Darryl Collins
darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au
Thu Aug 29 19:22:53 CDT 2013
I would totally agree that if I had the need for it (and in many past roles in corporate land I have) this would be a great solution. Where I am now and what we do, and need to do, Access is still the fastest and best solution. However if things change in future, I will definitely consider Alpha Five, and I have also suggested that others look at it for their needs too. Worth considering for sure. Cheers Darryl -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Hewson Sent: Friday, 30 August 2013 6:35 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Alpha Anywhere As an old codger, looking at retirement in a few years, I did not want to start learning a new language nor did I want to start over learning something that I might not use. I have worked exclusively on the same project for four years. I completed the first version in six months and it has been continually modified and updated since. I am on my fourth contract. Some of the issues have been the IT departments restrictions on what can and cannot be done. It was suggested that the Access 2007 tool I built be re-written for the web! A daunting task at best and almost impossible in my mind. It contains 82 tables, 532 queries, 167 forms, 152 reports, 33 modules which contains over 30 UDFs and over 34,000 lines of code. I did research on the best way to convert it to the web and still keep in mind the costs, etc.. I found Alpha Five and from what I read, it seemed to be the best solution. What I read stated it was easy to learn, somewhat easy to convert Access to Alpha Five and it was able to port over to the web. I asked for Alpha Five, v11 to be purchased so I could see how it worked and to see what kind of learning curve I would have. It took over six months for it come in... not because of Alpha but the purchasing department is slow. Once I received it, I was told by the IT department it wasn't authorized to be on the network! So I had to put it on a laptop. I procrastinated for a few months before I started working with it. Probably because I didn't want to learn new things at my advanced age. I have been going through the tutorials and reading the documentation in the Alphapedia for the last week or so. It's been a real eye opener. Xbasic which is the programming language is quick and similar to VBA. I have had no problem reading it... although it's like reading a foriegn language sometimes. It is way more powerful than Access. Many of you have heard the phrase: There's an app for that! You know an app for your mobile device. To compare... In Alpha Five .... There's a function for that! For example, some of you might remember the discussion we had a few years ago on the best way to calculate the someone's age or the age of an invoice or something else. The final function was over 50 lines of code. Alpha has a function for that. The Age() function calculates the age from the current date or any date for that matter. The learning curve is not as steep as I thought. I just have to keep at it. Someone once said (I think it was Arthur) Alph Anywhere "beats the socks off" of Access. I must admit he's right! Jim On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>wrote: > Full Disclure: I am in no way affiliated with the company behind this > software, other than I have found their principals and developers most > forthcoming with software, updates, friendship and technical support. > > Acess developers are looking for a new parking spot. I strongly > recommend AlphaSoftware.com as the place to begin. Write once, deploy to anywhere. > e.g. smart phones, tablets and traditional web sites. No more need to > code for specific platforms: AA handles all this so gracefully that it > makes competitors vomit. No lie. Check it out, free trial downloads available. > > And one more thing... Due to my previously established relationship > with said firm, I can garner a deal for us all. Regular price is ~1K, > cheap at the price, but assuming that I can gather ten or twenty > buy-ins, then the price might drop significantly. > > Restating the aforementioned, I have zero fiscal interest in the Alpha > sfttware firm. I stand to gain absolutely nothing from my endorsement > of their software firm. I just call them as I see them, and in this > case, Idecale AA the leader of the Pack. Nothing else contends.. > > -- > Arthur > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com