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Where is the WAS book?

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    Where is the WAS book?

    Where is the WAS book, 404+ pages, that Richard mentioned a wile ago. Does anyone know if its available yet??
    Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.


    #2
    Re: Where is the WAS book?

    bringing up to the top
    Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Where is the WAS book?

      From an email received today:

      3)Within 30 days we will have a �Building Web Applications in Alpha Five v9 PLATINUM Made Easy� Book.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Where is the WAS book?

        Curious, who is the author of this book?
        Steve Wood
        See my profile on IADN

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Where is the WAS book?

          I seem to recall that Richard, several weeks ago, mentioned that a "403+ page" book on building web apps was due to be released within "30 days" from that date several weeks ago.

          Looking forward to it!
          Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Where is the WAS book?

            Curious, who is the author of this book?
            I thought it might be you Steve!:D

            You sure have written a book with all of your answers here.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Where is the WAS book?

              I've been thinking about it; "Building Business Web Apps". Much of what users discuss here on the message board is taken out of the Alpha help and the examples. The problem is those resources are a mixture of functions, features and methods for version 6, 7 and 8. For example it's easy to miss the full benefit of Ulink and go down a more complex path using a5ws_logged_in_user_values() because that method existed and was documented before ulink was invented.

              There's also a lot of 'in the trenches' stuff you learn when you build one or more applications, especially if they are for a variety of clients because each one throws you just outside of your known universe. Much of this is not documented anywhere, just learned as you go or buried somewhere on this message board. That's not the fault of the documentation, every software has its learned side.

              Here's an example of in the trenches knowledge. Say you define a page as your redirect after login. But your user has bookmarked the restricted MyAccount.a5w page and goes their directly. Since they are not logged in, Security Framework will properly send them to the login page. Now, after they log in, will they go to your designated redirect page, or the MyAccounts page? Here's a clue, in v8 it's (the default condition that is) exactly opposite of what was true in version 7. The answer may or may not be critical unless you do have something crucial on that redirect page and need them to go there always. If you determine the answer, and don't like the behavior, how do you override that behavior and make it do what you want?
              Steve Wood
              See my profile on IADN

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Where is the WAS book?

                I've been thinking about it; "Building Business Web Apps". Much of what users discuss here on the message board is taken out of the Alpha help and the examples.
                That would be AWESOME! You can count on one pre-order from me right now.

                That is the biggest struggle for someone like me coming from the desktop side....and as many have said before...finding the answers to your questions here and in the help file.

                For example, you answered a question for me the other day saying that the only place to set the default value for items in your dialogs is in the server events->initialize area of the dialog properties with something like:

                currentform.controls.pdfpath = alltrim(str(vpdfpath))

                While this makes intuitive sense now - I sure struggled with it at 2 am when I was working on this for the first time. Since that time (just a couple days ago) - I have been to "polish" my app with some new features by using this newly found info passed on to me by you.

                It would be great to see a WAS book that has a business focus and provides some guidance for real world business app needs. If you would like some ideas for the book, just let know and I'll give you some of the things I have ran into as I built my first few WAS Apps. :)

                There is definitely a learning curve to the WAS side of things once you want to extend beyond the "pre-built" functionality. That being said, if you just want to do some general display / editing of data - Alpha is AMAZING!!! I have a customer where I recently installed a hybrid personnel system. Part of the system has an In/Out board on the WAS side of things that pulls it's employee info from the desktop side. Anyway, the customer asked me if they could put the employees' phone numbers / contact info on a new page (WAS) for the employees' emergency contact information since it was in the desktop side. I had it up and running on their intranet site in less than an hour. I am sure there are a lot of examples folks on here can post like that....Alpha is CRAZY good software.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Where is the WAS book?

                  Originally posted by Steve Wood View Post
                  Curious, who is the author of this book?
                  Susan Bush

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Where is the WAS book?

                    The standard approach to this on all web app platforms is to capture the inbound standard http header "SCRIPT_NAME" on the first request, store it somewhere (e.g. a session variable perhaps) and then, upon successful login, you would be able to redirect them there (re-authorizing the redirected request, of course).

                    Originally posted by Steve Wood View Post
                    I've been thinking about it; "Building Business Web Apps". Much of what users discuss here on the message board is taken out of the Alpha help and the examples. The problem is those resources are a mixture of functions, features and methods for version 6, 7 and 8. For example it's easy to miss the full benefit of Ulink and go down a more complex path using a5ws_logged_in_user_values() because that method existed and was documented before ulink was invented.

                    There's also a lot of 'in the trenches' stuff you learn when you build one or more applications, especially if they are for a variety of clients because each one throws you just outside of your known universe. Much of this is not documented anywhere, just learned as you go or buried somewhere on this message board. That's not the fault of the documentation, every software has its learned side.

                    Here's an example of in the trenches knowledge. Say you define a page as your redirect after login. But your user has bookmarked the restricted MyAccount.a5w page and goes their directly. Since they are not logged in, Security Framework will properly send them to the login page. Now, after they log in, will they go to your designated redirect page, or the MyAccounts page? Here's a clue, in v8 it's (the default condition that is) exactly opposite of what was true in version 7. The answer may or may not be critical unless you do have something crucial on that redirect page and need them to go there always. If you determine the answer, and don't like the behavior, how do you override that behavior and make it do what you want?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Where is the WAS book?

