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**Steve Workings** · 02-28-2007, 07:49 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Welcome Jeff! I, and a whole bunch of others, are glad you found A5, this forum, and decided to post a message.

You'll find that everyone here is a friend, and no one is a competitor. We've all found something fabulous we want to share with the world, and we'd like our community to grow.

I presume you've already downloaded the 30-day free trial or even bought an A5 license. This is one product you're going to be really glad that you tried.

Herewith some responses:

1> What have been your experiences in selling solutions made with this product?

People who can't get what they want with other solutions end up coming to me so they can get what they want.

2> Most technical people know of .NET or Java, at least those persons who have some knowledge in software development. What is the reaction when you propose an A5 solution?

I haven't had to compete with other solutions. People come to me for a responsive, customizable database and usually by the time they get here they know A5 is a really good candidate. Kind of like what you know already, but haven't seen it in action.

3> How is Alpha's pricing model. Is it prohibitive to that of A5 competitors?

I think it's terrific. All you need is a copy of the A5 desktop system and, for each web server, a web server license. I've seen comparison to other pricing models such as Filemaker's on this forum. A5 is clearly better-priced than any of the others.

4> How is Alpha's support. Can you get an answer when you need it?

The very best support comes right here on this message board. The documentation is good, there are a few books out there to help, etc. but this board is the best!

5> I see that Alpha has a Certified Solution Provider program which I assume has a referral program. Any comments on this would be appreciated.

Alpha gets approached for custom help quite a bit, and works with qualified developers to help provide the solution. I've been too busy to participate but perhaps others can offer some experience.

**meanrat** · 03-05-2007, 04:19 AM

Re: Alpha vs the competition

Regarding your question about support, I have to say that PHP, ASP.NET or any other more professional programming language provides more support, for there are much more people that use it. So when you have a question about PHP, you can enter it at Google.com and most of the time there's an answer ready somewhere on the internet.

For Alpha5 it's a bit harder. When I have a question I am almost always forced to look on the alpha5 forums. Searches on google also only give me results from the Alphasoftware website. And it happens more often that I won't find the answer.

Overall, in my opinion, Alpha5 software is also very buggy. There are many little innocent bugs like in Alpha5 V7: when you want to edit the code of a webpage, the SCROLLER starts at the top, but the cursor is at the bottom of the page. When you scroll, everything jumps to the right position, but still, it's a bit messy.

Unfortunately there are also many bugs that are dangerous. Because of that, I think, even though you can produce applications at a high rate, the endresults are not 100% liable. But I admit, it could be useful for small business, although if I had a choice, I still would choose something more professional.

**Steve Workings** · 03-05-2007, 09:20 AM

Re: Alpha vs the competition

I disagree with Maarten. I have several web sites up & running for various companies. Some are fairly small of only a dozen pages or so, two probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pages each, and I have more in the planning stages. There's no reliability or accuracy issue anywhere that I know of, and every one of my clients is asking or planning for more.

Yes, Alpha Five, has a few behavioral issues and quirks, just like any other program. And given the complexity of Alpha Five, I'm not surprised. I can point 'em out in Excel, Word and Dream Weaver too. But the company is very responsive about fixing bugs they can reproduce. And they've given us a set of tools that allows me to trample all over the competition.

If you're looking for fast development and a rich environment, Alpha Five should be one of the first tools you reach for. At the very least, start with the 30-day free trial download and take it from there.

**AaronBBrown** · 03-05-2007, 11:39 AM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

I merged the two separate threads into one.

**advcomputer** · 03-05-2007, 05:56 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Steve,

I have been playing around with the 30 day evaluation copy, and I must admit that it is a nifty piece of code. I believe the only issue that I have is with the execution speed of WAS; it is slow, and I am using v8, which I have been told is faster that v7 due to threading enhancements and refinements.

I am running WAS locally, and as such, I would assume the speed would be faster than running on a remote host, although I could be wrong. On average posting data from one page to another is taking 2-3 seconds each, if not more.

Regarding the tool as a whole. it has been my experience, there is no perfect tool, ALL and I mean ALL environments have bugs and I guess it's the skilled programmer that needs to be aware of such bugs and be able to work around them. Alpha is no different.

I would like to get some information regarding the database itself. I am very used to using an MS SQL environment. I relize the Alpha native database is not as fast as a SQL engine, however what are it's limits, multiuser access and the like.

Any help would be appreciated,

-Jeff

**Steve Wood** · 03-05-2007, 06:52 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

V7 was always much faster on a host than on the localwebroot. I recall some discussion that this not because of horsepower or bandwidth but inherent to localwebroot.

