Latest news for dbQwikSite, dbQwikEdit, dbQwikSync, dbQwikReport

dbQwikSite 6.0 Beta Ready for Testing

2009-09-15T21:02:00.004+07:00

dbQwikSite V6 is on the way. As part of the release we are conducting a public Beta test where users can download the pre-release version and provide feedback to the development team about new features.

Anyone who wants to participate as a tester can download V6 BETA from the user forum
There is a thread available to record any issues and chat about new featured.

Official release dates for dbQwikSite production release is not available yet. The release date will depend on the outcome of the Beta test. We are targeting about 1 month for Beta testing.

dbQwikSite V6 is on its way

2009-07-07T15:54:00.008+07:00

Without a doubt the single most asked question I hear is: "When is version 6 coming?" The answer too often eludes me. But today I am happy to say... it's on the way.

After going through some staffing changes, version 6 took some hits in terms of both scope and delivery schedule. I have been avoiding answering that most prevalent question because, I just did not want to misguide our loyal user community. Amid all the forum rumors of the lack of delivery of new versions, I did not want to add to the confusion.

Truth be told we have been working on version 6 all along and it is shaping up for a release. Version 6 offers a range of new features that should make dbQwikSite generated web sites more powerful and flexible than ever before. The list is not yet finalized, as we try to squeeze in those last few features before freezing development to begin testing in earnest. V6 focus is on two areas, making pages more powerful for the end user and on design flexibility to allow designers greater control on the look of generated pages.

In the area of more powerful pages, look forward to: multiple categories, in-line edit/update, group actions against multiple selected records, new user controls, and enhanced search capabilities.

In the area of design you can expect to see: custom add/update form support, enhanced CSS classes, customizable HTML sections on all pages.

The above lists are not comprehensive, but should give you an idea of what to expect. As far as delivery dates, these will depend on testing results. Tomorrow is the date set to set the final scope and thus the development target deadline. After that some testing, and finally general release. It's hard to say exactly when these will occur, but stay tuned to this blog for news and updates.

Beyond V6. Many will note that V6 does not include true dot net code generation. That's because we wanted to do that right, and rather than shoehorning dot net functionality into the more classic paradigm of dbQwikSite generated pages, we decided to come out with an all-new version of dbQwikSite for dot net. That in no way infers that we are dropping PHP support. Quite the contrary, we are planning to migrate PHP into the same framework as the dot net product, leveraging a class oriented code generation in both languages. This will open new doors to PHP users, as well as Microsoft platform users who wish to extend and enhance dbQwikSite generated code.

dbQwikSite 5.4 Makes it a Joy to Deploy

2008-10-08T16:02:00.000+07:00

Oh Boy… another deploy! This is what I always feel before trying to move a dbQwikSite database web site to a hosting server. I’ve got to worry about file folders, file transfers, connection strings, data base installs, file permissions and none of it is as easy as I would like it to be.

I’m not the only one that does not look forward to sorting out all the differences between my perfect PC test and some distant server looming out there in cyberspace. Users have been asking for help deploying for quite some time now. That time has arrived with the release of dbQwikSite version 5.4. They say necessity is the mother of invention, I say laziness is a close second. I therefore confess that my laziness is the driving force behind this most recent release. “Just make it easy for me.” was the mandate I gave to the development team. And about 6 weeks later I am happy to report that I can be lazy as I like and STILL get my site to deploy!

So what magic do we get in this version? The Highlights are: a new, smarter deploy wizard, a better more robust FTP, and on-line administrative pages. The new deploy wizard now is smarter a producing working connection strings for your host. The all new folder based file selection for deployment is a breeze to use. Say “bye-bye” to dbQwikFTP, I doubt too many users will shed a tear over that. Say “hello” to FileZilla (free open source) file transfer tool. Simply put, it just works better than the now depreciated dbQwikFTP. Smooth integration between the Deploy Wizard and FileZilla makes short work of file transfer; all I have to do is click the start the queue button and all my preselected folders are moved to the right place on my server. A cool feature at the end of deploy, let’s me launch my site in my browser for easy testing. One option is to launch the all new dbQwikSite “Site Admin” console. Arriving in the console, I can install MySQL tables if I had generated the scripts, I can see what scripting languages are supported on my server, I can troubleshoot connection strings. Neat, I think I like being lazy! This version make it much more of “a joy to deploy” my sites.

While the team worked hard to make sure I could be a real sloth, not every deployment task can be automated. So to accompany all this new software wizardry is the infamous “missing deployment guide”. It’s not missing anymore! You can access the new on-line deployment guide from the either the “Help” or “dbQwikHosting” menus.

There are other new features in 5.4 along with the regular batch of bug fixes. Details can be found in the release notes. Version 5.4 is a free upgrade for all version 5 users and is available via live-update.

Mashing it up with dbQwikSite

2008-06-18T18:51:00.001+07:00

What is a Mashup? For me it conjures up images of a bunch of cooks, all mashing away at a pot of boiled potatoes. But in the world of web development it means piecing together discreet units of available web functionality into a single integrated application.

Wikipedia defines a mash up as:

Mashup (web application hybrid)
In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.

Before I say anything more let me show you are screen shot of something I was playing with in dbQwikSite before I looked up the term in Wikipedia.

What you are looking at is a dbQwikSite page that I have in our Real Estate test project in which I added a Windows® Live Map. I had created, almost verbatim, the Wikipedia definition of a MashUp. The listing data is all in the dbQwikSite Real Estate database, but the Map is pulled in from Microsoft. After copying sample code from the Live Maps interactive SDK and fiddling with the custom code a bit, miracles of miracles I made a MashUp in about 15 minutes.

Well that’s not all, check this out. I made this over two months ago, when I was testing Developer Edition. This page uses Google Charts APIs to produce graphs of a data page generated by dbQwikSite.

Here’s another graph… ok, so it’s not a “true” MashUp by definitions. It is using Microsoft’s Siverlight 2 technology which is not a web service, but I didn’t have to know anything about coding graphs, just enough to call the JavaScripts and pass the right parameters. It’s just so pretty, I could not resist showing it off.