                      Steve, if you do start writing that book, focus on dialog controls. I have found that A5WS does a really great job with grids. Browsing and updating grids of data seems to be the favored use-case for A5WS, and it is possible to make really nice looking grids with all the basic functionality in a matter of minutes.

                      But as soon as the customer starts wanting custom dialogs that deal with a lot of heavily-relational data, or that have even something as simple as a few multi-select elements, and maybe a form that doesn't fit too well physically into a grid-like table layout, it quickly becomes vastly harder and more frustrating to implement the functionality in A5WS than it would be to just knock it out in Java Struts/Spring/Hibernate.

                      A major part of the difficulty is the lack of in-depth documentation of the innumerable quirks in the platform that arise once you get beyond the point-and-click functionality oriented mostly towards grids. For example, it took me probably 8 hours of fiddling around to get a couple of groups of checkboxes to work properly on a dialog without writing an inordinate amount of code for each one. The help file has little on the topic of checkboxes you can't figure out from the A5 GUI, and even the message board here gave me the impression that most people had given up trying or resorted to "stupid pet javascript tricks" to get the job done. Some exploration of what the purpose of the data type configuration for dialog controls might be, and how they actually work in practice would be especially great.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Where is the WAS book?

                        But as soon as the customer starts wanting custom dialogs that deal with a lot of heavily-relational data, or that have even something as simple as a few multi-select elements, and maybe a form that doesn't fit too well physically into a grid-like table layout, it quickly becomes vastly harder and more frustrating to implement the functionality in A5WS than it would be to just knock it out in Java Struts/Spring/Hibernate.

                        A major part of the difficulty is the lack of in-depth documentation of the innumerable quirks in the platform that arise once you get beyond the point-and-click functionality oriented mostly towards grids. For example, it took me probably 8 hours of fiddling around to get a couple of groups of checkboxes to work properly on a dialog without writing an inordinate amount of code for each one. The help file has little on the topic of checkboxes you can't figure out from the A5 GUI, and even the message board here gave me the impression that most people had given up trying or resorted to "stupid pet javascript tricks" to get the job done. Some exploration of what the purpose of the data type configuration for dialog controls might be, and how they actually work in practice would be especially great.
                        Very well said Erik.

                        As an addition to what Erik has said. I don't know Javascript, Java Struts, Spring, Hibernate and don't want to. I want to use Alpha. I know that may seem "hard-lined" and myopic but I simply do not have time in an already overfull day to learn more languages and methods. I must say I am blown away by folks that can program in 5 different things. I have no idea how ones' brain can get wrapped around that many different platforms. I realize I can't live in a vacuum and might need to venture out a little - but since Alpha is promoting itself that you can build web apps easily - I am hoping more can be done to round out the picture as it were. That being said, if you want to build some basic and really more than basic web apps - Alpha lets you do that with amazing ease and speed.


                        This book is a great idea Steve if you can find the time to do it.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Where is the WAS book?

                          Jkletrovets, I appreciate that you just want to get stuff done without needing a degree in computer science. That said, if you think that doing more than just the simplest ad hoc "computer guy" stuff might be in your future, it would serve you well to go ahead and bite the bullet. Doing real programming isn't actually as difficult and error-prone as A5 often makes it seem. Outside the world of XBasic, there is much more of a method to the madness, and once you learn one object-oriented language such as Java, moving over to, for example, C# is no sweat.

                          And those tools and frameworks from the Java Open-Source community (Struts, Spring, Hibernate, JUnit, Maven, etc.) are actually there to make your life easier--not harder. But they do take some time to learn.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Where is the WAS book?

                            Thanks for the comments Erik...

                            I make my living building custom desktop apps and have only recently ventured into the web side of things so I don't feel I fall into the "the simplest ad hoc "computer guy" stuff" category. But, ALL of my experience is on the desktop side. The web side has had me doing several of the "8 Hour" type of adventures you mention with the checkboxes however....that is, once you need to slightly venture off the standard options offered by Alpha.

                            It should be said (from my point of view at least) -there is a ton of pre-built functionality in the standard product.

                            Regards,

                            Jeff

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Where is the WAS book?

                              My 2 cents...

                              I would appreciate a complete overhaul of the on-line help.

                              I use this more than anything else. I don't have to lug a book around and page through to find what I'm looking for. I can also copy and paste examples. But more often than not, finding the function and a good example is very frustrating at best. Many times I would see a function named in this forum, go the the on-line help to learn more about it and not be able to find any information on it. Or what about broken links?

                              - Definitions of current functions
                              - Dump out-of-date function definitions
                              - Good and sometimes several examples on how to use the function
                              - Links to other functions that may compliment the current function

                              Even though I had Alpha since the first version, v8 (web side) has been daunting. I came close to giving up several times and Alpha would have lost a customer. A good up-to-date on-line help would go a long way in supporting Alpha's marketing campaign that creating an Alpha database on the web is "easy."
                              Last edited by EricN; 04-02-2008, 11:26 AM.
                              Eric

                              Alpha Five Websites
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