I know on my server folks are very happy and you guys that demo it say it is fast enough. Alpha page are not as fast as the same pages hand coded or coded with AJAX included, etc. From other threads here, you can achieve equivalent speed by bypassing the grid components and handcoding pages, including adding AJAX for speed. In general, the pages are 'fast enough' for any one I have developed an app for.

**advcomputer** · 03-05-2007, 06:57 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

I just downloaded and installed the newest patch (3059, I think) and the WAS seems faster, maybe its just me. Bypassing the components can be done, but in a way that defeats the purpose of using Alpha in the first place, I would assume.

-Jeff

**Steve Workings** · 03-05-2007, 11:02 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Handcoding doesn't mean defeating the purpose of Alpha. What you're doing with the handcoding is skipping the thousands of lines that must run if you use a grid or dialog component.

With handcoding, there are lots of very simple, very fast ways to get value (such as from your database...) and then insert them to the html code.

Here's a little example. It uses a hardcoded vUserID from an app that I'm working on right now:

Code:

<body>

<%a5
dim vUserID as c = "000003"
vGreetName = lookupc("f", vUserID, "alltrim(firstname)", "[pathalias.adb_path]\contact", "contact_id")
vGreetText = "Hello, " + vGreetName + "!"
?vGreetText
%>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
</body>

This usesAlpha Five to help populate an html page. The example above is very simple but this simple approach can be easily extended to a lot of uses that still use Alpha Five, but bypass the use of the bulkier components.

Don't get me wrong --I use components extensively. As Steve Wood said, pages with components aren't as fast as those without, but they're still plenty quick enough for my clients.

**Richard Rabins** · 03-06-2007, 01:24 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Take at look at the link below. I think you will find performance of the web pages being served in version 8 is noticeably faster than versions 7 or 6.

If you go to http://afas.alphasoftware.com/SamplePages/, you will see the sample web pages that ship with Alpha Five Version 8 running from a server here at Alpha Software.

Most of these pages are built using components.

**advcomputer** · 03-06-2007, 04:57 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Richard,

Thank you for the post. The speed increase appears to be in order of magnitude vs. the older version(s). Very nice job by your developers.

-Jeff

**FrankR** · 03-06-2007, 06:58 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Originally posted by advcomputer View Post

Richard,

Thank you for the post. The speed increase appears to be in order of magnitude vs. the older version(s). Very nice job by your developers.

-Jeff

I'm very impressed. I can't compare it to previous versions - I'm new to Alpha. However, after reading what people have reported in the past, and then testing those new pages out myself - I'm very happy with the results.

**Thontlb** · 04-04-2007, 09:20 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Originally posted by advcomputer View Post

Richard,

Thank you for the post. The speed increase appears to be in order of magnitude vs. the older version(s). Very nice job by your developers.

-Jeff

V8 did have a noticable increase in speed. I did identical indexed queries retrieving 15,000 zip codes. One with ms Access 2003 with a form based on an SQL compiled query. The other was an A5v8 form with an indexd query operation. In V7 Access retrieved and displayed the form 6 seconds faster than Alpha. In V8 it was 3 seconds faster. 3 seconds is nothing to me, but in pc time its a large margin. The Access queries are faster, but actually it's the screen rendering (redraw) that slows A% down. The machine is a Pentium 4 3.4 with 2 gigs of ram.

I like the new look of V8 and have been using both access and alpha since DOS V2 but ususally do my work in Access. I'm doing an identical db app with both just for kicks and always find a something that one can't do and the other can. I run into the same number of things that I can't do in Alpha that Access can do as in reverse. If Alpha allowed sql statements as recordsources for forms, combo boxes and other controls it would be a godsend and simplify things. I know there must be a good reason why it can't be done, however other .dbf apps (foxpro) managed to do it. I'd put Access away forever if Alpha supported sql statements.

**Richard Rabins** · 04-04-2007, 09:41 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

have you seen this white paper

http://www.alphasoftware.com/whitepa...chitecture.pdf

and also http://dweb.alphasoftware.com/AlphaF...ur/sqlpdf2.pdf

**jmatienza** · 04-04-2007, 11:30 PM

Re: Alpha vs Competitors

Hello, Richard.

You know, I've always wondered why building an application to a backend database isn't as straightforward as building one to the native Alpha database. My impression of Xdialog, to give one example, is that it's just one gigantic workaround. Why can't forms be linked directly to the backend?

I'm sure I'm missing something fundamental here, but I think having just one pathway for building applications, regardless of the data source, would exponentially enhance Alpha Five's appeal.

Just a thought.

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