So today, it dawned on me, I was creating MashUps and I didn’t even know it. At first I said to myself “Naw, it can’t be that easy, MashUps are the realm of web gurus. I must be missing something.” So off to Wikipedia I went, to delve into the real meaning of MashUps. I stopped reading after I read the example I quoted earlier. “Wow! This is cool!” I thought to myself. There’s something big going on here, code generation plus MashUps what an awesome, powerful combination.

By themselves these web services like Google Charts and Windows Maps are interesting. But they only become valuable when placed within a meaningful context. Let’s face it you are much more interested in a map to the new house you are going to buy than just “a map”. And you are likely much more interested in a plot of your sales than a graph of data that is not yours.

What MashUp developers do is take all these nice “gadgets” and knit them into an application to enhance their applications. These guys are the guys writing the back end processing, digging data out of their databases and integrating these fantastic web services to enrich their web applications. But, wait a minute; dbQwikSite users know that they don’t have to code the back end. The code generator of dbQwikSite does that for you. So we just made the job of creating MashUp web sites magnitudes easier. Let dbQwikSite churn out the back end code and a basic interface then add a few lines of custom code to call web services and we are making MashUps in the blink of an eye.

While I still think that MashUp is a funny term, I do agree that the concept is valid and very powerful. Even more powerful is when you marry that technology to the dbQwikSite code generation technology to web services technology in MashUps. You can produce some pretty advanced websites at lighting speeds by “Mashing it Up” with dbQwikSite.

Rave Review from Bangkok Post

2008-05-30T11:50:00.003+07:00

This Wednesday, then I opened my morning paper I was pleasantly surprised to find that Thailand's largest newspaper had done a review of dbQwikSite by their resident Web Design columnist. It's quite a positive review so I thought I would share it with you.
Read the full review here. (updated link Jun 9 2008)

Here are a few kudos from the article: (in the event that the above link gets "retired")

I do not normally get excited about a code generation tool but I have watched this local product evolve and it just keeps getting better.

Remember this is a local Thai product that rivals the bigger US equivalents and is of course a lot less expensive

If you are looking for a deceptively inexpensive web site builder and don't want to pay someone to build one for you then I recommend that you try dbQwikSite.

If you are wondering: No I'm not on the board or payroll - this is just a great product.

Smart XSL Snippets: Mini Code Generators

2008-05-23T22:52:00.000+07:00

Today we released dbQwikSite 5.3.0.3. By most counts, this is a simple maintenance release but hiding in the list of updates there appears one rather mundane looking item entitled “xsl snippet support”. Looks pretty small and simple on the surface, but this single new feature infers some pretty powerful implications. It means that you can make mini-code generators inside the dbQwikSite generation framework.

Let’s take a closer look at this feature. We call it XSL code snippets. What it means that in any of the 150-plus custom code insert points found in Developer Edition, you can write an XSL(T) template. But this is not a template transforming xml data to format HTML in the browser. These XSL templates work a code generation time and they work against the XML of your project. This is really cool, because it means that you can access all the design information stored in your project model to generate code snippets. It takes a bit of time to wrap your mind around the concept but once you do the implications are quite interesting.

Let’s step back a bit. Let’s say we are working with Developer edition, which in itself is very powerful. What we can do is add in new script code to enhance our generated pages. We can do all kinds of neat things by typing in “static” script syntax into insert points / events. Ok, so we can understand adding code snippets to our pages. But what about a “smart snippet”? One that can write the code snippet for you. One that can know about other pages in your project, one that can react to the design setting contained in your project model. That’s exactly what the XSL snippets offer. And when you think about it, that’s exactly what the dbQwikSite code generation engines does, translates your design setting to code. But what’s extra cool about the XSL snippets is that it is you who defines what is to be generated, rather than the code generation engine itself. Now, that’s pretty advanced flexibility, and you won’t find this type of power in any competing tool. If you are lucky you may get “events” and then only a handful at best. With dbQwikSite you get over 150 “events” and you get smart snippets that can actually generate code themselves.

So why would we ever write a smart snippet. There are a number of situations that make smart snippets indispensible. The first one that comes to mind is to be able to have code snippets that is “project aware”, for example you may want to create code that adds new page flows, but without the names of the other pages, you could not so this, smart snippets can gather information from the project XML. Another situation is to make a snippet that is settings aware, for example you want it to create code differently if the page is secured or not, or if the group has a shopping cart. These are examples where smart snippets can outperform their “static” counterparts. You can write snippets that are not project specific, they are generic and self adjusting between projects. Another example could be a multi-scripting language snippet. For example rather than writing two snippets, one in ASP and one PHP and maintaining, managing and distributing both snippets, you have only one smart snippet, that automatically detects the generation language and inserts the correct language syntax.

Granted, writing smart snippets may not be for everyone. You can get along quite well inserting ordinary “static” script code into your insert points. To write a smart snippet, you need an understanding of the project XML and XSL as well as the code that you want to generate. But if you are into these technologies, you may be interested in a few of the details of the mechanics of XSL smart snippets. To create a smart snippet, you do as you would for any other kind of code snippet. But instead of typing in script syntax you type in an XSL template, and check the box that says this is a XSL snippet. During code generation, your XSL is executed and the output is placed into the insert point that invokes the snippet. Your snippet is passed the entire DOM of project XML, as well as two parameters. The two parameters are the Page ID and the Item ID (when applicable), giving you the context of the call to your XSL. You can easily work your way through the DOM to access Groups, Pages and other project objects to produce the code syntax you need.

That’s it, one small item in a maintenance release, the gives you an extremely powerful capability, a capability that you won’t find elsewhere. And even if you are not up to writing your own smarts snippets others will write and share smart snippets and you can benefit. This is yet another way that we are providing ways for the user community to contribute to the development of dbQwikSite. With our first step about a year ago providing an XML project model, to support for user defined project reports, addition of a plug-in architecture, user definable payment processing page generation, code snippets and now smart snippets. You can look forward to dbQwikSite becoming more powerful and more flexible with every release.

