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Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

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    #16
    Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

    I just want to add a comment to Bob Moore's comment.

    While Alpha Five v9 certainly makes a lot of sense for small/medium size business,
    it is designed to work with any SQL backend and the upcoming cluster server gives it the scalabilty, manageability and availability demanded by larger/enterprise customers.

    Many of the real world applications being built/ designed today in v9 platinum are in situations where the the number of users would be in the 100,000's and millions

    We will be demonstrating an Alpha Five v9 app built against a SQL server for a Fortune 20 company which uses AJAX techniques and is designed to scaled to 5 million users. Let me know if you are interested in attending the demo and if you want more information on the cluster.

    Thanks
    Richard Rabins
    Co Chairman
    Alpha Software

    Comment


      #17
      Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

      Originally posted by Mike Thomson View Post
      Thanks Bob - A useful summation.
      Agreed, thanks for the thorough comparison. Personally I had never heard of RoR before reading about it on Alpha's HP and when I read up about it, I couldn't make much sense of it. Your explanations may be why...

      I think one of the key differences is that Alpha Five has its own web server which is of particular interests for people (like me) who want to develop a single application for both desktop and internet use.
      Indeed, that and the database integration are what 'do it' for me. We are trying to get away from the desktop client server model for some parts of our internal tracking app, but will still need desktop elements for others. No other tool has allowed me to work on these different elements with the speed and reliability that Alpha has, especially with regards to porting parts of internal modules to customer sites and vice versa.

      With the coming event of clustered server, existing VPS support and perhaps a PHP model to come it is perhaps the most self-contained scalable development system for the web on the market today.
      What's this about PHP? Do you mean the Apache module which has been around for a while, albeit not 'officially'?

      I presume this is part of the web app cluster package?

      Comment


        #18
        Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

        Thank you for all the responses -- one of the key things that drew me to this product initially is the strong development community and the tireless effort that everyone seems to have!

        This past Saturday, I decided to do a "head-to-head" comparison on my own re: RoR and Alpha Five. I went out to the local bookstore, purchased a big reference book on Rails, and began to read it... I fell asleep. On Sunday, I made another attempt to understand the development framework -- although I did get the gist of it, I quickly came to the conclusion that there was no way that I would be able to punch out a workable app to solve business problems anytime in the near future without investing hours of study and practice.

        I spent 4 hrs yesterday afternoon going through the three video tutorials on how to build a web app with reporting capability. At the end of the 4 hrs, I had a fully functioning app complete with security that was served to the outside world from my own computer -- truly amazing. The big bonus was that the whole exercise was actually fun.

        Conclusion: RoR may be fun to develop in and I'm sure that those who are really familiar with the language can do wonders with it. However, for me, the proof is in the pudding.... at the end of the weekend, I had a live product with Alpha and not with Ruby. Time is money and the gap between the two products from a productivity perspective appears to be pretty big -- more like a chasm. Winner = Alpha Five.

        Andrew

        Comment


          #19
          Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

          Originally posted by Bob Moore View Post
          ...
          Here's my take on the two.
          ...
          Thanks Bob. That was a very useful comparison. Much appreciated.
          Peter
          AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

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


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            #20
            Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

            Great thread, and, Mike T - great demo. Wow.
            Frank R

            Comment


              #21
              Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

              Originally posted by achung View Post
              ....I went out to the local bookstore, purchased a big reference book on Rails, and began to read it... I fell asleep.
              LOL Andrew! I can relate that.

              Comment


                #22
                Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                Originally posted by APFCClyde View Post
                LOL Andrew! I can relate that.
                That's rather sad, because RoR *sounds* like something that *should* be exciting enough to keep you awake! However, nothing has ever made me *want* to spend some of my spare time just "tinkering" with it the way Alpha5 has, esp. V9! :)

                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                  Originally posted by NoeticCC View Post
                  That's rather sad, because RoR *sounds* like something that *should* be exciting enough to keep you awake! However, nothing has ever made me *want* to spend some of my spare time just "tinkering" with it the way Alpha5 has, esp. V9! :)
                  Andrea,
                  You don't happen to work in the basement of your building do you? And is there a very strange man living in the server room?
                  Tim Kiebert
                  Eagle Creek Citrus
                  A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

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                    #24
                    Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                    Andrea, what I meant was I've been bored out of my skull reading some tech books EVEN when I really wanted to learn the material. Let's face it, knowledgeable techies don't always make the best writers/teachers.

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                      Originally posted by Tim Kiebert View Post
                      Andrea,
                      You don't happen to work in the basement of your building do you?
                      Not the basement, but we do happen to have no windows and are situated next to an abbatoir... (I wish I was joking!)

                      And is there a very strange man living in the server room?
                      There's two very strange men living next door to the server room... but that's just IT Support! ;)

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                        Originally posted by APFCClyde View Post
                        Andrea, what I meant was I've been bored out of my skull reading some tech books EVEN when I really wanted to learn the material. Let's face it, knowledgeable techies don't always make the best writers/teachers.
                        True, although some of them are so passionate about their subject that it makes up for it - I must say that tech books have never done much for me, at least until the advent of PDF copies... Alpha's code samples and sample/template databases do the trick for me a lot more than any book could for the most part.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Re: Alpha Five V9 vs. Ruby on Rails

                          If you are not familiar with Object Oriented programming you probably will go to sleep trying to figure out Ruby. I tried that route and being an old procedural programmer was totally lost. Could you pass a test about objects, classes, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism? If the answer is no, then I highly recommend you read a book by Matt Weisfeld named The Object Oriented Thought Process. This book won't put you to sleep. It is well written and it has definitely changed the way I approach many projects, not just programming.

                          On another note, I would be curious as to your thoughts on why a fantastic product like A5 is not better known. I actually bought A5v1 off the shelf in Nashville back in the 90s. I don't think I have seen it offered that way since. Any ideas?
                          Tommy Thompson
                          Thompson Consulting Services
                          Beautiful Kentucky Lake, Springville, TN 38256
                          [email protected]

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