Key Features in upcoming Alpha Five version 8

[Richard Rabins]

Key Features in upcoming Alpha Five version 8

• Major speed improvements.
• Loads in a fraction of the time taken by Version 7.
• "Feels" much snappier - switching between open windows is now instantaneous.
• Totally new, fresh, modern look - new toolbars, new icons, new gradient fills.
• Ability to create applications with a contemporary, state-of-the-art user interface.
• Great new design-time tools in the form, reports and other layout editors.
• Powerful new Browse features.
• Better looking Forms.
• Many new Xbasic capabilities and new Xdialog features.
• New Action Scripting actions.
• Many new features in Web components, including a Security Framework to automatically add a sophisticated security system to your web applications.
• Powerful new features for working with SQL databases.

For the Desktop

• Speed improvements in all areas, including program load time.
• Great new look - includes five different "themes".
• Dockable "Action Panels" for added productivity and convenience when working in layout editors, the script editor and the HTML editor. Action Panels give you single click access to all of your different tools (such as the toolbox, field drag/drop list etc.) and they conveniently slide out of view when you don't need them to give you more screen real-estate.
• Major improvements in the field drag/drop list and summary field genie make designing layouts much easier.
• New appearance options for buttons, frames and browses give these controls a modern new look.
• Better looking forms.
• Gradient backgrounds supported for most control types, including form backgrounds - gives your forms an ultra-modern look. Over 20 different gradient styles included.
• Powerful new color picker lets you easily set custom colors for any object on a layout. The color picker lets you easily pick different colors in a "theme" to help you select complementary colors.
• Automatic browse "green banding" - different color backgrounds for alternate rows.
• Place buttons and images in Browse cells - make the selection of what image to show data-driven.
• Place images in browse column headings.
• Multi-line browse column headings.
• Define events on browse column headings - when the user clicks on a browse column, execute any Xbasic code that you want.
• Enable sorting when a user clicks on a browse column heading.
• Several new actions in Action Scripting.
• Powerful new Xdialog features including gradient backgrounds on dialogs, new Property Grid control, new tab control, drop-down button controls, improved tree control and much more.
• Hundreds of improvements to Xbasic.
• Printing report layouts with ActiveX controls is now supported (this means you can now print graphs in reports using the bundled SimpleChart ActiveX control).
• Single-click import of Access and Excel databases (from the File/Open menu).
• SSL and TLS Support in Email and in XBasic - including powerful new encryption features.
• Built-in functions for USPS, FedEx and UPS shipment tracking.

For the Web

• Complete Security Framework for creating secure web applications without coding.
• "Group" based security - security settings are made for different groups and logged in users are assigned to groups.
• New "Login" component makes it easy to build login pages without having to write code.

• More control over the layout of components - no longer limited to a rigid tabular structure.
• New "Maintenance Component" for re-indexing and packing .dbf tables on the server.
• Dialog component has client-side calculated fields - e.g. enter a quantity and have the total display without having to do a "round trip" to the server.
• Dialog component has client-side show/hide and enable/disable rules to automatically show/hide or enable/disable controls based on data the user enters into the form.
• Grid component supports "arguments" which can be used in filter expressions. "Arguments" can be automatically bound to session or page variables, or to cookies. This makes it easy to create pages with filtered grids where the filter expression is based on values in session, page or cookie variables without the need for any Xbasic programming.
• Flexible new builder for editing and creating CSS style sheets.
• Improved HTML editor with tabs for fast switching between documents.

Powerful Features for Working with SQL Databases

• Connectivity to SQL Databases.
• Alpha Data Access Objects (AlphaDAO) -a robust set of high level XBasic objects that you can program to build sophisticated applications against SQL data.
• The SQL Query Genie - interactive two-way tool that makes it easy to build and edit complex SQL queries - a great tool for learning SQL query syntax.
• Enterprise Report Builder - use the full power of the Alpha Five report writer to painlessly create reports against any SQL database.
• Universal SQL Database Explorer - powerful "tree structured" tool that makes it easy to explore, report on and manipulate data in SQL databases.
• SQL Command window - execute SQL commands against any SQL database.
• "Passive-Link" tables - easily refreshed snapshots of SQL data that are stored as standard Alpha Five tables.
• Portable SQL - bridges the differences in syntax between the different variants of SQL.
• AlphaDAO Import Genie - Powerful new tool for importing data from SQL databases - offers many enhancements over the ADO Import genie in version 7.