Web Developer Edition Now Available

2008-05-09T16:43:00.005+07:00

dbQwikSite Developer Edition is now available for download. Developer Edition makes its debut as part of the release of 5.3. In a nutshell, Developer addition let’s you add your own custom code into your website projects. The concept is simple, but the ramifications are profound. It means that you can now extend and enhance your generated pages. Developer edition opens the door to a realm of possibilities.

I have been pushing for Developer Edition for almost a year now. I knew that I wanted it, I knew that it would be kewel (cool). What I didn’t know was exactly what it meant to web developers and web designers until I started testing it. It was like having my hands untied, or taking the rev limiter off your sports car. Now, I could do things that I had seen on other sites, but were beyond the capabilities of code generation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the other editions of dbQwikSite, and every time I use them I am grateful that I don’t have to hand code thousands of lines of code. I always amazed what I can do in 10 minutes with this software. But, being the overachiever I am, I always want more! More features, more cool stuff, more flexibility. That’s exactly what I got with dbQwikSite Developer Edition. To date, I had to wait for the developers to have the time to code new features. I know from emails of our users that I am not the only one that wished that we could provide features faster. With Developer Edition, the game changed overnight. The only one that was holding back features was me, not the developers. I wanted graphs, I added graphs! I wanted conditional highlighting, I added conditional highlighting! I wanted a search on the data lists page, I added it! You get the idea, I am sure. It was instant gratification. It was the freedom to do much, much more without giving up all the “cushy” benefits of my beloved code generator.

Here is a copy of the promotional video I made to introduce Developer Edition.
The quality a bit blurry here, there is bigger one on the home page of dbQwikSite

If I have caught your interest, then you likely want to know more about what’s inside the new edition. Developer looks the same as other editions. What’s new is a “In-line code editor”. When you are working with a page, you click the “custom code” option in the popup menus. What you see is the generated source code. Inside the code, there are input boxes we call “insert points” in which you can type your own custom code. There are over 150 of these insert points at key places in the processing. Some are “events” like “after open dataset” and “on focus” of a control. Others do not related directly to an event, but more to places in code where you may want to add your own code, an example is “CSS Includes” it is not an event, but you may wish to include your own CSS files at this point in the source code. As you may have gathered, there are insert points for both client and server side scripting.

Besides the code editor, there are several reports designed specifically for web developer in mind edition such as the custom code report. You don’t need to hunt through each page looking for custom code in your project. Just run this handy report, and you’ll know exactly what custom code you have in your project. Another powerhouse feature is a complete custom code versioning mechanism built right into dbQwikSite. Every time you modify a custom code block, a new version is saved into your project. You can use the Version Management Interactive Report to view a complete history of your custom code blocks. What’s more, you can even “revert” back to previous versions if you discover you somehow messed things up along the way. Behind the scenes there have been some changes to the way pages are generated to allow better control of presentation by JavaScript. Ids are assigned to page elements; the contents of the page are now embedded in layout matrix of divs that let you insert content around generated elements. Variable name abstractions have been added to let you code using variable names that are readable and do not get changed when you do design changes.

If you want to give developer a try, you need the new executable program file. To get the most recent exe new users can download PE and existing users can run live update. All editions let you preview Developer’s entire user interface. If you want to test drive the code generation, just run in Full Trial mode. Upgrade pricing is available to all version 5 users. Details can be found on the web site.

Code Generators are Not Evil

2008-04-30T13:49:00.001+07:00

Recently I had someone ask me “I want to learn to make web sites. Tell, me honestly, if I buy your product, won’t it make me lazy?” I thought that was an interesting question. I combed the web and found several articles about how “real web coders” should not use code generators and that by using a code generator you will never develop the skills of a “real web developer”. I can appreciate some of the comments made in these blogs. But what strikes me as ironic is that these articles are reminiscent, of arguments made 30 years about the “evils” of high level programming languages such as COBOL and BASIC. I remember the arguments that if developers did not understand the assembly code generated, they were not really knowing what they were doing, and that some sort of evil end would come to the software developed by these “ignorant” coders using high level tools. Who could possibly create software when you were completely out of touch about what they were really doing at a binary level.

Well, I openly admit that using high level tools may produce code that is less efficient as hand coding every line, carefully scrutinizing every function and operation. But let’s step back and take a lesson from history of technology. First, things first… there was no “dooms day.” Programs written by “ignorant” programmers using high level programming languages, worked. What’s more, nobody codes in assembler any more, except in very niche applications. What is true is that high level programming languages empowered more people to produce more helpful software that has been successfully adopted by millions of users around the globe. How many programs do we use today were developed using assembler? “Very Few” is the answer.

History shows us that advancement in tools that help deliver the software that people want are not “evil.” Nor is it true that the people using these tools are “ignorant”. I would argue that the people using empowering tools may be “ignorant” about the technical details of what is happening under the covers, BUT they are actually “enlightened” individuals knowing more about the end product. Making technology more usable empowers people with knowledge about the final “solution” to become more involved in producing the solution. Moreover, people using these tools are able to focus more about the “what” the applications should do over the “how” to do it. The end result is better solutions, faster. There is no evil in this. And just because I don’t know how to repair my car, does not mean that I cannot use it to do some very productive things… like getting to work. Software tools are getting more advanced, and like our cars, we can use them to reach our “software destinations” without all being certified mechanics.

I personally grew up on code generators, in the 80’s “case tools” were all the rage. I leaned to design better systems, by worrying less about the “how to build” and more about the “what to build”. I learned that, as a project manager, I could get more productivity from my team, in less time and to higher quality standards by using automated coding tools. I learned that most of the programmers where happier to concentrate on the desired business goals of the project than on the correct syntax for a particular line of code. And to acknowledge the “dooms sayers” that, yes, you cannot escape the technology and that performance still needs to be considered. But that said, it less of an issue than they would like to make it to be. By producing the solution faster, and testing it earlier, you can identify the performance bottlenecks and call in the hard-core techies to “save us all” as needed. But what I found is that, in reality, the performance issues may only be relevant in 15% of an application. The other 85% can operate happily as is. Either there is no performance issue to begin with, or that this particular part of the system is used only by a few users, or that used so infrequently that it is not worth the investment to make it high performance.

