Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

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 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.
See more
See less

Web or Desktop?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #16
    Re: Web or Desktop?

    George, as a rule of thumb on the Forum, I recommend you consider the replies that actually help your decision and not those which muddy the waters.
    At the end of the day it's your (_|_) that's in the fire so it's up to you, but as one long time Forum user once said, "There are 'givers' and there are 'takers' on the Forum. Take your pick who you listen to."
    Analysing 900,000 very large individual social care records in a DBF structure, with multiple comparisons for duplication checks and cross checks for presence in another table took about 5 mins.
    I doubt you will be doing this sort of thing soon.
    One last pop at the Web side. On the few occasions I've posted questions on the WAS forum, the response has not been good. Now that could be because I'm asking simple questions, but if you know that answer, any question is simple. You will get a lot of support on the Desktop side.
    See our Hybrid Option here;
    https://hybridapps.example-software.com/


    Apologies to anyone I haven't managed to upset yet.
    You are held in a queue and I will get to you soon.

    Comment


      #17
      Re: Web or Desktop?

      Originally posted by Ray in Capetown View Post
      NOTE Jet - I am not doing these operations on a form
      Just the final results

      Maybe you could get a little more experience with alpha before giving advice on its capabilities.
      Experience? I see you have a lot! Experience in creating one table and populate it with many records and display it on a form and access it over a network doesn't have 1 to be an experienced user, the speed is too slow 1 min and 30 sec. and this is what I experience in alpha five, now, if the masters/gurus etc say that 1 min and 30 sec is normal in filtering 240,000 records in alpha five then I will take it and explain to the end user. I even reformatted 1 computer, fresh install and installed the runtime but I am getting slow results

      Comment


        #18
        Re: Web or Desktop?

        Every db is different. It's hard to comment w/o seeing the actual db and what you are actually doing. If you haven't tried this: create an index using the same criteria as your query.
        Peter
        AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

        [email protected]
        https://www.alphabasesolutions.com


        Comment


          #19
          Re: Web or Desktop?

          I have seen queries that had to be re-written to speed them up. I use queries as well as indexes and one can help the other.

          Reynolds & Reynolds has used several different backends for their data for dealers over the years. Presently, I believe they are using a form of sql and mostly on a server with 40-100 users and the front is written in c" or c++. I can and have duplicated almost everything they do with their million dollar app. The speed with the dbf is typically faster by a ton and slower in a few spots. Understand I am looking at the front en for clues as to what they are doing. No code reversals here!

          I would suggest you start checking those NIC cards, switches and other stuff on your lan. sometimes it is all in the protocol. Seems a while back I did an extra protocol beside tcp/ip and it just made all kinds a speed difference. Your lan speed should not be much off your standalone speed.
          Dave Mason
          [email protected]
          Skype is dave.mason46

          Comment


            #20
            Re: Web or Desktop?

            I thought I would give some real time experience as to the speed of a dbf file.

            I have a dbf file that has 177,462 records. There are 9 fields in this table. There are 6 indexes attached to this dbf table. I have a form that shows the records in this table having each field shown as a header and then there is an embedded browse showing about 25 records.

            Alpha has built in toolbar buttons, Quick filter and Show All. If I move the cursor to a field that has an attached index and press the quick filter button, the filter runs and the form refresh is instantaneous. If I select a field that is not indexed, the quick filter and form refresh takes two seconds.

            I then created an index for the field that took 2 seconds to filter. I again ran my test using the quick filter toolbar button. The filter and form refresh was instantaneous.

            The only point I�m trying to make, every tool has limitations. Dbf�s have been around for a long time and have worked very well. They are native to Alpha and Alpha has many functions to manipulate dbf files.

            Check out this web site. Ira Perlow is one of the top Alpha guru�s and he has very unselfishly given to the Alpha community a tremendous amount of his knowledge.

            http://www.csda1.com/csda_codeutilit...lity_Tips.html

            Hope this helps.

            Ron
            Attached Files
            Alpha 5 Version 11
            AA Build 2999, Build 4269, Current Build
            DBF's and MySql
            Desktop, Web on the Desktop and WEB

            Ron Anusiewicz

            Comment


              #21
              Re: Web or Desktop?

              Originally posted by Ted Giles View Post
              it's your (_|_) that's in the fire
              I just got it Ted. hah

              Comment


                #22
                Re: Web or Desktop?

                Originally posted by Ray in Capetown View Post
                NOTE Jet - I am not doing these operations on a form
                Just the final results

                Maybe you could get a little more experience with alpha before giving advice on its capabilities.
                I have friends who got disappointed because there are members like you, they will withdraw their plan to buy a 1 year subscription because of you. You want someone to be banned from this forum? will that make you happy? members like you should not intimidate novices, novices will appreciate alpha because of the help they are getting here. now for the company to be happy to know that a subscription has been withdrawn because of you, it is not the way to be recognized ray in this forum, do not pretend as if you know all.
                Last edited by JetLi; 07-08-2012, 09:31 PM.