More: For more comprehensive information:
http://www.alphasoftware.com/AlphaFive/

[Tom Mills]

Re: Key Features in upcoming Alpha Five version 8

Well...... unless I'm misreading what I've been able to find, you still can't create standard forms against live SQL databases.

[Dan Blank]

Re: Key Features in upcoming Alpha Five version 8

If I am reading this correctly --> SQL Database Connectivity with Alpha DAO
Alpha DAO is a high level family of objects (each with properties and methods), that make it possible to read from and write to SQL back-end databases.<--

One of the key elements in this statment "write to SQL back-end databses" will be key to my decision to upgrade. I have too many customers asking for this ability in A5. If I can not deliver this with v8, I will probably loose business, or need to switch to MySQL.

I plead with you to PLEASE make this happen with v8!!!!

Thanks,

[Richard Rabins]

Re: Key Features in upcoming Alpha Five version 8

Dan - In the Enterprise Edition of version 8 which is designed for customers who want to work with SQL Data you can write to SQL databases through the new Alpha DAO




SQL Database Connectivity with Alpha DAO
Alpha DAO is a high level family of objects (each with properties and methods), that make it possible to read from and write to SQL back-end databases.

• Alpha Data Access Objects (AlphaDAO) -a robust set of high level XBasic objects that you can program to build sophisticated applications against SQL data.
• The SQL Query Genie - interactive two-way tool that makes it easy to build and edit complex SQL queries - a great tool for learning SQL query syntax.
• Enterprise Report Builder - use the full power of the Alpha Five report writer to painlessly create reports against any SQL database.
• Universal SQL Database Explorer - powerful "tree structured" tool that makes it easy to explore, report on and manipulate data in SQL databases.
• SQL Command window - execute SQL commands against any SQL database.
• "Passive-Link" tables - easily refreshed snapshots of SQL data that are stored as standard Alpha Five tables.
• Portable SQL - bridges the differences in syntax between the different variants of SQL.
• AlphaDAO Import Genie - Powerful new tool for importing data from SQL databases - offers many enhancements over the ADO Import genie in version 7.

What is AlphaDAO?


AlphaDAO provides Xbasic program access to SQL databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access. This functionality extends the familiar Alpha Five database features that previously supported only .DBF files.



AlphaDAO and "Portable SQL" provide easy Xbasic programming access to a large number of popular database products. The list includes:

• FlexQuarters QODBC
• IBM DB2
• InterSystems Cache
• Microsoft Access
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft SQL Server
• MySQL
• Oracle XE, 9i, 10g
• Oracle Lite (9i, 10g)
• Quantel
• Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
• Sybase SQLAnywhere
• Any Remote database that has an ODBC driver

Portable SQL

While the SQL syntaxes used by leading vendors are similar, they have some some critical practical differences. Functions, object names, and literal values are implemented and formatted inconsistently. Complex behavior such as selecting only the first 100 rows often requires equally complex (and database specific) syntax. Alpha Five has implemented a vendor neutral SQL syntax that is automatically portable across databases.

• More than fifty functions that are automatically converted to the appropriate function calls for the target database.
• Object names are automatically formatted for the target database.
• Literal values are transformed to the target database syntax.
• Named arguments in queries enhance the readability of queries.
• SELECT FIRST <rows> syntax is automatically translated to the appropriate (and sometimes complicated) construct on target databases.

As you would expect, Portable SQL is optional. If you need to access the native capabilities of a specific database, simply code your SQL using native syntax and it will be passed directly to the underlying database. Portable SQL also supports named arguments, including stored procedure calls, in native syntax.