The Clarion Magazine Roadmap
Posted July 17 2009
These are interesting times for Clarion developers. Recently I published an article titled Clarion and .NET: The 50,000 Foot View. In that article I discussed some of the significant differences between Clarion Win32 development and .NET development. And as Bruce Johnson pointed out in a comment to that article, there really is a divide in the community over how (or even why) Clarion should "do" .NET.
A lot (possibly a majority) of Clarion devs simply aren't concerned about .NET and neither are their customers, who just want software that works.
At the other extreme are those Clarion devs who have a pressing need for .NET but lack a Clarion-like path through the .NET landscape.
A focus on Win32
Here at the mag we've had a lot of discussions about how to best deal with these diverging paths. And what it comes down to is this: Win32 is still the sweet spot for most Clarion developers. Until that changes, Clarion Magazine will remain primarily a publication about Win32 development. We'll continue to cover important Clarion# news, of course. And once there's a .NET AppGen and at least one Clarion# template chain you can expect an increase in .NET coverage. But the reality is that most Clarion developers are far more concerned about the migration from C6 to C7 (or just getting the job done in C6) than they are with moving to the .NET framework.
If you are one of those devs looking to .NET, take heart. We have something special in the works for you, which I'll get to in a moment.
Clarion Magazine v.3
To better support Clarion developers in their Win32 work we've been working on a major update to the ClarionMag site. This is actually the third major version of the mag. The very first version was, if you can believe it, a static site. It had a flat file of logins for authentication and authorization, but other than that there was no back end database; each web page was a discreet HTML page. ClarionMag quickly outgrew that crude architecture, and for most of the last decade we've delivered the magazine using a combination of SQL, Clarion, and custom server-side code. We're now taking that server-side code to a new level with Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC framework.
ClarionMag version 1 was just a collection of web pages; ClarionMag version 2 went beyond pure article content and added reader comments, search functionality, a topical index, RSS feeds, surveys and a blog.
Here are just some of the things we're adding to ClarionMag version 3:
- Improved site navigation and search
- File uploads - share your Clarion code
- A third party product directory
- User ratings (of third party products and other site elements)
- Skill sets - let other Clarion developers know what you do well
- Favorites list - keep track of your favorite articles/links/products and optionally share that list with others
Our vision for ClarionMag version 3 is as much about online community as it is about publishing. We want the mag to be a place not just where you read content, but where you can share information with other developers.
We've enjoyed and appreciated the support of the Clarion community for the last ten years; we trust that Clarion Magazine version 3 will be a valued resource for many years to come.
A new .NET magazine
Along with a new ClarionMag site we'll be rolling out a new online magazine for .NET business software developers. Although we think this new mag will be immensely useful for any Clarion developer doing .NET work, it really isn't about Clarion per se. It's about .NET, and its purpose is to help business software developers choose the optimum path for their needs path among the many different paths available.
Our new .NET mag will have many of the features of Clarion Magazine, but with a .NET focus. These features include:
- Articles focused on business software development
- News items
- Site navigation that actually helps you plan and execute your .NET strategy
- Rated links to the best .NET business programming resources
- Favorites list - keep track of your favorite articles/links/products and optionally share that list with others
- Skill sets - let other .NET developers know what you do well
- Glossary of terms
- And much more
We're very excited about the new .NET mag and the changes coming to ClarionMag. These two publications will offer terrific new opportunities to learn, to share your knowledge, and to make the most out of your business software development options.
Article comments
Post a comment
You must be logged on to post comments.
Talk To Us!
Search ClarionMag
From the archives
Sending Clarion Reports as Email Attachments (Part 1)
1/9/2001 12:00:00 AM
The email capability in version 5.5 is a nice addition to the Clarion toolset. What is still missing however, is the ability to easily send a report as an email attachment. In this article David Potter demonstrates one possible solution to this problem. Part 1 of 2.
by Graham Dawson on July 20 2009 (comment link)
As you say exciting times - lots of questions on how this will work, for starters...
Will you need a separate subscription to access it?
Will existing Clarion.NET and Clarion# articles be moved over to it, and only be accessible there?
Kevin
by Dave Harms on July 20 2009 (comment link)
Yes, the new site will be a subscription-based publication and will be a separate entity from Clarion Magazine. There will probably be a discount for those who want both, but I haven't worked out the details yet.
I will not be moving any existing Clarion# or Clarion.NET articles to the new site. And while the new site might occasionally carry some Clarion-specific content, that won't be its primary focus.
So will the new site be of interest to existing Clarion developers? If they're doing any .NET work, or have any interest in doing .NET work, I think the answer is an emphatic Yes!
One of the great features of Clarion development is that it provides a standard architecture for application development. This, I think, is the foundation of the Clarion community: we have a common language and a common basis for discussion.
By comparison, the .NET world presents a bewildering number of architectures and development paths and a vast universe of tools and add-on products. This fragmentation makes it harder to form a cohesive view of what your particular kind of .NET development should look like, and hard to find the help you need.
Template sets from SoftVelocity (or third party vendors) will help, but only to the degree that the choices made by the template designers align with your specific requirements. Template sets are unlikely to cover such issues as multi-language development, continuous integration, test driven development, domain-specific languages, or any of dozens of other significant concepts common in .NET development.
We believe we've found a way to bring order out of that chaos, to impose some structure on the massive amounts of .NET programming information out there, and to make it easier for developers to find their way through the .NET universe whether they're using Clarion or any other toolset. And that's the purpose of the new site.
Dave
by Lee White on July 25 2009 (comment link)
by Dave Harms on August 4 2009 (comment link)
Thanks, and yes, I think this will definitely enable a "101" kind of overview of the available information.
Dave