Alpha Five Version 10: Afforable, real-time global data management

One of our Alpha experts and Version 10 demo users, Peter Conway, put together some pretty incredible sample development pages he recently created in Alpha Five Version 10, without using programming skills in Java, AJAX, or any other complicated language or procedure.

In Peter's words, "Alpha Five Version 10's seamless use of Ajax is remarkable. So much so, I have stopped developing in V9 and have started the planning process to move all applications to the environment, these video’s will show why. V10 is truly an awakening of what is possible, now -- no longer do we see a grids as data, numbers managers, V10 provides a real time graphical experience in both development and daily use that is remarkable for a database, based product, V10 is going to change everything."

Take a look at the pages Peter created to get a small idea of the possibilities.









And here's a final sample that shows the quick row expander being used.



Beautiful work, Peter! We look forward to seeing more.

Cloud-based applications not the uphill battle InfoWorld's Neil McCallister claims

In a recent InfoWorld article, Neil McCallister claims that cloud-based applications are still plagued with a variety of performance problems, despite today's browser improvements. While I'm sure some developers are faced with network bottlenecks and scripting problems, the stability, security, and scalability of every cloud-based app depends on the level of testing and capacity planning completed by an organization.

As I said in my comment, performance is actually not an uphill battle at all. It's not fair for McCallister to say, "for Web apps in general," because that is a generalization. IT teams, developers, and the businesses they serve must (and often do) consider performance as part of the application requirement. I'll stop myself there, but have a look at my comment to get the full scoop on what I think the best practices are for performance testing and a closer look at cloud-based applications.

Alpha Five Version 10 Feature Peek #14: Client-side formatting, calculated fields, and show/hide fields

Alpha Fiver Version 10's grid component supports several powerful "client-side" features, such as calculated fields, dynamic formatting, dynamic show/hide of grid elements, and dynamic enable/disable of grid elements.

The first video shows how you can define a calculated field. The calculation is performed using Javascript as soon as the value in one of the input fields changes.



The second video shows how you can dynamically style controls in the grid. As you'll see, the quantity field can be displayed in a different font and background color depending on what range of values it is in.



And this third video shows how parts of a grid form can be hidden under certain conditions. The grid shown has a section for the billing address and shipping address. If the "shipping address is the same as billing address" field is checked, the entire shipping address part of the grid form is hidden.

Alpha Five Version 10 Feature Peek #13: Data validation

Grids within Alpha Five Version 10 have exceptionally strong data validation features. The video below will show you our data validation rules, data validation custom Xbasic at the field level, data validation events, and automatic honoring of field rules for DBF tables.

Alpha Five Version 10 Feature Peek #12: Tabbed linked grids with codeless Ajax

Alpha Five Version 10 makes it possible to create powerful "master-detail" grids by placing "linked content sections" on the grid. If a linked content section contains more than one grid, the content is displayed in a tab or accordion object.

For example, say you have a customer grid that displays the orders for the customer record that has focus. The orders grid, in turn, might display the order details for the order that has focus. There is no limit to the level of nesting of linked content.

This video shoes how easy it is to create a linked content section.

Alpha Five Version 10 Feature Peek #11: Multi-user editing

Grids withing Alpha Five Version 10 use "optimistic record locking" to trap multi-user edit conflicts. The video below shows you how data automatically refreshes as soon as the user starts to edit (which minimizes chances of a write conflict), and how V10 traps write conflicts.

Alpha Five Version 10 Feature Peek #10: Constrained keyword search

The constrained keyword search within Alpha Five's grid component has always let users create specific keyword searches (a search that searches in multiple fields). But now, you can create "constrained" keyword searches. This lets you perform a keyword search subject to some other constraint e.g. (Department = "Books").

This new "Amazon.com-like" search option makes searching easier and more highly targetable, as the video below demonstrates.