Now I’ll share with you the answer I gave to the question “will it make me lazy”. My answer is “No, it will make you productive.” Why would we think it is “lazy” to not do things the hard way? To me, if you are achieving your goals, faster that’s hardly the definition of lazy. For a non-technical user to undertake the task of making a website is hardly lazy. For a professional web developer to not waste time hand coding pages that can be generated out-of-the-box is not lazy. To direct your energy in to value added features rather than debugging code is not lazy. Using the right tools for the job is “smart” not lazy.

If your objective is to learn to code, then a code generator is not going to prevent that from happening. Only you will prevent yourself from learning. Back to my car analogy, just because I can drive my car does not prevent me from learning to be a mechanic. In fact, true story, as a teen I learned all the basics of car mechanics from a small book and my old car. I spent a lot of time learning by doing, starting small, with fixing hoses to eventually rebuilding much of the engine and brake system. Having a car to tinker with did not impede my learning, it helped me learn. Likewise having a code generator to tinker with can actually be a learning aid. By enabling features, studying the code generated you can learn in an interactive, “by example” manner. In the same way that I worked my way “up” in my car mechanic skills; you can work your way up the technical learning curve as you have the need and inclination. But the great part is you can still have your working web site while you are learning.

With the introduction of dbQwikSite Developer Edition, I would say that using dbQwikSite code generator as a learning aid is even more practical than ever before. Developer Edition let’s you insert your own custom code into the generated code. So, you can “tinker” with your pages with ease. You can see how things are working in the code and add your own code to make your pages do more, adding features without having to be an expert. You can learn to code one-line-at-a-time while dbQwikSite fills in all the gaps. And, of course, if you are an expert in JavaScript or Server Side scripting you can make your generated pages do things only you can dream of.

To all the authors of all the blogs I read about “real programmers”, I offer the following counter points.
1) It is not every do-it-yourself web builder’s objective to become a coding guru
2) Understanding code is important but not more important than understanding the web site functionality that you are building.
3) If you bill or are paid by the hour, it would be professionally “negligent” to insist to hand code every single web page when there are tools available to enhance your productivity.
4) Coding is a means to an end, not an end into itself.
5) Don’t sweat it, “real programmers” are still needed, for all the “cool creative” stuff. Let the code generators do all the “boring repetitive” stuff.

Google Checkout++ new in dbQwikSite 5.2.3.0

2008-02-01T16:36:00.000+07:00

Today we released dbQwikSite 5.2.3.0. This release concentrates on enhancing payment gateway support. There are two major payment gateway enhancement offered in this release. The first is the addition of support for Google Checkout and the second is the ability to add your own payment gateways to dbQwikSite.

Those who know Google Checkout, likely know that there are two flavors of checkout; a single charge checkout and a multi-item checkout. The good news is that dbQwikSite support both flavors. If you just want to bill the bottom line, then the single item checkout is what you want. If you want to have an itemized billing then the multi-item checkout is just the ticket.

When it comes to native payment gateway support, the list now includes: PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, World Pay, SecPay, and VCS. However that is only the beginning, now you can add your own payment gateway support to dbQwikSite. Under the covers, we have added a payment gateway plug-in architecture, which means that not only TheDevShop, but also you, can add new payment gateways without the need for programming. So, virtually any payment gateway can be supported by dbQwikSite.

Adding a new payment gateway involves defining XML and XSL files. There are basically 2 steps, define the user input needed during design this is done using an XML document, and define an XSL that transforms saved dbQwikSite model into a web script. To create payment gateways you likely need some proficiently in XML Style Sheets. The great part is that these gateway plug-ins not project specific, that means that they can be shared amongst users. There is no “compiling” or “updating” involved, just drop the XML/XSL in the right folder and “presto” a new payment gateway. If you do happen to delve into creating a payment gateway plug-in and want to share it, just send the files to support and we will add them to the plug-in download page. Other users, I am sure, will be most appreciative. Documentation on how to create payment gateway plug-ins can be found on the dbQwikSite download page http://www.dbqwiksite.com/download.html in the “Other Downloads” section.

On other news, many people are asking about Developer Edition. It is definitely still on the product road map. The release has been delayed as we decided to do some serious R & D into two areas: “proper” .net support and Web 2.0 support. As that effort winds down we turn our attention back to developer edition. We have just set up our first beta tester and we are starting to move forward on the development of Developer Edition. An later this year, you should see some great stuff as a result of our R & D being incorporated into the product.

2008 New Year Message from TheDevShop

2008-01-15T22:36:00.000+07:00

2007 has come and gone, a good year all and all. We did a few interesting outsource projects and we managed to release major upgrades to all of the dbQwik Family products. dbQwikSite took second price in the national software industry awards. TheDevShop was named “Finalist” in Red Herring’s Asia’s Top 100 most promising privately help IT companies. We couldn’t have done it without our dedicated staff and our customers. As I bid farewell to 2007, I do so offering a “super-duper-mega-humongous” THANK YOU to employees of TheDevShop Ltd. and to our Customers who not only support us financially, but serve as a source of inspiration as well.

