Hi;

I came across this product last night (which kept me up till 2:00 AM ) and has got me pretty excited. One interesting thing is that this product is being used to develop commercial apps which is my direction. Although I'm planning to download the trail version and get into the docs, but there are some questions that the sales team did not have solid answers to them. I'll categorized them to the best I can. Perhaps some of the answers can end up on you website FAQ:

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[Deployment]
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1) When a developer purchases the development kit, security module and database toolkit, is there any runtime royalties with these kits?

2) When my app is ready for deployment, does SF offer any installation packaging system that I can use to deploy my app? (i.e. an installation that verifies whether the user has proper .Net runtime and etc.)

3) During the course of development, when the database schema changes and we are ready to send updates, is there any facility in SF to automatically convert the user's database?

4) I read that you're planning to release a middle tier server. Is there a royalty or server license fee involved? If yes, how is organized and how much? (this way we can establish a final product price when offered to users).

5) in 3 tier smart client, will it use ClickOnce system for deployment?

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[Security]
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6) Can the users/roles/rights of the security be created/modified by users without the need to the developer being involved? In commercial apps, we do not want to get involved about setting users, roles and rights.

7) Is the security data stored in database? or flat file or XML?

8) When a user logs in, How does SF display what forms/reports/etc. are available to that user? Is it done via menus or some sort ot TreeView?

9) Within an app, how can certain parts or region of that form be hidden to certain users? Is that done via code or admin setup or what?

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[Development]
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10) The same way you have provided SF for WinForms, is there any plan to have ASP.Net WebForm development (using your tools) that can be used to connect to BO. This way, we can offer WinForm and WebForm of the same screens and features!

11) What's the best way developing, printouts and reports. (lots of it)

12) When new app is being developed, do we create the tables/fields/indexes in Database first then import them to SF OR do we create our BO based on OO methodology and then have SF create the appropriate data tables and their relationships?

13) [As you know] MS is working on "Entity Relationship" or vNext which allows the developer to create a diagram of his view of the system relationship regardless where the data is. Since SF has it's own O/R mapping, is this something SF might use?

14) When doing query or filtering, does the developer has to use your proprietary syntax or is it SQL code?

15) Following the above question, will you support LINQ syntax?

16) Is there any plan to support WPF for the UI?

17) What grid system do you support/prefer? Users like to see their data in matrix format (Thanks to Excel )

18) Are there any pre built system in SF that users can filter/search their data by different fields without developer writing all kinds of custom filters. i.e. list of customers whose balance > 2000 and State="Florida"?

19) Are there sufficient docs/tutorials to get started?

20) Do you recommend the Training Videos?

I like to thank you in advance for your time and hope to get started soon!


..ßen

Good I guess, I mean the 2:00am thing…

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[Deployment]
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All current products are runtime royalty free.  The only twist is the Enterprise Server, middle tier.  The actual developers SDK is zero cost but when you deploy your product there will be an annual fee assessed to the end-user.  Similar to SQL CALs or Citrix.  The price is yet to be published but it is our desire to be competitive.  When published the rates will be as follows:

Developer Toolkit (SDK) – Free
$995 – Up to 25 users who will access the server (25 CAL) / SERVER
$2495 – Up to 100 users who will access the server (100 CAL) / SERVER
$4995 – Unlimited users / SERVER

All prices are annual.  As a side note, to incorporate this feature in your application requires a single line of code.

No, you would need to create your own install.  We are currently using InstallAware for our applications.  It seems to be friendly enough, as install packages go, and has a pre-built requirements list.

This is the actual function of the DDT.  It was designed and is currently being used to accomplish this task.  In fact, it is not necessary to follow a linear sequence when updating the user’s databases.  For example, say the user is currently running version 2 of your application and your current published version is 5.  It is not necessary for the user to upgrade in sequence (2,3,4,5) the DDT will update the schema changes from 2 to 5 by simply installing version 5.  The DDT help has samples showing this functionality.

Answered in question 1.

 

Refer to the above described install scenario.

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[Security]
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Yes, your only responsibility is obviously the permissions.  This is a very well designed application providing session locking, restriction sets, field level security, CRUD functionality controlled via the business object properties, application events, data events, and capability for localization.

All security data is stored in SQL server and requires SQL server to run.  If you use something other than SQL we recommend installing SQL express for security.

Actually, this functionality is under your control.  The login process is used to determine if the User is granted access to your application.  It simply returns a Boolean value and entrance is a programmatic determination.  Once in the application, a SecurityKey attached to each form determines whether the user has access to that form.

