Updated Alpha Supports Browser Access
Alpha Five Version 6 provides menu-driven scripting to more easily build Web-accessible databases.Peggy Watt, PC World
Alpha Five Version 6 adds enhanced scripting functions and tools to write browser-based applications. The update is available now from Alpha Software priced at $349 for a single-user copy. Alpha's Web Application Server costs $699. The company is offering an introductory price of $849 for Alpha Five Version 6 bundled with the Web Application Server.
Basic Features
"Most database Web sites involve heavy-duty programming tools," says Richard Rabins, co-chair of Alpha Software. Alpha has long been known as a desktop database interface, but its menu-driven tools can now generate HTML and give a database a Web interface, he says.
"You specify your preferences, and we write the code for you," Rabins says. Alpha users click their selections through active scripting menus, choosing such options as date format, colors, the type of field, and data update permissions. About 60 cascading style sheets are also built in. The more experienced user can open the code and revise it directly.
"My thrust as a developer is to switch to browser-based applications," says Ray DiFazio, a database developer and longtime Alpha user. "Now, if the client wants to put up a Web database, we just need to get Alpha's Web Application Server. It's a huge leap forward to not have to stick with a desktop-based database interface."
DiFazio notes that Alpha Five applications can manage data from other ADO and ODBC-compliant databases such as MySQL, IBM DB2, MS Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and QuickBooks, as well as Alpha Five's own.dbf engine.
In fact, Alpha has partnered with open source database vendor MySQL AB, which will be bundling an integrated version of Alpha Five for its customers. Rabins says that although Alpha Five's primary users are midsize and small businesses, large corporations are expressing interest in the new Web-enabled version.
Midlevel Power
"I don't think someone is going to replace SQL Server with a lower-level tool--that's a hard sell--but I do think that Alpha Five Version 6 would be perfectly adequate for lots of chores that many people would normally select a higher-end tool to do," says analyst Amy Wohl of Wohl Associates. She says the update offers "impressive function for its ease of use."
Alpha's approach is "easy to use and quite powerful for even new users unfamiliar with database design and usage," agrees Tim Bajarin, analyst with Creative Strategies. He says Alpha is unlikely to lure developers from SQL Server and other high-level engines, but especially with the Web technology support, Alpha may draw more midlevel users.
"Alpha's approach offers a very simple and intuitive alternative and it's a real alternative, especially for newer companies and users who want a more Web-based set of tools," Bajarin says.
One of the first applications using the new version of Alpha Five is Airline Employee Travel, a membership site for airline staffers that draws from databases of multiple airlines, noting flight and lodging discounts and standby options available exclusively to airline personnel. Developer Kevin Tucker crafted the browser-based interface through the active scripting in a beta version of the updated database-development tool.