dbQwikReport 1.3 Vista Ready

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

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

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.

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!

dbQwkSite v5.0 is out!

Life at ThedevShop is hectic as the team is busy releasing dbQwikSite version 5.0. Version 5 is now available. Top of the list of technical enhancements is Windows Vista Support and ASP.net code generation. In what’s new category look for, HTML editor integration, a cool new Web Form Import Wizard, our new “Universal” Database Table Editor, and Project Reporting.

Ok, I know you want all the juicy stuff, but indulge me for a moment while I position TheDevShop’s direction for this release. If I had to say what I wanted for this release in one word it would be “unification”, or at least a good start at it. What I mean by Unification is blurring the lines between all the tasks of involved in web development. I wanted our development team to give you, our users, a tool that is not just “another” code generator, but much more. It should be a tool to build and maintain your database web sites, dbQwikSite should be a tool that unifies common tasks. Version 5 is a step in that direction. It is the only non-enterprise “code generator” that I know which allows you to change just about anything, just about whenever you want, without the whole thing flying apart at the seams. We have worked extra hard on this release with the idea that development is not a linear process, and that we cannot be the best tool for all tasks, but we can be the best place to “pull it all together”.

OK so much with the grandiose vision! Let’s get down to the juicy stuff! I can’t talk about everything in details here, but here are the best “bits”.

Windows Vista: dbQwikSite now runs on Windows Vista. We have tested Business and Enterprise editions. We have had some strange security issues, but then again who has not with Vista? You may need to launch as Administrator on the first execution other than that it all seems to work.

ASP.net: You can now generate ASP.net just as easily as you do ASP and PHP. You can even use your old projects and generate ASPx with no modifications. This release is “Beta”, we have tested all core functions, but a few things are lacking, however we did not want to hold the whole thing back over the remaining issues that should be address shortly. Some other have not been fully tested, shopping gateways, require additional testing, they “should” work, but we won’t know until we test them out fully. Anyone with any troubles, please let us know and we will fix these as quickly as possible.

Web Form Import: This is one of favorites: point dbQwikSite to any web form (PC file or URL) and it analyses the form, creates table based on the form fields and creates a set of dbQwikSite pages. Mind you, the new pages don’t look anything like your original form (maybe in v5.1), but this is cool way to build back-ends to web forms. It is also a way to let web masters design database applications in a way that they understand, using web forms. Sometimes starting from designing a table is not as intuitive as designing a form which is more a visual representation of the data. By the way, experience has shown me that end users understand a form much more readily than a table definition.

Universal Database Table Editor: Now you can change your database tables as you work in dbQwikSite. This is part of my grand vision, in case you actually read the second paragraph. It seems perfectly natural, you’re working building a “web app” and you need a new column or you discover the table identifier needs tweaking. The “Universal” Table editor lets you do just that. You got to ask “Why doesn’t every tool work this way?” The answer is because “it isn’t easy”. If changing a table structure in any database is not hard enough, try making sure your pages that use these tables don’t all go sideways. Hats off to our developers, who managed to make changing database tables as simple as changing HTML tables. dbQwikSite continually analyses your database changes and flags items that have been invalidated because of database changes.

HTML Editor Integration: You can now use your own HTML editor anywhere that you can use our integrated HTML editor. Let’s face it; dbQwikSite would be hard pressed to come up with an internal HTML editor that can compare to Dreamweaver, FrontPage or CoffeCup. Besides, who wants to learn yet another HTML editor if you are comfortable with the one you have. Now you can configure dbQwikSite to either use its built-in editor or launch your editor to edit HTML pages or HTML fragments. Keeping with my grand vision, dbQwikSite goes the extra mile, we don’t just start your HTML editor, we constantly monitor edited files, between sessions just in case you happened to edit a file from your HTML editor “stand-alone” or out-of-sequence. dbQwikSite will flag any page that is out of sync and even guide you through a reconciliation process deciding which changes to keep and which to discard.

Project Reports: “Who needs them?” was the question the developer asked. “Our users do!” is what support replied. What are project reports? They are pretty close to what they sound like. These are reports that give you consolidated information to help you manage and troubleshoot your projects. If you have ever hunted through program dialogs to discover a stay setting, you’ll know what I am talking about. Run a report, and you can survey a wealth of information in one format. We have supply about 5 canned reports. The cools part about reports is not only the fact that you can see information buried in the “guts” of dbQwikSite, but you can actually create your own reports. If you’re an XML techie, you may rise to the challenge. dbQwikSite now stores a copy of your project in XML. You can create report definitions in xsl. Add a little XML report description file to the mix, and “voila” dbQwikSite integrated reports. There as section in help on this topic for you brave soles that want to try creating reports. If you do make something useful, or just “cute” be sure to share, send a copy to us to distribute.

Those are the big enhancements. There are a number of smaller things what we would have loved to have out 3 versions ago, these include:

• A missing image graphic, when record images are not found.
• Check Boxes, yes finally, dbQwikSite can do a check box.
• Smarter Auto page items: now we don’t add a whole set of page items when you redefine your dataset.
• File upload on the Add page.
• Enhanced Consistency checking. Warning you if something in your project may not generate correct code.
• MySQL script for the sample project databases.
• Login page default page targets can now be defined.

That’s about it for this release. We hope it will make developing and maintaining your database web sites a much more enjoyable task. And don’t worry, we are already planning version 5.1 and v6, we have a long future ahead of us. Thank you to all our paid users for your support. To all our PE users, I hope that we by offering more that we can earn your business as a paid user. For those of you who are users yet, what are your waiting for? You’re missing some pretty cool stuff, and besides PE is free!