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