I mentioned last Thursday that I'd had a visit and product demo from Richard Rabins of Alpha Software. I was initially hesitant to take this meeting at all, because I remembered Alpha Five from the 1980s: it was essentially an easy-to-use variation on dBase II. I couldn't imagine any of my readers being interested in a product that depends on DBF files, no matter how easy it is for the developer. What changed my I mentioned last Thursday that I’d had a visit and product demo from Richard Rabins of Alpha Software. I was initially hesitant to take this meeting at all, because I remembered Alpha Five from the 1980s: it was essentially an easy-to-use variation on dBase II. I couldn’t imagine any of my readers being interested in a product that depends on DBF files, no matter how easy it is for the developer.What changed my mind is that Alpha Five Platinum, a.k.a. Alpha Five Version 9, supports working with SQL databases from the desktop, using active-link tables. For that matter, it can perform heterogeneous joins, with the relations between the heterogeneous tables enforced on the client. It uses optimistic record locking when working with active-link tables to avoid holding unnecessary server locks, and has a query optimizer that decides what filtering and sorting can be done on the server.The quick overview of the Alpha Five product, according to the company, is that it is “software for building desktop and web database applications – applications that include report writing, intelligent email, web connectivity, backend database access, data browsers and security.” The company goes on to say: Alpha Five is “beginner friendly.” You can define and manage databases — and create complete applications without programming. With Alpha Five’s Action Scripting, Genies, and point-and-click interface you focus on building your solution, not on the programming details. Professional developers benefit from Alpha Five’s Xbasic language. You can create user defined functions and integrate external software libraries. Thousands of functions are included. My enthusiasm for learning yet another computer language was extremely limited, but Xbasic and Xdialog both turned out to be easy and well-documented. I was skeptical about the performance of the Alpha Five application server for Web applications, but it was perfectly fine in my limited tests — and Alpha has introduced a clustered server for people who need extra performance, scalability, and reliability. I was skeptical about how Alpha Five could possibly support Web 2.0 applications and still be easy for developers, but its new Ajax support easily integrates with Xbasic.I haven’t done extensive development with Alpha Five Platinum at this point, but I have tested the beta enough to uncover a few small bugs in the newest demos, which the Alpha developers fixed overnight. On a weekend, yet.I’d say at this point that the Alpha Five Platinum beta is good enough to be worth some evaluation time. Start with the older Alpha Five product overview to get a feel for the product; go on to the Alpha Five Platinum tour to find out about the new version; read about what’s new to get the details; watch the videos embedded in the “what’s new” material; read the blogs for Richard’s inside tips; and sign up to download a beta trial. Software Development