Alpha Anywhere for Access Developers Julian Baker Alpha Anywhere for Access Developers

Agenda Why What is it Key Features Demo Good Bad Questions

Who am I? AlphaAnywhere newbie Microsoft Access & SQL Server Access since mid 90’s www.theaccessman.co.uk since 2004 Wide range of clients across many industries

Alpha Software Around since 1982 Produced the Alpha Five desktop database Alpha Anywhere released 2013 Continuous development since Various mentions for Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others Dan Bricklin – CTO Alpha Anywhere & Transform

Why Alpha Anywhere Increasing demand for mobile/tablet applications Hybrid applications Access not suitable Wide range of other options available Wanted something that felt intuitive to an Access user Rapid development speed i.e. not starting from the bottom Powerful and flexible and would not restrict Other tools are available!

Key Features No-Code & Low-code mobile/www development “Coding Optional” – but fully flexible where needed Integrated back-end & front-end (hosted/cloud) Data integration (SQL, non-SQL, Rest) Off-line (with sync, conflict resolution) Security framework PhoneGap with auto-update (HTML5) –single code base Standards based (HTML,CSS, Javascript)

Other Features Charting Reporting – PDF generation Mapping inc Google Maps Calendar Video Graphics/images PhoneGap integration – use native features of phone Build in tools to transform SQL data to Json

Demo

Good Rapid speed of development (generally) Strong functional foundations + templates Quick build features/wizards Very database centric Fully customiseable (code & components) Regular addition of new features Goods docs/videos (if you can find them) Going enterprise-grade (features but also price)

Bad Some things turn out to be much harder than expected Still a learning curve Language/code Mobile paradigm Has become quite expensive Not Microsoft Making it look good is time consuming

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Questions