News from TopSpeed - DevCon Wrap-up

by Danielle Guzzetta

Published 1997-10-01    Printer-friendly version

This year's Developers' Conference was held in south Florida, September 22-24, and it was a smashing success! Over 400 developers from 25 different countries attended the conference which was held at the Radisson Bahia Mar Beach Resort, located on Ft. Lauderdale's famous strip.

TopSpeed and Pervasive Software (formerly Btrieve Technologies) jointly announced a strategic alliance. With the two companies joining forces, Scalable SQL database will be included in TopSpeed's Clarion for Windows Professional Edition. All Clarion developers will now have the ability to develop Client/Server applications with a "low maintenance, no DBA," server at no additional charge.

TopSpeed introduced two hot new products -- Internet Connect and Clarion 4 (C4)! And, gave a taste of what's to come with Enterprise Edition.

It was announced that Internet Connect will go gold in a month. Designed to meet the needs of scalability, open standards, security, flexibility for application logic and rapid application development, Internet Connect is an amazing product that puts developers one step away from publishing applications over the Internet or an Intranet. Internet Connect extension templates add event receptors to an application that fire any event that can be produced by any control in the user interface. After regenerating, compiling and linking, the application can be manipulated as usual from Windows. But now, it can also be manipulated remotely via the new event receptors.

C4, the fourth generation of TopSpeed's Windows product, brings even more speed to Windows database developers by extending the reach of the already mature, stable, and powerful Clarion. Additionally, C4 delivers the best technology for creating PC database applications, and the industry's fastest option for expanding to global Client/Server computing -- the Internet. C4 comes with a new application infrastructure called the Application Builder Classes Library (ABC). The ABC library provides all the functionality that can be reused within a database application, file access with referential integrity and error reporting; browse and update with toolbar navigation; lookups and viewers. Everything developers need to make database application development simpler.

Due out late December, Enterprise Edition -- the first total solution for corporate developers -- is a single product that combines the highest development productivity with the highest application performance. With this edition, corporate developers will be able to develop the fastest Client/Server applications in less than half the time. Enterprise's dictionary synchronization feature minimizes the work necessary to coordinate normal database maintenance and development planning. Because Clarion for Windows easily propagates changes made in the dictionary to applications, a developer will find creating a new application to maintain a revised database as easy as running a wizard and recompiling. It automatically synchronizes an application to the database when the database structure changes, and passes the changes to the application.

Bruce Barrington's presentation, "Automating the Art of Programming" (the company's new vision statement), kept developers on the edge of their seats as he shared with them Clarion's bright future.

Third Party Accessories were highlighted throughout the conference as a way to improve productivity and provide developers with complete solutions.

Peter Coffee, Advanced Technologies Analyst for PC Week, gave the Keynote Address titled, "No Excuses." In his address he told developers not to let the rapid pace of technology get in the way of producing results. Peter encouraged developers to listen to the needs of their end users in order to produce better solutions.

No surprise here -- David Bayliss had a full house at his presentation on C4. It was at this session that developers learned how this revolutionary product will increase their productivity. Scott Ferrett, Gavin Halliday, Richard Chapman, Ilka Ciocanel, and Ole Poulsen also made the trip from the London Development Center. All were on hand to talk about the latest TopSpeed technology.

The south Florida sunshine wasn't the only thing that was cookin'. Andrew Guidroz and his wife Sabrina kicked off the conference when they fired up the grill and prepared a Cajun feast for all to enjoy. With Mardi Gras beads, doubloons and jester hats, it felt like Fat Tuesday in the French Quarter of New Orleans! And the food ... well, we're sorry if you missed it! It was delicious!

TopSpeed Jams -- this year's conference hosted the first annual Jam Session. With a number of developers playing mostly rock and roll, the audience "twisted and shouted." The highlight of the evening came when Bruce Barrington strummed a few favorites on the guitar.

Printer-friendly version

Copyright © 1999-2008 by CoveComm Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in any form without the express written consent of CoveComm Inc., except as described in the subscription agreement, is prohibited.

Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942