Now TheDevShop enters 2008, a bright new year with a bright new plans and dreams. What coming in 2008? Some may have noticed that TheDevShop planned releases of dbQwikSite for Q4 2007 did not materialize, and things got very quite in the marketing and communications. What happened is that we were given an opportunity to work on a large scale social networking, web 2.0, dot Net project. I saw a huge synergy in the project and the dbQwikSite product road map. So we put R&D on hold in exchange for some heavy duty hands on experience into the technologies that we want to incorporate into dbQwikSite and dbQwikEdit. While this resulted in the delay of dbQwikSite releases, it also means that we are well positioned now to incorporate all the knowledge gained in our latest project into the tool. The new result should be a new dbQwikSite in 2008 which will be a major leap forward into the world of web 2.0. dbQwikSite will be doing all the cool stuff in AJAX and .net producing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) in the blink of an eye.

dbQwikEdit is also on the road map for some major changes in 2008, with stronger support for XML being our primary target. Look for a hybrid database / XML tool, marrying the two technologies. Expect to see XPath and XQuery support in 2008.

dbQwikReport is due for a reunion in 2008. dbQwikReport began as a spinoff of dbQwikSite to provide users with a simple way to create reports on web hosted databases using standard scripting technology. dbQwikReport has received a lot of interest from the community. There seems to be a real demand for a simple, light weight reporting solution for hosted databases. In 2008 we hope to migrate the reporting features of dbQwikReport back into the dbQwikSite framework. This should result in some major improvements in terms of user interface and flexibility.

2008 holds a lot of promise for our users, who will see the advent of the next generation of the dbQwik family of tools on your desktops. For us at TDS it is a very exciting and ambitious plan. We are committed to develop the best tools possible to support technology trends. And always in the spirit of “dbQwik” we will be packing high-tech knowhow into simple to use, affordable software.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog to be informed of the latest developments from TheDevShop.

dbQwikEdit SQL Tool Prices Slashed

2008-01-10T11:05:00.000+07:00

dbQwikEdit, TheDevShop's multi-database data manager has just gotten cheaper with Pro version selling for only $39.95 USD. That's an incredible price, the competition can't even come close, neither in price or functionality. I did a quick survey on the Internet, most competing products are priced between $69 to $250 USD. That makes dbQwikEdit the best value in town.

For those who are not familiar with dbQwikEdit, it is an SQL tool and visual query builder. It works with most databases so you don't need to buy and learn a different took for every database you use. Like all the dbQwik family of tools, dbQwikEdit does not require that you have advanced programming and technical knowledge to use the tool productively. But if you happen to be a database SQL guru, the tool has no problems supporting the demands of power users.

You can find more information and a free trial edition on the web http://www.dbqwikedit.com/

dbQwikEdit 3.4.0.0 Adds Office 2007

2007-10-04T19:19:00.000+07:00

Today we release dbQwikEdit 3.4.0.0. In this release, we add a few new features that some users have been looking for as well as the regular set of bug fixes to known issues.
The two highlights of this release is a reworked connection wizard and Office 2007 support.
Building ADO connection strings easier than ever using the new connection wizard. That said, sometimes easy just doesn’t go far enough. Our power users have been demanding more control over their connection strings. The new connection wizard opens the door to entering connection strings manually.

The other major update is the addition of Office 2007 support. What does “office 2007 support” mean? It means that dbQwikEdit can now work comfortably with MS Office new “x” file formats. When using MS Access you work with accdb office 2007 formats in addition to the classic mbd files. MS Excel xsl and xslx file types are both supported in this release of dbQwikEdit.

If you are not a MS Office user yet, there are still a slew of bug fixes that make upgrading worthwhile. We clean up some exceptions and fixed some irritating bugs. Some of these bugs include: inability to modify primary keys in some cases, adding fields sometimes missed the “not null” option, specifying lengths of MS Access text fields at times was missing and a few minor tweaks to the data grid.

Existing version 3 users can get the latest release by running live update from the help menu, new users or users of older version can get more information about available upgrades at www.dbQwikEdit.com

dbQwikSite 5.2.1.7 –Paves the way to a New Edition

2007-08-30T17:56:00.000+07:00

This week we released dbQwikSite 5.2.1.7 this is a maintenance release with a few bug fixes and minor enhancements. Hardly worth writing about, except for the reason behind the release which is far more exciting news. We released this edition because it contains fixes that we wanted to get to the user community, before dbQwikSite undergoes a major change to the code generation engine. This change will introduce new, powerful of functionality for web designers and web developers.

What’s it all about? You’ll get a hint if you upgrade to version 5.2.1.7. In some of the property dialogs, version 5.2.1.7. In some of the property dialogs, you’ll see a new option tab “Custom Events.” This is the essence to an all new “Developer’s Edition”. The Developer’s Edition adds the ability to incorporate your own custom code into your projects. It will offer both “client-side” and “server-side” script support. This means that you can add your own JavaScript to run the browser or add ASP(.net) or PHP code that will execute on the server. We introduce “events” and “insertion points” in this edition. You can add your own code at any of these points to change or enhance generated pages.

If you are a designer, you likely have seen, or used, JavaScript to do such things as create rollover effects, validate form fields, and highlight errors or other dynamic HTML effects. With Developer Edition, you can use provided JavaScript functions or incorporate your own scripts that you write or download from script sites. Web developers familiar with ASP(.net) and PHP can insert their own code “snippets” to change processing on the server side. For example you could change the security authorization or perform server-side validation or calculations. Having the ability to add your code to dbQwikSite code opens the door to creating even more advanced, highly customized applications. Unlike editing the generated code which is overwritten if you regenerate a page, embedded code is preserved between code generations.

Stay tuned to this blog from more breaking news about dbQwikSite Developer Edition and other news about dbQwik products.

dbQwikMySSH 1.0.0.4 - Painless MyODBC SSH Management

2007-08-27T14:21:00.000+07:00

We just introduced dbQwikMySSH only a few short weeks ago and it is doing very well. This week we released a minor update to make it even easier to use. We added a new function to automatically reconfigure your MyODBC connections to pass through the secure SSH tunnel. Restoring them is just as easy. You simple right click the connection to secure, and choose the Secure option in the popup menu. To restore connections to their original settings you right click a secured connection and choose the Restore option.

There are a couple of other tweaks to the interface to make it easier to understand what’s going on. For instance the MySQL server detection is easy to confuse with your connection settings. The Server check is just to see if there is a MySQL server listening; it does not have anything to do with the authentication of your MySQL connection. So we have refined the interface a bit to try to make that a bit clearer. A couple of small bug fixes are included to round out this release. If you are installed and want to get the latest, you can run the live-update. Otherwise just download the latest install from: http://www.thedevshoponline.com/dbqwikssh.html it has the latest updates.

