Recently, I had the good fortune of being able to participate in a
on-line meeting/presentation demostrating the capabilities of the
DesignBais product (DB).

http://www.designbais.com/

The presentation was done by Tony Gravagno, and I really appreciate the
effort he made to outline the product, show off some of its extensive
features, and answer many of the group's questions.

Though my *only* exposure to DB thus far has been Tony's 2 hour
presentation, I was thouroughly impressed and will move forward with
the available 60 day trial.

IMO, DB appears to be a polished product that can easily breathe new
life into old Pick applications. But, not only do I see it putting a
new face on old apps, I see it as the way to develop new applications,
for which a web-browser based interface is appropriate.

The interfaces DB can create are mondern looking and supporting the
visual elements you expect to find on today's web sites. There are
many great features that you can read about on the DB web site. Field
level validation without page refreshing is one. I won't list them all
here.

Sadly, their website is a little lacking in terms of visuals and
detailed explanations, but I've been told they plan to improve it.

The biggest thing to note is that it is easy to use the product. One
doesn't have to know anything about AJAX, JavaScript, HTML, XML, etc.
The develper can just focus on dropping their fields, lables, buttons,
etc where they want them on the page, then "hook" them to their MV
database to read and update data as they see fit. All this by setting
various properites in the DB designer. No code to write.

There is a *LOT* of control and flexibility - Allowing you to leverage
existing investments file structures, and BASIC code routies.

I know I've gone on quite a bit for someone that has never used the
product and only seen a single presentation, but this is the first MV
add-on product I have seen a a very long time that has actually got me
excited about MV development again.

It appears that one can have the productivity, simplicity, and
deployment ease of the traditional, green screen applications of the
past, with the user interface that more and more businesses demand.

I really think this product is worth serious consideration, so if you
have any questions, your best bet is to contact DesignBais or talk to
Tony G.

Cheers,


--
Kevin Powick

Hi Kevin - I have been using DB for 18 months now, on a number of
projects and agree with what you say. It is sometimes the little things
that make something stand out, and DB has some of those little pieces
in there that show they have really thought about the developer and the
application.

I am sure you will have fun developing in DB and get a good looking app
developed fairly quickly.


rgds
Symeon.

We are well over 50% of the way through the conversion of our Laboratory
Information System. Every prospect I show it to is very impressed and we
show favorably compared to any other new system out there. We are
generating a lot of interest.

What you say here Kevin:
appropriate.

This is what is so extraordinary and why I said it "legitimizes" the MV
database.

I'm very excited and see a very bright future.

I highly DesignBais to anyone thinking about tomorrow. I would also suggest
spending a few dollars and letting the DesignBais team train your staff and
convert a few of your programs as a kickstart. It's well worth it.

Feel free to contact me for a quick on-line look at what we have done.

Jeff

Yes - BUT - I sent a query to these folks at DesignBais with a simple
question that they haven't answered:
Did you use your product to create your web site pages?
Curious that they haven't responded....
It is an interesting product though.
I wonder what Raining Data's marketing position is in response to some
competition to MvDesigner (sp?)?
And if you believe the info advertising the product - a lot easier to
implement.

"Jeff Caspari" <FDFDFDFD (AT) sneakernet (DOT) com.invalid> wrote

"Tom Phillips" <squash (AT) computer (DOT) org> wrote

Tom, why is that significant? I'm gessing the answer is no.
What is your intended use?

Jeff

Jeff -
I've been wanting to migrate as much of my clients applications to "web
ready" for years now.
It looks to be that I can use DesignBais for inquiry and report apps without
too much work.

Complicated apps like purchasing and order entry would need lots of study
first, just because they can "bounce" to so many other functions - maybe do
updates and return to the current task at hand. For example - during
purchasing a buyer spots something they want to change in a product. They
bounce - make the changes - and return to continue buying.

Then I'm left with front end host apps like the standard stuff: "hi there;
we're..; contact; etc., and the biggie - secure login/logout".

So I'm trying to determine how much of this DesignBais can do.
If they are using it for their own site, then I've got a real live example
of the front end capabilities.
In other words - do I use DB plus another standard web page construction
tool or can DB do it all?
Does this help to understand my query?
Tom...

"Jeff Caspari" <FDFDFDFD (AT) sneakernet (DOT) com.invalid> wrote

"Tom Phillips" wrote:
I'm intimately familiar with both products so I guess I'm qualified to
comment on this.

Raining Data has no specific position regarding DesignBais.
mvDesigner is an Omnis Studio front-end which plugs into D3 using
FlashCONNECT on the back-end. It's a great idea that was completely
mismanaged, and for that reason mvDesigner is pretty much a dead
product. Omnis Studio is great software but it's EXTREMELY complex.
It is exactly what DesignBais is Not: An installed development
environment that uses a custom object oriented language and browswer
plugins. DesignBais uses nothing but the browser and MV BASIC, no
plugins, no installables for the developer or the end-user, no other
languages, no object orientation. There are a handful of people in
the Pick market who could use mvDesigner but anyone in our market can
use DesignBais.

mvDesigner should have been an Omnis Data Access Module for all MV
platforms (sort of like what mv.NET is) but in RD's hurry to lock
people to their own brand they shut out an entire market. OR -
mvDesigner should have allowed Visual Studio to plug into many MV DBMS
products, like what mv.NET does, but RD insisted on trying to push
Omnis on the Pick market, which was a dreadful mistake.

