Build desktop and web apps with Alpha Five 10.5 Developer

Alpha Five is a development tool that I wanted to learn more about for some time. Whenever I mentioned it on TechRepublic, a number of Alpha Five users would comment that they love the tool. Now that I finally had the chance to work with Alpha Five, I can see why they gave it their stamp of approval. Alpha Five is definitely worth a look if it’s appropriate for your project.

Note: The vendor provided me with a full version of Alpha Five 10.5 Developer free of charge for the purposes of this review.

My review of Alpha Five 10.5

Alpha Five is capable of generating desktop and Web applications from the same data model, which is a huge plus. Developers can leverage the tool to deliver sophisticated applications; and yet, someone without significant programming experience or skill (such as a junior developer or a good business analyst) could quickly assemble simple, data-driven applications. Alpha Five occupies a unique niche because it does more than a code generator without taking away a substantial amount of control from the developer.

Alpha Five is heavily oriented towards building data-driven applications. For example, creating screens for a desktop application usually starts by picking a database table (or view) and selecting fields to include on the form. After you follow a couple of steps in the wizard (though you don’t have to use the wizard), a form for working with the table or view is created. You can edit the code for handling events by editing XBasic code directly (the BASIC-like language that Alpha Five uses) or by constructing a tree of commands in the Action Script editor (which is not the ActionScript that Flash uses)

Read more: TechRepublic

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