"Introduction to Alpha Five Version 9 - Platinum Edition Part 3"
How to Navigate Database Applications with SuperControls

Richard Rabins - Alpha Five Version 9

Complete Transcript of Interview

Let's Talk Computers Radio Talk Show

Host Alan Ashendorf

October 4 2008

Alan: Today on Let’s Talk Computers we will continue our conversation about the benefits businesses are now receiving by creating their own in-house business applications. It is our pleasure to have as our guest Richard Rabins, Co-Chairman of Alpha Software. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Richard.

Richard: Hi, Alan. It’s a pleasure to be back with you.

Alan: Richard, we have been talking about all the pitfalls that businesses and developers can run into by relying on third-party applications or controls for their business applications. And we are talking about why Alpha Five Version 9 eliminates this problem by including “SuperControls.” And we just started talking about one of your great SuperControls, which is the “BrowseControl.” This has so many features imbedded in it for developers.

But what about navigation - Navigation to me on a form is so important because the end user needs to get from any point in their program to any other point in their program. And you actually have a record navigator SuperControl; and how does that work?

Richard: The Record Navigator SuperControl is actually a fun control in Alpha. Typically, you data can be navigated, where you can go from record one to record two. In either, the record number order, which shows the data in the order it, was entered, but the beauty of databases is you can apply what are called “indexes.”

You can set the data available in multiple different ways. You may want to look at your data based on last name, first name, phone number, age of the customer, the size of the order and you can essentially set your index any way you want and then navigate.

So, you might want to say, “I want to see the smartest kids to the least smartest kids.” And you can just visually move slider to the middle of the slider bar and that will automatically take you right to the mien of the kids’ grades. It’s a very powerful tool for just moving through your data based on any index.

Alan: Alpha Five has true indexing where a lot of other companies use what they call “pseudo-index,” by using an SQL call, but it’s not really truly indexed. You use real indexes, don’t you?

Richard: Yes, we absolutely do. We also support through SQL (if we are working against a back-end database such as SQL Server) we support their indexing system, as well.

Alan: That’s very important because when you’re going against a back-end and you’re trying to grab just a small subset of records you don’t want to bring all the records over to the client and then do sorting or manipulation. You want to do it at the server side, don’t you?

Richard: It’s a critical point. When we go from a traditional desktop database, which are typically handling a limited number of records (although that limit can be substantial). Many people who have got millions of records in Alpha Five databases; but if you were managing substantial amounts of data, there is a strong argument for having your data sitting in the SQL back-end.

And one of the things the SQL back-ends do, such as SQL Server or MySQL or DB2 or Oracle – they are very, very good at processing lots of data, quickly and reliably. The beauty of the way we have architected Alpha Five is that we have architected it in a true client-server mode where we let the server do what it does best, which is typically manipulating and massaging and sorting the data and sending what we call the “result set” to Alpha.

I will give you a practical example. We actually did a comparison to one of our friendly competitors, FileMaker. And they don’t quite use the same approach. We took 1,000,000 records in a database and used FileMaker to sort them through FileMaker and did the same thing with Alpha. Alpha took about 8 seconds FileMaker took about 15 hundred seconds and the reason is architectural.

We essentially issued a SQL command under the covers so our user didn’t have to know any SQL and instructed the SQL database to sort the data and send the data and send the results to us. FileMaker’s approach was they essentially told the back-end SQL Server, to send us all your data and we’ll do the sorting.

The reality is SQL Server happens to do sorting really well. So, the result is a dramatically different outcome and it speaks to the point that designing your product correctly to work in a client-server fashion against a SQL back-end is very important.

Alan: Yeah, because we never really know where we are going to be in the world. It’s not like all this is in one business in one little room. We could be on the other side of the globe and what comes over the line makes a lot of difference in bandwidth, doesn’t it?