I have the highest respect for the Omnis Studio product and the people
who use it. It just doesn't fit this market and the shotgun marriage
with MV didn't help its popularity with this market, but the good news
is that it's doing fine outside out our market with Mac, Linux, and
Windows developers and users around the world.

DesignBais has been ported to a number of MV DBMS platforms and there
are more to come in just a few weeks. It's easy to use, made just for
this market, and well accepted as such. The cost for development is a
couple thousand less than for mvDesigner, and for deployment is a tiny
fraction of the cost as well.

For all of these reasons there is simply no comparison between
mvDesigner and DesignBais. If you get DesignBais you will be well on
your way to putting a new front-end GUI on your app and just that much
closer to new sales - to paying clients or to your own management.

HTH
T
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com

"Tom Phillips" wrote:

I'm glad you separate inquiry and reporting.
- DesignBais defaults to update forms but these are rendered as
inquiry-only screens as easily as calling them with the characters
"~E" for Enquiry.
- Reports are designed much like forms, entirely in the browser.
Reports have a header, detail, and footer sections for paging, and
some other nuances.

All of this is easily done. Forms are set as "modal forms" with a
single checkbox. In a prototype I just did I have a customer master
maintenance screen with a button that launches an A/R Inquiry page.
That page has an on-form report which shows open invoices. Click an
invoice number and header and details display on the page. Now click
the sequence number on an detail item and another form launches to
show the G/L distribution of that line item. Click a product ID and a
form launches to show the product info. That's where my prototype
stops but the products page can easily then launch to forecasting,
inventory control, purchasing, receiving, etc - all of which pages can
launch elsewhere, ad infinitum. Any of these pages can be inquiry or
update, and of course closing windows windows just returns you back to
where you jumped.


Consider the difference on one hand with intranet and extranet
business apps, and on the other hand with internet-facing web pages.
Intra/extranet applications are genenerally built with DesignBais and
accessed via secure login, while your internet pages that are hit by
Joe Surfer are built with other common tools.

DesignBais is primarily for generating dynamic business forms with
field-level validation, page events and other Ajax features which are
handled with DBMS interaction. You can also use it to render product
catalogs, availability, and other data coming from the back-end - this
would be more extranet access for trading partners and authorized
logins. (The prototype mentioned above is for a client who is adding
a completely new extranet module to their app, which their clients
will open to their trading partners.) Static pages are best built
with other tools like Dreamweaver (my preference) or FrontPage.
Static pages for internet consumption could include product catalogs
which are generated elsewhere and then saved so that you don't hit the
server constantly for data that isn't changing too often.

DesignBais allows you to build side and top menus for application
navigation and to allow the user to jump off to any URL. For general
(internet) site navigation it's better to use standard tools that
don't hit the database. My particular favorite is DHTML Menu Builder:
http://xfx.net/utilities/dmbuilder/


The DesignBais International site is static and was not built using
their own tool. I believe this answers the question you put to them.
They will add more examples to their site as time permits. In the
mean time if you'd like to see how the product works you can contact
me and I'll setup a demo like I did for Kevin and some other
colleagues.


I hope that's been answered now.

HTH
Tony
TG@ removethisNebula-RnD.com

Tony Gravagno wrote:
I don't think that is much more accurate than saying that anyone can
use anything. I really will have to delve into this and see for
myself, but until then I'll ask questions instead. I use a hosted (on
linux) OpenQM implementation running Apache web server on the same
host. What would I need to ask my hosting site to do in order to run
DesignBais? I'm certain that at no time in the near future will this
site diversify to using Windows servers, so I think the answer is that
I cannot use DesignBais now or any time in the foreseeable future,
correct?

Is anyone working on an mv.NOT product? If they did, is DesignBais
written so as to be able to be ported to it?

Microsoft hasn't seemed to suffer from such an approach ;-)

Really? Is there a good online community that I could listen in on?
I'm curious how big the Omnis Studio user base is. I used to hear
about the product (before RD), but never hear of it outside of cdp
anymore. I certainly don't think of the tool as having a promising
future, but I might be misreading the tea leaves.

That's great. Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased with what it is, even if
sorry for what it isn't. Cheers! --dawn

opinion that if it is that good why did they not use it for their own work.
You have clarified that.

My next question is what is a couple of thousand less. Why is everybody
afraid of posting the retail price. Heck I work with oil companies and
everybody knows the posted price is not what you pay but it does give a
ballpark starting point.
Peter McMurray

DesignBais has been ported to a number of MV DBMS platforms and there