I'll try and make this as brief as possible. And thank you in advance for any insight anyone can provide.
I'm a faculty member at a community college in Bakersfield, CA. trying to make a decision VERY QUICKLY on a new development environment to integrate into my SQL/Database Design course. My class starts the end of August with 30 students. We use M$ SQL Server and MySQL for the SQL portion of the course, M$ Access for the front-end interface work, and I'd like to incorporate some "better" web access. I'm currently using ColdFusion for this function, but have never been completely happy with it.
I stumbled upon Alpha Five V9 and downloaded the trial copy and it looks promising, but this still have a bit too much overhead for a one semester course. V10 looks VERY promising.
I've been calling Alpha Five for TWO WEEKS trying to get some answers and have NEVER received a call back, nor have I been able to talk to ANY human... this does not bode well. As a last resort I'm trying here to the general user base.
My questions:
1) Does anyone have a more defined release date for V10 other than "Summer"? I need to be able to get it and become familiar enough with it and create a few labs using the product before my class starts at the end of August. In reality, these labs won't be needed until October.
2) Will V10 have a more "streamlined" process for the webserver side of development than V9? From my limited use, V9 still has a few too many steps for 1st time students (who have VERY different skill sets) to pick up, along with SQL and data modeling, in a one semester course. I may be able to make some cheat sheets after I learn more.
3) Does anyone know pricing for V10? I need two sets of prices. First, for academic use for 30 students + 1 for the instructor. Second, if I like the product enough, I may do some real-life development in my consulting business. I've reviewed the pricing web pages and am a bit confused. For my own needs, I would like to run the server product on multiple servers. Let's say I develop a product that I want to sell to multiple customers who have varying concurrent user requirements. One customer might have 2 users at a time on the web server and another might need 30 users concurrently running on the web server. Most, if not all, of my development will be run from a web server.
4) Will V10 server run as a service, or an application?
5) I received an email yesterday from Alpha Software with some great pricing... and I'm a little ticked that the offer ends July 4th (2 days to decide) and no one is at the company to answer questions. The offer has some VERY unique wording in one section.
"# You automatically qualify for Upgrade pricing on the upcoming Alpha Five Version 10 which will only be available for Version 9 customers.
# 100% of the money you spend can be credited toward a future purchase of Version 10 "
Does the second line mean for a NEW, additional, purchase (after the initial purchase of V9)? Or does it mean it will be applied to your upgrade pricing for V10.
6) What will the upgrade pricing be and are they changing the purchasing scheme that is used. For instance, will they have a buy the server version and you can deploy the developed app on an unlimited number of servers and clients.
I know I said I would be brief, and believe it or not this is, based on the number of other questions I have. 8-)
Thanks for anyone who can respond by July 4th especially.
Phil Whitney
I'm a faculty member at a community college in Bakersfield, CA. trying to make a decision VERY QUICKLY on a new development environment to integrate into my SQL/Database Design course. My class starts the end of August with 30 students. We use M$ SQL Server and MySQL for the SQL portion of the course, M$ Access for the front-end interface work, and I'd like to incorporate some "better" web access. I'm currently using ColdFusion for this function, but have never been completely happy with it.
I stumbled upon Alpha Five V9 and downloaded the trial copy and it looks promising, but this still have a bit too much overhead for a one semester course. V10 looks VERY promising.
I've been calling Alpha Five for TWO WEEKS trying to get some answers and have NEVER received a call back, nor have I been able to talk to ANY human... this does not bode well. As a last resort I'm trying here to the general user base.
My questions:
1) Does anyone have a more defined release date for V10 other than "Summer"? I need to be able to get it and become familiar enough with it and create a few labs using the product before my class starts at the end of August. In reality, these labs won't be needed until October.
2) Will V10 have a more "streamlined" process for the webserver side of development than V9? From my limited use, V9 still has a few too many steps for 1st time students (who have VERY different skill sets) to pick up, along with SQL and data modeling, in a one semester course. I may be able to make some cheat sheets after I learn more.
3) Does anyone know pricing for V10? I need two sets of prices. First, for academic use for 30 students + 1 for the instructor. Second, if I like the product enough, I may do some real-life development in my consulting business. I've reviewed the pricing web pages and am a bit confused. For my own needs, I would like to run the server product on multiple servers. Let's say I develop a product that I want to sell to multiple customers who have varying concurrent user requirements. One customer might have 2 users at a time on the web server and another might need 30 users concurrently running on the web server. Most, if not all, of my development will be run from a web server.
4) Will V10 server run as a service, or an application?
5) I received an email yesterday from Alpha Software with some great pricing... and I'm a little ticked that the offer ends July 4th (2 days to decide) and no one is at the company to answer questions. The offer has some VERY unique wording in one section.
"# You automatically qualify for Upgrade pricing on the upcoming Alpha Five Version 10 which will only be available for Version 9 customers.
# 100% of the money you spend can be credited toward a future purchase of Version 10 "
Does the second line mean for a NEW, additional, purchase (after the initial purchase of V9)? Or does it mean it will be applied to your upgrade pricing for V10.
6) What will the upgrade pricing be and are they changing the purchasing scheme that is used. For instance, will they have a buy the server version and you can deploy the developed app on an unlimited number of servers and clients.
I know I said I would be brief, and believe it or not this is, based on the number of other questions I have. 8-)
Thanks for anyone who can respond by July 4th especially.
Phil Whitney
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