I'm not sure England does this anymore but I seem to recall they used to have a concept called the Shadow government. The party out of power would have someone appointed to a position equivalent to the real person.
So if Labor was in charge, the Conservatives would name some bloke the Shadow Home Secretary, etc. (all you UK guys cringing feel free to correct all those errors.)
So, with Selwyn out of town, shadow management feels free to say what it would do if running Alpha:
1. (They've fixed this one already.) Having your only free demo being your old version, and making people pay to see the new one and hoping they could get their money back, was just a bad idea.
2. Like Tom Hanks said in "That Thing You Do": "And this name thing with the Oneders? It doesn't work. From now on you're just The Wonders".
The name thing at Alpha is confusing. You name your products after numbers (4 and 5) and then you have versions of 5 named 4 and 5. It doesn't work.
You're hitting the big time. Rename the Products. Alpha for Dos (ver 7.0), Alpha for Windows (version 5), Alpha Web (1.0) and Alpha ADO (1.0). The actual names aren't important. While you're at it, having the programming languages called Xbasic and XDialog for a program called Alpha doesn't seem to make sense.
3. I've decided to use a program launcher at work to try to make my data sources appear more seamless to the end-user. So they click on buttons from a central source, and get data from the Legacy app, MS Access, R&R Report Writer, and Alpha. It would be possible to build this in Alpha. But for this purpose, Alpha is the wrong tool. I'll use VB.
I want to have a 3" x 5" form with buttons on it. Nothing else. I can't do this in Alpha, because everything has to operate within the "shell" of Alpha. My 3" x 5" form would be within Alpha's main window, not on the desktop.
Selwyn has discussed the theoretical possibility of losing the shell. I think this could be HUGE for Alpha. As a database they are trying to grab market share from MS Access. (in both Ver 5 and ADO). With a Web Product you'd be fighting Macromedia Dreamweaver.
If you could release Xbasic/XDialog as stand-alone outside the Alpha shell, you have a totally new product. It would compete with VB and Delphi. You could give it minimal (maybe non-relational) database capabilties. You need more, you get A5. The form-table connection needs to be broken for this to occur.
With this product your competition is VB and Delphi. But add Action Scripting and now you have a product no one has !!! You open up programming to non-programmers!! You have to dedicate yourself to the AS concept. You'd have to almost think that whenever someone says, "you can't do that in AS, you have to code it", that you've failed.
4. Figure out a way to make multiple front-ends hit the same data. That may be the biggest advantage Access has.
5. Don't make us choose between security and 3rd party tools. When convincing customers to use xbase as the file, I expect to hear how "insecure" it is. I can encrypt the database, but then I can't use Excel, or Access or R&R or Crystal (or scores of other products). Give us some way to "decrypt" using these tools.
The Shadow
So if Labor was in charge, the Conservatives would name some bloke the Shadow Home Secretary, etc. (all you UK guys cringing feel free to correct all those errors.)
So, with Selwyn out of town, shadow management feels free to say what it would do if running Alpha:
1. (They've fixed this one already.) Having your only free demo being your old version, and making people pay to see the new one and hoping they could get their money back, was just a bad idea.
2. Like Tom Hanks said in "That Thing You Do": "And this name thing with the Oneders? It doesn't work. From now on you're just The Wonders".
The name thing at Alpha is confusing. You name your products after numbers (4 and 5) and then you have versions of 5 named 4 and 5. It doesn't work.
You're hitting the big time. Rename the Products. Alpha for Dos (ver 7.0), Alpha for Windows (version 5), Alpha Web (1.0) and Alpha ADO (1.0). The actual names aren't important. While you're at it, having the programming languages called Xbasic and XDialog for a program called Alpha doesn't seem to make sense.
3. I've decided to use a program launcher at work to try to make my data sources appear more seamless to the end-user. So they click on buttons from a central source, and get data from the Legacy app, MS Access, R&R Report Writer, and Alpha. It would be possible to build this in Alpha. But for this purpose, Alpha is the wrong tool. I'll use VB.
I want to have a 3" x 5" form with buttons on it. Nothing else. I can't do this in Alpha, because everything has to operate within the "shell" of Alpha. My 3" x 5" form would be within Alpha's main window, not on the desktop.
Selwyn has discussed the theoretical possibility of losing the shell. I think this could be HUGE for Alpha. As a database they are trying to grab market share from MS Access. (in both Ver 5 and ADO). With a Web Product you'd be fighting Macromedia Dreamweaver.
If you could release Xbasic/XDialog as stand-alone outside the Alpha shell, you have a totally new product. It would compete with VB and Delphi. You could give it minimal (maybe non-relational) database capabilties. You need more, you get A5. The form-table connection needs to be broken for this to occur.
With this product your competition is VB and Delphi. But add Action Scripting and now you have a product no one has !!! You open up programming to non-programmers!! You have to dedicate yourself to the AS concept. You'd have to almost think that whenever someone says, "you can't do that in AS, you have to code it", that you've failed.
4. Figure out a way to make multiple front-ends hit the same data. That may be the biggest advantage Access has.
5. Don't make us choose between security and 3rd party tools. When convincing customers to use xbase as the file, I expect to hear how "insecure" it is. I can encrypt the database, but then I can't use Excel, or Access or R&R or Crystal (or scores of other products). Give us some way to "decrypt" using these tools.
The Shadow
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