“In Order To Have a Successful Web Application Being Easy to Modify and To Maintain is a Must”

Richard Rabins – Alpha Five Version 10

Complete Transcript of Interview

Let's Talk Computers Radio Talk Show

Host Alan Ashendorf

November 21, 2009

Alan: Today we are seeing more businesses than every relying on Web applications for just about everything – whether it’s working with customers; customers who are buying products and tracking their own shipments or working with vendors who are placing orders; maintaining inventory and tracking shipments.
We are seeing more businesses turning all of their applications into Web applications and having all the right easy-to-maintain modules that we can put into any Web application can make the difference between either having extremely satisfied customers or seeing our customers go elsewhere.
And to continue our behind-the-scenes look at Alpha Five Version 10, it is our pleasure to welcome back Richard Rabins, Co-Chairman of Alpha Software. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Richard.

Richard: It’s good to be back with you, Alan.

Alan: Richard, we have been talking about what makes up front-end of a Web application – the display, the navigation, how the user interacts with the application. And we have been talking about the back-end – how easy it is to get the data from any kind of database server.
But, to me it is very important to have a maintainable application. At the time we write this application, we really don’t know what’s going to be changed later; but we do know one fact – it’s going to have to be changed later, whether it’s two years; three years down the line, it’s going to have to be changed. We have to figure out how this application came about.
And Alpha Five Version 10, in its ability to write code for us in easy to maintain modules really makes it so easy for a programmer to get a Web application up and running. As a programmer, I have seen so many applications that have to be completely rewritten because you couldn’t figure out exactly how the application was written many years ago. And this can cost companies a lot of money. That’s why to me maintenance is very important.

Richard: I don’t know what the statistics are, but I am sure we are talking about tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars that get spent on folks just having to restart applications and throw away application because it is just taking too long and they sort of just forgot what the initial objectives were; or even if they remember what were, if it takes to long to build an application, the business needs change. Business needs are very demanding and the requirements if you lay out a spec on January 1, chances are what you need six months from now and a year from now are going to be different.

Alan: Yes, I’ve seen so many applications where like at the state – the state will start building an application and they will beg so far with it and it gets so bogged down in what it’s trying to do and how it’s trying to do it and all the code behind-the-scenes that they just let this programmer off and the next one that came in doesn’t know where to start that the project just gets scrapped. And yet, here, anybody can take over from where the last person stopped because you have everything you need.

Richard: Right. Being able to go in and see how the application was build and it’s not complicated at all. You are just looking at selections that someone made in a system, vs. polling through literally thousands of lines of code.

Alan: And in most cases the developers look at all this code and they say, “I just don’t have time to do this.” And this is where your new version of Alpha Five Version 10 comes into play because we don’t have to think about that. We just do it.

Richard: Right. The whole premise of computing for a long time is you want your tools to be there to serve you. We pioneered what we are calling “Codeless AJAX” and the whole principle behind that is the developer can focus on the business rules and the requirements and we do all the heavy lifting behind-the-scenes.
So, behind-the-scenes we are writing the bulk load of JavaScript and dealing with server-side scripting. We are dealing with the differences between the various browsers. This way you can stay focused on what your business requirements are and not have to deal with becoming an expert by any means in AJAX, yourself.

Alan: Well, I know we’ve been talking about AJAX and I know that is probably the most important part of the Alpha Five Version 10; but other than that, what is your favorite feature in the new software?

Richard: I should mention that while we definitely see the Web as the future for all the reasons we have described, we don’t see the desktop falling away in the near future. We have also made some massive enhancements on the desktop in Versions 10.
There are certain areas where we see crossover. For example, one of these capabilities in Alpha Five that’s built right into the product is we have got a very powerful report writer. It applies to both desktop applications and Web apps.
We have enhanced the report writer where you can control the layout much more easily and the formatting much more easily. For example you can put green banding or you could put conditional green banding, based on the actual data.

Alan: Your report engine is not a static engine where it just does a report. You can actually drill-down inside the report engine, can’t we?