TheDevShop Finalist in the "Red Herring 100 Asia" Awards 2007

2007-08-10T15:20:00.000+07:00

Today TheDevShop, makers of dbQwik products, got some some great news. We have are among the 200 Finalists in the "Red Herring 100 Awards". The awards are for "The Most-Promising Private Technology Ventures" in Asia.

Here's an excerpt from their Press Release:
San Francisco, CA, August 7, 2007 – Red Herring Magazine announced today that TheDevShop Ltd. has been short listed forerunners of the Red Herring 100 Asia 2007 awards. The 100 winners will be announced at the Red Herring 100 Asia event in Hong Kong, on August 29-31.

The Red Herring editorial team carefully selected the finalists based on criteria such as (please check the FAQ for the 5 criteria). The 200 finalists are based in 16 countries/regions including China, India, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Australia and Vietnam. The names of the 200 companies short-listed as finalists for the "Red Herring 100 Asia 2007" can be found online here

"The 200 finalists we selected from across 16 countries and regions are all excellent contenders," said Joel Dreyfuss, Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring. "They are exceptional companies who thrive on innovation and strongly define the important role of technology in Asia’s economy and throughout the world."

For us, this is pretty exciting. It's great to know that we rank among the top 200 technology companies in Asia. So if you ever wondered "Just what kind of company is TheDevShop?" this may help you put us in context.

dbQwik™MySQL2Access v 1.0 – Moves MySQL to MS Access.

2007-08-08T18:12:00.000+07:00

This week we introduce a brand new member to the dbQwik™ family of products. dbQwik™ MySQL2Access is a program that moves MySQL databases into MS Access. It can either connect directly to MySQL or it can read in MySQL dump files. The program can either create new MS Access Databases or import into an existing MS Access Database. You can selectively import tables.

The program is very simple to use. Enter your MySQL login details or browse to a MySQL Dump File. The tables are listed, and you just pick the tables to import and all rest is done for you.

This program is great for creating local copies of local or remote MySQL databases. Local copies can be used as back ups, or “off-line” copies for reporting and anlysis. The advantage of MS Access is that it is highly portable and integrated into MS Office. There is no need to install MySQL in end users PCs. This is a handy little utility that you can use again and again if you have data in MySQL.

dbQwik™MySQL2Access is available for download from our software store: www.TheDevShopOnline.com. There is a free trial version. The trial has an import limit of 25 records per table. You can buy the full version for only $19.95.

dbQwik™MySSH v 1.0 – Debut of Secure MySQL SSH connection.

2007-08-01T18:07:00.000+07:00

This week we introduce a brand new member to the dbQwik™ family of products. dbQwik™MySSH is a SSH client, highly specialized for working with your MySQL connections. What is SSH? SSH is a secure encrypted protocol for internet communications. Using dbQwik™ MySSH, ensures that all data exchanged between your PC and your MySQL host remains private and protected from eavesdropping hackers. There is another advantage to using dbQwik™MySSH, that is being able to connect to remote MySQL servers even when these servers block the standard remote connection on port 3306. If your hosting allows SSH connections, you can use dbQwik™ SSH to connect, and dbQwik™MySSH will proxy all your MySQL traffic through its secure connection.

What makes dbQwik™MySSH different than other SSH clients? Most SSH clients are general purpose utilities that require that you learn and understand how to set it up and configure it using cryptic commands. dbQwik™MySSH is highly specialized to work with MySQL and MyODBC. It provides a beautiful graphic interface that allows you to instantly see exactly which connections are using SSH and which ones are not. dbQwik™MySSH takes care many of the settings and configuration set up, so you only have a few fields to enter to establish your SSH connection. There simply is no easier way to connect to MySQL using SSH.

dbQwik™MySSH is available for download from our software store: www.TheDevShopOnline.com. There is a free trial version. The trial has a limited connection time. You can buy the full version for only $19.95.

dbQwikSite v 5.2.1.5 – Introduces Easier Deletes

2007-07-29T18:18:00.001+07:00

This week we released dbQwikSite version 5.2.1.5. As usual there are a number of bug fixes, and some new features. The new features include a new delete behavior in generated pages, FTP can now be stated from the tools menu, On-Demand plug-ins are introduced in this release.

The new Delete Page behavior was originally a work around for the delete page not offering a query for a dataset, but it actually is quite cool and in most cases, eliminates the need for your visitors to use the delete page. We call it “in place delete” what that means is you can now set up your delete page so that is deletes the record but never shows the delete page itself. The net effect is that your users can delete records directly from the Data List Page or from the More Page. You can set up a confirmation message, or just delete “in place”. For users that want to show the record before deletion from the Data List Page, you can link your delete button your More Page to show the record using a query, and do a silent delete from the More Page…slick!

We are also working on the plug-ins extensions framework. In this release we introduce “download-on-demand” plug-in support. The plug-in menu shows plug-ins available at time of publishing. When you select a plug-in that is not installed you will be directed to the download page for that plug-in. Right now, there are only two download-on demand plug-ins, but we expect that list to grow. Visit our plug-in page from time to time to see new offering of free and trial plug-ins. At this time you can download: CSS Merger and dbQwik™MySSH. CSS Merger is free and combines identical CSS files generated by dbQwik™Site as well as updating links in your pages to reference the merged CSS. dbQwik™ MySSH is a new trial offering, allowing you to connect to remote MySQL servers using secure SSH connections, great for data security and for those hosting companies that block remote MySQL connections, but permit SSH connections.

