBasic which includes xDialog for building Dialog boxes. (In fact a lot of the user interface of Alpha Five was written in XDialog.)
Alpha Five has a rich development environment including a, multi-pane Script Editor with auto-complete logic, color coding, auto-complete expressions, bubble help and many other features.
You can view the underlying XBasic code generated by Action Scripting with the ability to switch from Action Scripting to the Code Editor and back!
Add-ins provide the ability to add new features to Alpha Five.
The Xbasic has a built in Debugger along with Profiling to analyze how much time each line in a script is taking to execute.
OLE Automation and Active X support give Alpha Five virtually unlimited levels of extensibility.
Alpha Five sports a powerful Expression Builder, including auto-complete technology to help with syntax, customized fonts, color-coding, expression libraries, bubble help, display of sample values and more.
Intelligent Function Finder to locate over 500 functions easily.
And much more.
*****
For more information, or to place your order with a customer service representative contact Alpha at: (781) 229-4500.
-Jeannette Cook
Customer Service Representative
Alpha Software, Inc.
Announcement
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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines
The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
- Be professional in your conduct
- Be kind to others
- Be constructive when giving feedback
- Be open to new ideas and suggestions
- Stay on topic
Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
- Spam.
- Vulgar language.
- Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
- Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
- Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
- Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
- Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
- Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
- Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.
If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
- Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
- Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
- Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
- Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.
Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.
Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.
Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.
The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.
Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.
Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.
Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting
Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.
When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.
The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.
When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.
A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.
If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.
When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.
Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
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A4 to A5 upgrade offer from Alpha Software
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