                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: Web or Desktop?

                  Back on topic Web vs desktop. I just know that if I design a desktop DB, it does not take much in Alpha to turn into a web as well. That is the great thing about Alpha, what table structure is on the desktop can also be live on the web. Desktop first gives you the basis for thinking how the web db should look, feel and perform


                  Reference Speed - everything boils down to queries, indexes and number of users no matter what we do. I have a table with over 1m dbf records. It is fast to load but takes time to query. Across a network, I have no doubt it will get even slower. So I do not get bogged down on this, I simply try to think of other ways to achieve my goals. Sometimes the most efficient way could be the longest and more complext to design. There are so many ways to look at improving speed. Maybe we could benefit from a continually growing list of idea like:

                  1. Reduce the workload for users at peak times by have routine task reports system that is done during quite time. Map your network, users and time
                  2. Build reports and forms using flatter sets (get rid of uneceassary linked tables). It is feasible to have a form based on one table, but still linked to many
                  3. Create user interface that is not attached to any tables (eg xdialogs)
                  4. Think of temporary tables that update masters. Temps can be client side
                  5. Create startup tasks that improve clients side performance and tell the user to go and get a cuppa (they do anyway)- A funny but effective multitask example


                  Challenge your ideas and add to the list
                  -----------------------------------------------
                  Regards
                  Mark Pearson
                  [email protected]
                  Youtube channel
                  Website

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: Web or Desktop?

                    3. Create user interface that is not attached to any tables (eg xdialogs)
                    Can be done with a form and variables too.


                    Archive the unused data to lower the record count. EG: my newest version to come out will have auto archival as wished by the users. It will all go to a backup(basically) of the main adb in another folder. Then will be deleted from the main adb. Still working on it.

                    One of my dealers has 20 concurrent users all day long. They average 5 potential customers per day per sales person(17) 6.5 days a week. do the math for 8 years? That comes to about 3.1 million. Fortunately, the GM checks off the older and bad potential(non-buyers) customers each day and deletes them. They are then zapped. First chance I get, I will see how many are still there. It is a crm app, so a lot of reports(filtered), BD cards, and letters go out daily. they sell 250+ cars a month and all those are kept. The GM has already asked me to help him get rid of the ones over 10 years unless they have been in to visit again. He wants to just delete them, but I am going to put them in archive with a way to pull a customer up again later. All the ones he deletes will alsoi go to archive instead of gone.

                    I have a minimum of indexes and I believe they are all on one field each. I don't have index problems.
                    Dave Mason
                    [email protected]
                    Skype is dave.mason46

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Re: Web or Desktop?

                      Alpha five is best and is appreciated for its little or no coding approach, if i will be learning xdialog with that much code to create a simple user interface then, I will better learn WPF using the C# language to prepare for the next generation user interface on Windows 8,Winforms in Visual Studio is I think they say is dead, no more support from microsoft.Anyway its just an opinion.

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Re: Web or Desktop?

                        The c# and c++ platforms are very slow to write and quite complicated. I am sure alpha will be ready for win8 when it comes time. VS will still be around for awhile, but yes it is dead. There are other alternatives, but most are not RAD and not as good as alpha.
                        Dave Mason
                        [email protected]
                        Skype is dave.mason46

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Re: Web or Desktop?

                          Visual Studio 2012 is the latest and will continue to be developed, but WINFORMS support will stop, the new platform that Microsoft introduced sometime ago for the desktop is Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) using XAML to code its user interface. VB .NET and C# will be used in WPF.In WPF, one can create stunning user interface for the desktop app.

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Re: Web or Desktop?

                            There is no need to do a any coding for xdialog. The wizard does it for you. What needs to be done is validation which also can be done without any need to write code, action script will do it as well. Just need to think of how the steps work.

                            Once you build in the wizard you can then also view the xdialog in xbaisc to learn or leave it as action scripts
                            -----------------------------------------------
                            Regards
                            Mark Pearson
                            [email protected]
                            Youtube channel
                            Website

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Re: Web or Desktop?

                              Originally posted by Clunes View Post
                              There is no need to do a any coding for xdialog. The wizard does it for you.
                              That's not my experience. I might start w. the wizard but then hand code. Not every time, but.
                              Peter
                              AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

                              [email protected]
                              https://www.alphabasesolutions.com


                              Comment


                                #30
                                Re: Web or Desktop?

                                I do not understand how xdialog will help his search problem. The data is still on his peer to peer server and he is not getting it if he tries to query. Seems the query or the hardware would be the issue?

                                He is hooking direct to the PtoPServer and I still do not know how he is doing this. Serial, Parallel, usb, reverse cat5?????
                                Dave Mason
                                [email protected]
                                Skype is dave.mason46

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X