InfoWorld ranks Alpha Five #1 among rapid Web development tools

SURVIVOR: InfoWorld ranks Alpha Five #1 rapid Web development tool

The number 8.4 never looked as good as it does today. That's the score InfoWorld gave Alpha Five Version 10 in a comparative review to rank us #1!

In "InfoWorld review: Tools for rapid Web development," Rick Grehan reviews and scores Alpha Five Version 10, Iron Speed Designer 6.2.1, Visual LANSA for the Web 11.5, OutSystem Agile Platform 5.0, and MLstate OPA S2 Beta. On a scale of one to 10, Grehan looked at ease of development, extensibility, portability, documentation, and value.

After thorough, detailed testing, Rick's conclusion was that Alpha Five came out on top. There is only one way I can describe how I felt reading the review. I have to put it in the context of being a dog owner. It kind of felt like my dog won best in show. :-)

Even though Alpha Five scored best in Rick's review, that doesn't take away from the competition. We were up against some exceedingly sophisticated, tough development platforms with many users and apps in the field. They're formidable competitors in the marketplace that we always have to stay several steps ahead of. Clearly, based on this review, we're doing just that.

Of course, we didn't score a perfect 10. So we can't say it was all roses and sunshine for Alpha Five. But Rick's bottom line is this: "Alpha Five is an excellent database application builder that can create desktop as well as Web applications ... "

Just as this article hit the Web, we started to receive e-mails from readers. One observation that Rick didn't point out, but one of his readers does, was this:

"More precisely, Iron Speed builds CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) interfaces for databases. It won't create your application's "business logic" -- that is, code beyond the fundamental CRUD operations. Alpha Software BUILDS real business logic applications!!"

That's a great point that we often don't talk about. Alpha Five is a complete application development environment. Some of these other tools in the market just help kick-start your project, but then leave the rest of the building to be done the old fashioned way -- line by line of code.

Another thing that the article mentions, but doesn't really highlight, is the differences in the costs of these programs. We did the research. We're not only the best product according to InfoWorld, but we also have the best pricing for developers. Take a look at this comparative grid:

• Alpha Five: $699.
• Iron Speed: $2,795.
• OutSystem Agile Platform: $49 per user of an application per month. Equals to $6,000 a year for 10 or $60,000 a year for 100 users.
• Visual LANSA: Not posted on their web site, but we were given a quote by the company which stated "about $15,000 for first deployment server, and $5,000 for every additional server. "

One other tool we have on this front, if you haven't seen it, is our comparison product grid. Take a look at it. Alright, I'll stop thumping my chest here and sew my buttons my back on. It's time to read Rick Grehan's review for yourself.