Richard: That’s correct. We have reports that link to reports. So it’s a drill-down report engine.

Alan: I’ve seen a lot of reports that all we can do is print it to the printer and what we see is what we get. Well, we can actually see something we like and if we want to get more information about it, with just the click of a button we can drill down into another part; drill down into another part and we can see as much detail as we want. It makes it really nice for say a CEO or President of a company who wants to see what is going on and just doesn’t want a flat report.

Richard: So what you are talking about is how our ideas of tools in the process that lets you build, in effect, dashboards. There are a couple of very nice capabilities in Version 10. We have what’s called a page builder and tab UI builder.
Once you have built all these database elements – grids, etc. you can organize them on a page in either a page layout, where we do all the formatting or the other construct, which is the tab UI builder where we can actually have the tab at the top like a menu system and you can flip between pages, which in effect are different databases vies and screens by just clicking on buttons and it’s all done with whole the tab user interface builder. Again, it’s set up without having to write any code.

Alan: You go to some of these websites, where they have used a template to put it together and now all of a sudden you find multiple websites that all look the same and you have lost your competitive edge, because how a customer views your website is what separates you from your competitors. If everybody is using the same type of web design, you have lost your edge, haven’t you?

Richard: Yes, you need your design and you also need the whole experience. Another thing I am quite proud of that we have been able to do is we have been able to leverage all the works that we have done the website, with what we call these web components.
You can now take a web component that you have built and actually imbed that into a traditional desktop form. In effect, it lets desktop users start building Web apps that just run without being on the Web, which is actually quite a feat.

Alan: Because if you have two separate type applications, one for the Web and one for the desktop and they do not look and act the same, people get confused.

Richard: It makes for a training challenge. This way you can make your desktop experience either identical or very similar to your Web experience.

Alan: Yes, especially when you are working with a grid; because people want to see a lot of data at one time and they want to be able to scroll up and down and just click on the line item and they instantly want to see something happen on the screen without the whole screen flickering and repainting and sitting there and waiting with the hour glass.

Richard: Exactly. All of stuff is now possible and again, the whole point of rapid application development is not to let all this technology get in the way to take example of it. For example, taking that point and illustrating it – you can easily build an application that for example takes a look at all the customers for a company and then be able to, in the same grid, drill down and for each customer what they ordered, what the details are for each order, what the suppliers are for each of those, what the payments have been on all the invoices, what the service records.
You are talking about potentially six or seven grids, all linked together, all just grabbing the data on an as-needed basis and there is really is no significance delay. And it’s simply because you are just grabbing the data that you need, when you need it and nothing more than that.

Alan: And because this is a true client/server mechanism you don’t have to worry about multi-user; because we used to have to worry about if this person and this person were both hitting the database at the same time, who got the update and who lost their records. Well, you have a true client/server mechanism in place that we are going through; you never have that problem, do you?

Richard: We take care of all those issues for you.

Alan: And when you’re getting ready to host this application, you don’t have to find a hosting service that has Alpha Five databases; you can actually host it on most servers that are virtual, can’t you?

Richard: Right. The only requirement is you need a Windows server. You can go to any ISP and you can either get a Dedicated Windows Server or you can get what’s called a Virtual Private Server, a VPS, which is a machine that acts as if it’s your own server, but it’s a shared server and it’s therefore a lot cheaper.

Alan: You have lots of Videos and Tutorials and White Pages on your Website. If we would like to find out more information about the now released Alpha Five Version 10 and all of its features, what should we do?

Richard: They can send an email to marketing@alphasoftware.com or to they can go to the Website, www.alphasoftware.com. We also have a very interactive, information rich blog, which is http://blog.alphasoftware.com

Alan: Richard, as always, it has been our pleasure to have you as our guest here today, taking a behind-the-scenes look at Alpha Five Version 10 and how this is really going to help Web designers build great Web Applications. We look forward to talking to again real soon.

Richard: Alan, thanks a lot for the time and have a good day.