Richard: Absolutely. What I have just described the scenario was assuming that bandwidth wasn’t even an issue and saying that you are paying a penalty by doing the work on the client. But, you also have to move in the one case, you are actually moving the 4,000,000 records or 10,000,000 and you start chewing up bandwidth and slowing everything down.

A good design essentially keeps the data on the server and just sends the results or the answers or the pieces of data on an “as needed” basis to the client, which reduces the band load enormously and increases the speed and performance.

Alan: Well, you have something new that has been added to the new Platinum Edition called, “Active-Linking Tables.” What is that?

Richard: Acting-Linking Tables is the way of seamlessly letting you build applications against any back-end database, such as SQL Server or MySQL. What we had prior to this was something called “Passive-Link,” which essentially we took a snapshot of the data in the SQL database, brought it into Alpha and worked in Alpha in the Alpha format, which is fine for things like reporting and certain kinds of applications.

What Active-Link is really saying is we want to keep the data in its native SQL format, but we want to be able to build custom applications; browsers; forms; reports with full read-write and edit capabilities. So that as an example if you say 100 data entry people in a company and you wanted them all to be entering data live into the SQL database that is what Active-Link Tables are about.

The benefit of using Alpha Five as your front-end is that you can build very rich custom applications that are very scalable and robust. Because now instead of using the Alpha engine, which is best suited typically for small and medium sized businesses you have actually got the full back-end power of the SQL database.

Alan: Well, talking about the back-end databases, which are so important, we start off with say maybe using the native database that is built into Alpha and we go to say MySQL and then we go to Microsoft SQL. Normally you have to rewrite all the code because each back-end is slightly different.

But, you have a genie that takes care of that for us, don’t you?

Richard: The history of SQL is quite interesting. It was initially conceived of as being a unifying query language to multiple different databases. It was supposed to be one flavor of the language. As has happened even in the non-computer world, if you look at American English vs. British English – the languages are similar but not the same. Certainly there are spelling differences and meaning differences. A computer would have problems if it were trained in American English understanding British English vice versa.

The same has happened in the world of SQL, which is a pain for a developer when you have to keep worrying which flavor of SQL he is dealing with. We have developed something called “Portable SQL,” which sort of high-level version that the Alpha Five Genies and Wizards understand. And then, when you decide to connect to SQL Server it will automatically write the SQL Server flavor of SQL. And if you change your application now to connect to DB2 from IBM it’s going to make the necessary subtle, but necessary changes.

But as we all know, subtle changes like even changing a comma or changing a double-quote to a single-quote, if you don’t get that right, the system doesn’t work. So computers, at least for now are quite fussy about syntax. So, Portable SQL is parced into the appropriate and correct SQL, depending on the back-end you connected to.

Alan: So many developers stick with a certain back-end and it may not be the right back-end to work with – because they really don’t want to take the time to convert it to MySQL or Microsoft SQL or DB2. But this takes all that interaction away from the developer.

Richard: It removes that problem and its part of the philosophy of developers or people who are using Alpha is to be able to focus on the needs of the client. The client could be people in their company or for an independent developer, the paying client. All of these things that consume time and create friction and aggravation end up in resulting with less work being done in a certain amount of time and a less satisfied client.

So, to the extent that we know and can anticipate all the pain points and friction points, whether it’s this Portable SQL or whether it’s being able to design the forms with all kinds of controls on them or whether it’s being able to set up a custom email campaign easily or design reports that give useful information to management.

Whatever it is - our goal is to make this as seamless and as frictionless as possible, i.e. as easy and rapid with the endpoint being letting the developer get more work done in the same amount of time and driving satisfaction that way.

Alan: If somebody would like to find more information about Alpha Five Platinum where would they go?

Richard: They would just go to the Alpha Website at http://www.alphasoftware.com.

Alan: Richard, we are out of time and there is so much more to talk about on how the new version of Alpha Five Version 9 assists developers to build robust full-featured business applications and I’m looking to continuing this conversation next time.

Richard: Alan, I have really enjoyed being with you again and thank you for the opportunity. Be well.