Finally, you will see a new menu option “dbQwik Hosting” that gives you direct access to our hosting services, where you can get everything you need for hosting and great prices. You will find, Hosing from $3.99 a month for Windows or Linux, Domain Names now on promotion for only $1.99, SSL certificates, Mass Mailing services, Traffic Tools for your site and other essentials of web hosting. Just a final note, you don’t have to host with us, generated pages will run on all standard hosting accounts. But, if you are in the need of hosting, domain names etc, we appreciate your business. Our hosting is all managed by one of the world’s largest web hosting providers so you can be assured of excellent, dependable service. Low risk, great service, and low prices are yours when you choose dbQwik™ Hosting. (Ok, enough of shameless plugging of our new business! I am sure you get the picture.)

dbQwikEdit 3.3.0.2 Expands Database Support and Fixes

2007-07-28T20:18:00.000+07:00

We just released dbQwikEdit 3.3.0.2. In this release many of the functions of the program have been enhanced to cover a wider variety of databases, particularly desktop databases such as Dbase and Paradox but some additional Oracle work is also in this release. We also fixed a bug that caused the program to seemingly hang if you allow it to auto adjust your myODBC settings. Now the auto-optimize of myODBC settings works better. Optimizing your ODBC settings will address the dropping of MySQL connections resulting in “MySQL server has gone away” errors.

We have tweaked the query syntax builder to better size the list boxes on start up and done a lot of work on the batch move. You can now create target table definitions from queries as well as tables. Parameterized queries now process better.

All an all this is a pretty limited release as far as new features, but it adds a ton of stability and is worth the live update.

dbQwik offers Hosting and More

2007-07-20T17:57:00.001+07:00

Today we introduce a brand new service from TheDevShop: Web Hosting! We are excited to offer world class hosting and domain name services under the “dbQwik” brand. We have teamed with one of the web hosting industry leaders to provide dbQwik customers the best possible service at amazing prices.

Through our new dbQwik branded partnership we are able to offer a full range of services that round out our software offerings. Services available at www.dbQwikHosting.com include:

Web hosting: both Windows and Linux
Domain name registration services
SSL certificates for secure web sites
Marketing and web traffic tools

Because of the huge user base of dbQwikSite users, we are able to negotiate some of the best prices in the industry. When we were selecting our partner, we went through a careful screening process. It seems that there are thousands of hosting companies out there and all are not created equal. We wanted to be sure that dbQwikHosting was going to deliver the best possible service to our clients and be able to offer stability, excellent service and competitive pricing.

We evaluated on the basis of:

Technical compatibility with dbQwik tools
Customer Support
Stability of the company
Quality of data center
Reputation
Price point
Range of offerings

dbQwikHosting is your one-stop-shop for on-line presence. There is no need to wade through thousands of search results to try to find a web hosting service you can trust. With dbQwikHosting, you know you have found a name you can trust when it comes to websites and data bases.

dbQwikSite 5.2.1 Released: Single Language Editions get X-Gen

2007-07-10T19:06:00.000+07:00

Today we released dbQwikSite 5.2.1 adds X-Gen technology for easier local testing with single scripting language editions. Single scripting language editions include: Personal Edition (PE), Publisher (Pub), and Express Edition (XE). X-Gen allows users to design and test using one scripting language and then deploy to another scripting language.

We now include a limited X-Gen capability in the single language editions. The special edition generates local scripts that run under the dbQwik Web Server allowing you to test locally without installing support for your purchased language on your PC. Prior to this release, if you bought a PHP generation option, you can only generate PHP. In this case you would have had to install PHP support on your PC before you could test locally. With this release the X-Gen engine has been enhanced to generate code compatible with the included dbQwik Web Server. You can transparently test on your PC no matter which language you have subscribed to for deployment. X-Gen will make testing with single script editions a whole lot easier.

Also in this release you will find a new, single dialog to hide and show pages. Previous editions had separate dialogs, to show and hide pages in the explorer. I for one, welcome this change, a small but helpful tweak the program interface.

Other improvements have been added in this and lesser releases. There is better internal image handling while working on projects; this should result in slightly better performance. We still have more to do on image management, with the objective of improving the program performance while designing. There have been a few minor releases under the 5.2.0.x that address a wide variety of issues in the designer and in code generation. So if you are a multi-scripting language user there are plenty of small fixes for you too.

This is a free upgrade to all version 5 users. It is available via the Live Update menu option found in the Help menu.

dbQwikReport 1.3 Vista Ready

2007-06-15T17:49:00.000+07:00

Today we release dbQwikReport version 1.3. It is a both an important release, and a boring release. It is important in that, it is now compatible with windows Vista, and boring in that there no great new features for me to write about.

Anyone already using Windows Vista, or planning a move to Vista, can rest assured that their investment in dbQwik products is a sound one. dbQwikSite, dbQwikReport and dbQwikEdit all will run on your Vista machine. Only one left to migrate: dbQwikSync Pro and you should expect that one shortly.

There is one significant enhancement in dbQwikReport 1.3. It is a bug fix, of sorts. Actually the bug is with Microsoft ADO, it simply will not handle MySQL Timestamp data types. So, our fix is that we catch the error, and we allow you to continue designing, but without any data in your preview. When you deploy to PHP/MySQL all your data will appear. There are a couple important things to note here. It is far better to use DateTime data types in MySQL if you want your tables to be accessible by any tools that are based on MS ADO, technology (like the dbQwik Products and ASP). The resulting data storage is the same. Users of dbQwikSite should note that we have not fixed this issue yet in dbQwikSite… so best to avoid Timestamps in MySQL all together.

dbQwikReport 1.3 is a free upgrade available via live update. You access live update from the help menu of the program.

While we are on the topic of technical “stuff” and version numbers there is an important tidbit I have to share with you. I was using dbQwikEdit on my laptop lately. I could not believe how unstable it was; no matter what I did it seemed to go wrong. After firmly scolding all the developers with harsh words about quality and the likes, I was asked the question:
“What database?”
“MySQL, and we are supposed to support it! Nothing new here folks!” I retorted.
“What version of myODBC are you using?”
“I just updated maybe a couple weeks ago, 3.51.14.0” was my reply as my confidence began to fade.
“Can you try 3.51.15.0?”