Yes, this is accomplished via the field level security.  Depending on the value of the permission a field can be hidden from the user, displayed with a substitute character (x or * -- your choice) , read only, or normal editing state.  The purpose of the substitute character is to inform the user that data exists within a field but not allow viewing.

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[Development]
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This feature currently exists for web forms.  A BO, once created, can be used across platforms.

Work hard and stay up until 2:00am   We have several visions internally as to the perfect report writer.  We are trying to flush this out within the next 30 days.  However, some of our users use different report generators… everything from Active Reports to DevEx’s XtraReports, so you might ask some of them for their opinions.

We recommend using the DDT to create all tables/fields/indexes/relationships and then deploy the schemas to a database.  Additionally, static data can be deployed to your users.   Within SF regardless of how the schemas are created an internal BO mapper is used to strong type the fields.

We will incorporate and review all new technology as it becomes available.  We used .NET 2.0 beta for 16-18 months before the product was released.  It is our desire to be leading edge without too much bleeding edge on the way.  Things change features are deprecated but yes we care about new techniques.  The next version of SF will include our own implementation of the LINQ functionality to provide support that extends beyond the simple DLINQ and Entity LINQ that Microsoft will provide in the next version of Visual Studio (Orcas).

Nothing is proprietary, how nice .  It would be SQL or C# or VB code depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

Yes

Yes

Infragistis, or devexpress

Not really but we have a great built-in browse dialog function for locating accounts.

I think so; we have tried to make it as easy as possible.  IMHO

Yes we have not heard otherwise.  In fact we have had several good responses.

Steve, thanks for all the answers. The one issue that I'm trying to relove is how does one provide some sort of a custom menu at run time for the logged in user. How do you do it in your medical app?



For a developer to start, do you recomend to purchase all three toolkits at first and build the security into the app from ground up?



When you say webform development is already part of the kit, do you mean ability to desig an ASP.Net webform in StrataFrame? I did not see any reference to that?

..ßen

We build the menu using just a plain-Jane ToolStrip within the winforms designer.  For the menu items that should not be visible when the user does not have the proper permissions, we cycle through the menu items and check the permissions and then set the menuItem.Visible = False.  It's all done by hand to manage the menu for the application.  Each SF form has a ViewSecurityKey property that can be set to a permission and when the permission is not granted, the form shows a message to the user rather than showing the actual form when form.Show() or form.ShowDialog() is called.

Depending upon how many permissions you have, it can sometimes be easier to go and add the security after you have built the application.  However, it is nice to have the security editor to start adding the permissions as you create the application.

Yes, we have a collection of webforms controls that correspond to the winforms controls we have.  We also have the equivalent type editors for the webforms development.  Even if you decide to forgo using our webforms UI, you can certainly use our business objects since they are UI independent.

This product sounds pretty good guys! Now it's time to dive in...



Thanks for the prompt support!

..ßen

Not a problem... just post again when you have more questions.

Thanks! Just got finished the installation. Nice & clean! I really like the way you activate the product. I should do the same thing for ours when it's done!



question: No tutorial in C#??? I don't know VB and much rather to follow the tutorials in C#. Is there another download somewhere?

..ßen

Hi,





Are you going to have report writer like XtraReport or FoxFire! / StoneFieldQuery ?



Thank you

We haven't discussed writing our own report writer... certainly not for the current version.  There are so many good report writers out there, that it become a second job just trying to make our product competitive.  I won't flat out say "no," because you never know, but if it happens, it won't be any time soon.

Up above you had the following quote:

"We will incorporate and review all new technology as it becomes available.  We used .NET 2.0 beta for 16-18 months before the product was released.  It is our desire to be leading edge without too much bleeding edge on the way.  Things change features are deprecated but yes we care about new techniques.  The next version of SF will include our own implementation of the LINQ functionality to provide support that extends beyond the simple DLINQ and Entity LINQ that Microsoft will provide in the next version of Visual Studio (Orcas).We will incorporate and review all new technology as it becomes available.  We used .NET 2.0 beta for 16-18 months before the product was released.  It is our desire to be leading edge without too much bleeding edge on the way.  Things change features are deprecated but yes we care about new techniques.  The next version of SF will include our own implementation of the LINQ functionality to provide support that extends beyond the simple DLINQ and Entity LINQ that Microsoft will provide in the next version of Visual Studio (Orcas)."

Is SF 1.6 considered the new version with Linq support and can you send me in the right direction if so?

Richard