Found OpenXava for Web Applications

MarkusR

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the LiveCode web page did not made a good impression.

he he , if you know the best IDEs you have specific demands.
this Xojo IDE is currently very well designed.

someone here had tested OpenXava?
 
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techknight

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I am a Xojo developer as well, and its ok. B4X and Xojo have different target environments for me. With Xojo, I only use it for native apps. Mainly for OS X to use native dylibs for a USB Dongle I have, something that is not easy in B4J.

Anyways, yea its expensive. I only paid the one time for a license and its showing its age. So I dont really use it much these days.

It was known as RealBASIC in its past life, and dates back to the late 90s/early 2000s and would compile native apps for Macintosh systems as early as 68K.
 

MarkusR

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Anyways, yea its expensive. I only paid the one time for a license and its showing its age.
Click to expand...
yo, btw these days they have a 20% Coupon Code.
 

alwaysbusy

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You must also take into account that you will have to update your Xojo license almost yearly. We used to laugh that for every 200 bugs they fix in a release, 100 new ones/regressions were introduced. At the end, we would put a IDE version next to each app, because what worked in one release, was broken in another one (we had IDEs from RealBasic 2007 up to Xojo 2015 installed to keep our apps running). So it came very close to a subscription system.

Note that I was a huge fan back in the days (my Alwaysbusy blog was almost exclusively RealBasic oriented) and I had made some remarkable projects with it. But since it became Xojo, a lot of things have gone wrong and some poor decisions from the company, especially with the core stuff like the language, variable types, IDE etc, made it pretty clear that we could not keep our company depend on them. A cycle that nowadays seems to repeat itself with yet another core framework overhaul. And when some key employees left Xojo inc. (or were let go), we decided we needed another platform to build our own company on.

We are very happy with the stability of B4X and the steady progress it makes all the time. It gives us an edge we wouldn't be able to have if we kept using Xojo. The accessibility to Erel to talk about new stuff and the speed bugs/new things are fixed/implemented in B4X are rather unique in dev world.
 

MarkusR

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@alwaysbusy
understand, for use in business its critically and you need something solid / stable.
 

Indic Software

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We also own Xojo. Actually I was personally attracted towards Xojo after seeing a very powerful software built in Xojo called Fundy. Fundy is a cross platform album designing software and our direct competitor.

But after using it to make a few small software for multiple OSs we understood that it is not usable for building commercial apps and when we need heavy computing/processing it is seems to fall flat on its face. Another thing is that to build a decent software we have to rely on third party components and they are costing a load. In some cases they are costlier than Xojo itself. And finally protecting apps generated by Xojo is also a very big problem.

We are in the business of creating album designing software for last 18 years. It was originally developed in VB6. Currently we are developing our flagship album designing software (AlbumSense) in Delphi and are very happy that we switched from VB6 to Delphi instead of Xojo. Because we are using Delphi we are not able to target Linux and Mac at the moment. But we hope to be able to target them in near future.
 

SayCheese

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Delphi has been developing towards multiplatform for a few years now. I don't develop for Apple devices but with the Delphi Firemonkey platform sure is an option for iOS and Mac. I'm using Delphi sinds the 90s and back in those days Delphi was truly amazing. Our company still produces most applications in Delphi.
I've been trying Android development in Delphi Firemonkey but switched to B4A because of the bad performance Delphi delivers in the Android UI department sinds Delphi Rio 3.2. But productivity wise it is so much better, at least for me it is.
 
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MarkusR

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MarkusR

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OT
SayCheese said:
I understand. If you are coming from a Java world it's very different. Since last year the free community edition has also mobile development.
I hope they manage to fix the UI performance of Android in the next release.
Click to expand...
the syntax from delphi requiring getting used to, not intuitive and always i got cryptic error messages after i run something.
the database controls are so many for a simple task and terrible designed.
delphi is stubborn as a mule and developing is a waiting game.
maybe i invest my time later on.
 

SayCheese

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the syntax from delphi requiring getting used to, not intuitive and always i got cryptic error messages after i run something.
Click to expand...
Yes, the pascal syntax is very straight. Strongly typed. But at the end it helps you building far more clear code. I regret they have made some syntax changes recently like inline variables.
the database controls are so many for a simple task and terrible designed.
delphi is stubborn as a mule and developing is a waiting game.
Click to expand...
The true strength of Delphi are those database controls (and the open control-system in general). Very easy to use but very flexible. The original architect of Delphi and Turbo Pascal, Anders Hejlsberg, is one of the big names in the business. He is creator and the chief architect of C# at Microsoft now. I wouldn't say he is a terrible designer.

