Alpha Five: Fast, Flexible, Affordable
Alpha Five v6 retails at $349 for a single user and $1,499 for a five-user network pack. An unlimited user runtime license starts at $399 for three concurrent users.
Small businesses looking to harness the power of the Web have been faced with several hurdles, some financial, others technical. Nowhere is this more true than with e-commerce-based solutions, which are usually geared toward larger businesses and lack low-cost customization options. Solution providers have struggled to come up with affordable Web-enabled database products that can meet the individualist nature of the typical small business.
Solution providers can now turn that dilemma into opportunity thanks to a new breed of Web-enabled RAD systems. The key elements to affordability here are low start-up costs, reduced educational needs, low developmental environment costs and easy deployment.
With those factors in mind, the Test Center set out to find a development environment that meets the needs of both solution providers and small businesses. While there are several products on the market, ranging from Microsoft Access to FileMaker Pro, Test Center engineers determined that Alpha Five version 6.0 from Alpha Software, Burlington, Mass., offers an eclectic blend of features that speeds development without limiting options.
Alpha Five v6 offers an intuitive development environment in which new applications are referred to as projects. Each project is made up of several components, including a data dictionary, data tables, data field relationships, RAD templates and an encompassing menu structure.
Solution providers will find getting started a quick task. Once the product is installed, a developer defines the tables and fields of the database, creates relationships and uses RAD genies to create forms, menus, reports, record locators and automatically generated code to build a complete application.
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Unlike FileMaker, Alpha Five offers a complete programming environment. Using Alpha Software’s proprietary Alpha Basic, developers can further handcode any specialized programming needs. Alpha Basic is the underpinning of the whole product and offers an additional advantage: Developers can look at the automatically generated code to learn how to leverage the built-in programming capabilities. To further ease manual programming, Alpha Five v6 includes wizards that assist in the creation of code when users select common functions from a list to build expressions.
Alpha Five does have some weaknesses, mostly attributable to the integrated help system. The product could greatly enhance the overall learning experience by offering step-by-step tutorials and concise examples.
On the Web side of the equation, the product’s dedicated Web development tool can access all elements of the database through the use of the included application server—finely tuned to custom-generated Alpha Five applications.
While FileMaker can translate original screens and reports directly to the Web, Alpha Five requires a separate code base for Web enablement. But that is not a disadvantage. Products that use a translation scheme tend to be limited in what functions can be pushed down to the Web, while Alpha Five’s approach is limited only by the capabilities of a Web browser.
In addition, the generation of Web-based forms, reports and screens is completely wizard-driven and requires no hand coding. Alpha Five’s application server can access other data-bases via data conduits or ODBC embedding, allowing the product to tie many separate information resources into a single, cohesive interface.
Solution providers will find using Alpha Software’s Web component builder a snap. All one has to do is select data sources, “paint” the screens and forms, and use the wizards to define events. This allows a point-and-click approach to Web application development. Both the Web application server and Web component builder are designed around open standards, which allows solution providers to do extensive customization while guaranteeing compatibility.
The possibilities with Alpha Five are virtually limitless. Solution providers can use it to build quick and dirty databases to meet a specific need in a business and then continually add enhancements and features, while bringing those capabilities to the Web. This approach allows any small business to dip their toes into the Web application pool without limiting future capabilities.