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

Switch to Alpha.

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

    Switch to Alpha.

    I'm about to make a jump and switch database development platforms... I've been using Approach since v1.0 and Filemaker before that... I can't seem to make by brain think like Access, so A5 it is! I had purchased A5v4 around 1.5 yrs back, but never really got into it. Just purchased v5 today.

    So, which of the available books will be good to grab for reference?

    Also, tia for patience w/ the impending flood of mundane questions from me. ;)


    Roy.

    #2
    RE: Switch to Alpha.

    Hi Roy,

    Welcome to the fold. Get the book by Susan Bush, start with that. Get the basics down and then get Dr. Peter Wayne's book.

    There are some fundamental similarities with the various databases, normalization, etc. Force yourself to focus on Alpha, if you don't know how do do something in Alpha, check the user Guide, etc. Don't try to do it the way you did it in Approach. Your learning curve and frustrations will he a lot less. Don't be afraid to ask questions. We're here to help.

    kenn
    TYVM :) kenn

    Knowing what you can achieve will not become reality until you imagine and explore.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Switch to Alpha.

      I know there are gonna be some major adjustments to make...

      For instance, in Approach/Filemaker, there is only one "set" it would seem... One place where you define the relationships btw several databases (Approach calls them Joins, Filemaker - Relationships). I'm not quite sure how having multiple "sets" is gonna effect the way I work, other than possibly avoiding stupendously large numbers of tables in a join/set.

      Also, in Approach, indexes were basically hands off. They were handled and generated automatically. A5 seems to allow control over them, but I need to learn why. I do know that they frequently became corrupted in Approach. Eventually I stopped using any autoincrementing serial functions of Approach, so that I could just delete the indexes occasionally without losing the "next serial" for a field (approach or dbase perhaps stored the next available serial for autoincrementing fields within the index file). A pain, yes, but app development is full of workarounds anyway, eh?

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Switch to Alpha.

        Will soon be offering training materials from Pace Training on version 5.

        They have just completed a two days hands on training in DC and I understand that it was very well received.

        thanks

        Richard Rabins
        [email protected]
        Richard Rabins
        Co Chairman
        Alpha Software

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Switch to Alpha.

          Roy,

          Don't worry!! Forget how you used to do it. The sooner, the better. Pretend you know nothing about a database, other than normalization, etc. Focus, get tunnel vision, on A5. Yopu'll be running in the fast lane before you know it, unless, you drag Filemaker and Approach methods into the equation. If you do........I hope you don't frustrate easily.

          kenn
          TYVM :) kenn

          Knowing what you can achieve will not become reality until you imagine and explore.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Switch to Alpha.

            Well, I've already got a list of questions in my head that I'm anxious to have answered. Most are of the type:

            How the hell am I going to do this in A5? :)

            Luckily, the message board here seems pretty lively, so if trial and error or consulting the docs doesn't help, I'll have no problem getting a quick answer.

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Switch to Alpha.

              Well, just ordered both books v5 books (Bush, Wayne).

              Perhaps the added expenditure will further bolster my commitment towards switching. ;)

              Comment

              Working...
              X