I returned to my desk, and about 2 minutes, later I was both humbled and happy. It was like dbQwikEdit had magically transformed from a “clunker” to a “cool tool”. I learned two things: 1) go easy on the staff and 2) make sure that my ODBC drivers are stable. I share this with you in case anyone out there is using myODBC 3.51.14.0. and thinking: hey, the TheDevShop software doesn’t work at all. Please, please upgrade your myODBC to 3.51.15! It will make a major difference and bring serenity to your query building.

dbQwikSite 5.2 New Cheaper Editions

2007-05-30T13:24:00.000+07:00

Today we launch dbQwikSite new entry level editions. Now there are editions to suit all budgets. The new members to the dbQwik™ Family are: dbQwikSite Publisher Edition, and dbQwikSite Express. As the name suggests Publisher creates display pages, but no on-line forms, it is perfect for those who only need to publish pages on the web, and do not need on-line data entry. Express, is a single scripting language edition of Pro, designed for those who do not need to generate to multiple target platforms. We also bid farewell to two current license levels, PE+ and Project Licenses which are superseded by the new editions. Pro and Ecom remain essentially the same. PE and Full Trial get some major changes.

What about the price you ask? Cheap, cheap, cheap, is the answer. But before I tell the price I want to warn you, there are new and different limitations so do read the following paragraphs or check the feature comparison page before you rush out to buy. I am sure that no one will be unhappy with their purchase, but I wouldn’t want your purchase to be a surprise either. Prices in USD are: PE and Full Trial are FREE, Publisher $39.95, Express $99.95, Pro remains $149.95 and Ecom remains $179.95.

What you need to know about the new edition restrictions. Where major areas where editions differ is in script language support and generation capacity. The lower cost editions are all single scripting language, you must choose between, PHP, ASP and ASP.net. There are limits to project size as well, actually the projects size itself is not limited but code generation stops once you hit your project page limit.

There are some tweaks to the free versions. PE now does much more,than before, but the code generation speed is throttled, initially fast, but slowing as the installation ages. A special note to PE users is that you now have to “Activate” your preferred scripting language on-line. The activation process requires no personal information although there is a voluntary user registration to gain support privileges. Full Trial plays new tricks, you can generate everything for any platform, for a full 7 days, but the output pages have “scrambled” vowels, making your page read strangely. You may find an “Idit” button on your page rather than an “Edit” button.

Release 5.2 also includes a number of functional updates. We have added support for auto-increment fields in the universal table editor. The deploy wizard has been “Opened up” to offer a greater selection of target platform database combinations in addition to the recommended ones. We now allow generation of PHP with native MySQL connection on windows platforms, in addition to Linux. The shopping cart pages have gone through some QA to address some of the outstanding issues with these pages. We have also updated the activation and license manager, to better manage multi-license sites. This change will require users using live update to re-activate their software, which is a painless task, all your current information is pre-populated, so it is just a click of a button.

Today we rolled out the web site updates. Live updates will take another few days to get live update on-line. Current version 5 users should find the live update on-line by June 5^th 2007.

dbQwikEdit 3.2 – Vista Ready

2007-04-30T17:48:00.000+07:00

This week we release dbQwikEdit version 3.2. In this release we have added support for Windows Vista, enhanced the table editor and implemented a number of bug fixes.

We are working on ensuring all our products are Windows Vista compatible, this week, it is dbQwikEdit’s turn. Version 3.2 is now ready to go to work on your Windows Visa machine. We also retrofitted all the improvements of the database table editor from dbQwikSite back into dbQwikEdit. You can now edit database structures more easily with compatibility across a wider range of databases.

We have enhanced importing data from XML and CSV into tables making this function more robust under a wider variety of circumstances.

Registered users of version 3 can get the latest updates using live update found in your help menu of the program. Users of dbQwikEdit 2 can get more information on available upgrades from www.dbQwikEdit.com/upgrade.html

dbQwikSite 5.1: The Cherry on the Top of v5.0.

2007-04-05T15:17:00.000+07:00

This week we release dbQwikSite v 5.1. This release collects s few nice features that were on the 5.0 wish list, but did not make the initial cut. In Version 5.1 we have added: dynamic HTML (DHTML) navigation menus, check boxes for Search Pages, automatic Security Pages and a couple of bug fixes.

A little about each new addition:

Dynamic Menus make adding site navigation a breeze. Dynamic Menus are generated using a plug-in. This is an example of the power of the new dbQwikSite V5 plug-in architecture. When you run the Java Script Menu plug-in, it will generate a menu item for each checked group, and a sub-item for pages within the group. It uses your currently selected color theme so it looks pretty slick. You can further edit the generated JS (Java Script) file to reorganize, recolor, or rename menu options.

We have added the concept of “auto menus” if you enable this project setting, dbQwikSite will look for qs_menu.js and insert it into every page. All you need to do to add menus to your site is generate the menu and enable auto-menus. We also added some special HTML tags that you can put in your header to control placement and choice of navigator JS files in each page. So you can have more than 1 navigator. Which is great for sites, that have different “areas” such as public, admin, and members, each with distinct navigation.

Check Boxes are our “late bloomers” introduced in version 5.0. It seems we made a small oversight, thinking “One cannot use a check box as search criteria, because searches need 3 states: check, not checked, and either”. Well it did not take long for our users to let us know that this was not the case, there are some very useful applications of checkboxes on search pages. So, with all haste, we have added check boxes to the search page. You as the designer choose how the page should filter data when the box is checked and unchecked.

Automatic Security Pages are a small productivity addition. When you enable site security, dbQwikSite will now offer to generate a new page group to manage your secured users.

One bug fix is quite important to get. While it only occurs under certain circumstances, it can cause some of your page settings to be lost. We recommend that all users run live update to get the latest fixes.

Version 5.1 is a free upgrade to all 5.0 users. If you have not upgraded to 5.0 now you have even more reasons to upgrade. We sent emails to all our registered users, if you have not gotten your upgrade offer, let us know. This is especially important to version 3 users, who can upgrade at a discount if you do so before the end of April.

Stay tuned to this blog to get news on what’s coming next from your friends at TheDevShop!