The bottom-line is that it has to work for you whatever the tool is. But what works for you might not work for the next guy. For my daily work which is Windows development, Delphi is very productive and there is nothing is can't do. The compiler is extremely fast and delivers very tight and optimized binaries. But as I said: what is good for me doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you.
 

MarkusR

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@SayCheese
what i not like in delphi that they mix old and new technology together in one project, they did not find a standard.
all manuals are break in vcl and firemokey. this new inline variables feature did not work out of box but i like it.
Windows development is great in vcl but PC+Android with firemonkey not, the reason is more the Android OS itself^^

much c# classes in .net are also terrible designed.
one example:
try this
B4X: 
Color col = new Color(255, 255, 255,255);
u must use
B4X: 
col = Color.FromArgb(255, 255, 255, 255);
 

SayCheese

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You can't mix both frameworks. Either you choose multiplatform (Firemonkey) or Windows (VCL). Of course you are free to choose the units (libraries) you want to use.
The biggest reason for that is backward compatibility with existing projects.

VCL and Firemonkey are 2 different frameworks. You can ignore Firemonkey as long you won't be doing multiplatform developing. VCL is still the best I think when you are developing business applications for Windows.

I developed a couple of years in ASP.NET with C#. It was a very disappointing experience. Especially coming from Delphi. I was surprised that the IDE (Visual Studio) showed so little progression over time. I felt I was typing half of the time code the IDE could have generate for me. That's a shame and not productive at all.

Your examples about the colors:
I like the lower one best. This is because in Pascal you must declare 'col' as a simple type before using it and then it makes perfect sense.
To me the upper one feels clumsy. Unnecessary long.

B4X: 
var
  col: TAlphaColor;
begin
  col :=  $FFFFFFFF;  (or TAlphacolorrec.white or claWhite)
  .
  .
  .
end;

When there is a class involved then you must create it and destroy it

B4X: 
var
  col: TSomeclass;
begin
  col :=  TSomeclass.Create($FFFFFFFF);
  try
  .
  .
  .
  finally
    col.free
  end;
end;

To me this is very natural and clean.
 
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MarkusR

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OT
@SayCheese
i meant more old and new database technology in a project, its confusing what can be used together.
the toolbox is overfilled by default in an new project. (can be removed optional if u know what is useful and what not but as new user i can't judge)


col := TSomeclass.Create($FFFFFFFF);
that is what i mean
col = new Color($FFFFFFFF)
it is intuitive but not exists in c#.
or try in c# col.R = 255; this R property is readonly^^ that what i mean with bad class design.
 

SayCheese

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MarkusR said:
OT
@SayCheese
i meant more old and new database technology in a project, its confusing what can be used together.
the toolbox is overfilled by default in an new project.
Click to expand...

Every language has flaws, every tool has flaws. Nothing is perfect. If you can accept that, life gets easier
Delphi can be overwhelming for people not knowing Delphi. It is loaded with components. Having a choice is always better, certainly when it has a purpose. In this case it is a good thing because without the "old" database model there is no backwards compatibility. To be honest, at this point I like the "old" model still more than the new one. A clear object oriented model where presentation, datasource/provider and data are separated. Those objects need very little coding and the components are very transparent having properties you can set in designtime. If only firemonkey had better native controls for Android. But....hey as I said, nothing is perfect.
 
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MarkusR

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@SayCheese
see palette it list dbExpress,DataAccess,5x FireDAC,dbGo,Interbase, i just need one Database category that is up to date.
its confusing what i should use, can use, and what can i remove without break something.
i think they should make a choice at a new project what database model should be used. put everything in is laziness.
 

SayCheese

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As I said, most are for backwards compatibility. For new projects you are probably best of with FireDac. Btw, if you don't need/want all those possibilities, just remove them from the pallet in a few clicks. "Problem" solved.
There are some great third party solutions too. No need for DB drivers because they are build in. This means you can build full blown applications in one single executable in less than a few MB's with no dependencies and no runtimes whatsoever. Great stuff.
 
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DonManfred

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I do use Devarts UniDAC since years. It is a native database-connector for any Database we use. And it is FAST and no external dependencies. Only a few mb more in exe size.

I never regret buying a license.
https://www.devart.com/dac.html
 

SayCheese

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I do use Devarts UniDAC since years. It is a native database-connector for any Database we use. And it is FAST and no external dependencies. Only a few mb more in exe size.

I never regret buying a license.
https://www.devart.com/dac.html
Click to expand...

Yes, Devart I was talking about. I use Devart components for ages now. It's worth every penny.

Are you using UniDAC with Delphi? If so, what do you think about the Firemonkey framework in general?
 

DonManfred

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I am just using delphi xe3
Never tried the Framework if i should be honest

Before x3 we was using delphi 2007 and then we started searching for better database components.
I found devart and buyed a license.
Later we updated to xe3 and the devarts components too.
 
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