Pre-purchase Questions

[BenchmarkDan]

I hope this is an appropriate place to ask "pre-purchase" questions of existing users; if not, please accept my appologies.

If it is appropriate - a sincere thanks in advance for any help, I know your time is valuable.

Our background:
Many years programming experience in client/server environment with Visual Foxpro.
Some experience utilizing VFP against MS SQL, a little VB experience.
No web programming experience.

Our Search:
Need a web development tool. Have reviewed many - down to:
Aware IM, Servoy, Ironspeed, Alpha Five, ROR, and of course .net.
Of these Aware IM and Ironspeed are the only 'generative' programs.
If I had to choose today, it would be either:
Servoy: more coding - but not afraid of 'hitting the wall'
or
Aware IM: more automatic generation - but afraid of 'hitting the wall'
( maybe less debugging?? ooh ya! )

The more we look at Aware Im, the more it seems to have the bases covered, but before we invest more time, I was hoping for some feedback from current users/developers.

Questions:
Are Custom forms hard to build? Do most people utilize the automatic forms?
How automatic is any AJAX functionality.
To utilize document interface with MS Word, must you be running IIS?
Any CSS behavior?
Noticed in form messages that changing from Derby to MySQL requires some (a lot?) of work - why would this be?
Any speed issues with Aware IM in general - or a specific database?
Anyone built a 'large' system? Say - more than 30 tables, and lots of menus and submenus.

---- THE KEY QUESTION ----
Really don't want to learn another programming language (Java or .net), we are hoping we can do 99% of tasks within Aware IM, without having to drop to coding - is this reasonable?

What do you consider the greatest strenght of Aware IM?
What do you consider the greatest weakness of Aware IM?

Thanks again.

[greg]

Sounds like a marketing survey, however,

Are Custom forms hard to build? Do most people utilize the automatic forms?

very easy, yes, automatic, fiddling with elements of design within the automatic option interface

To utilize document interface with MS Word, must you be running IIS?

No

Any CSS behavior?

Can substitute with your own

Noticed in form messages that changing from Derby to MySQL requires some (a lot?) of work - why would this be?

It depends what you are doing. The configuration work does not depend on the back end database and a configuration file can be used with any of the supported databases. However if you already have data in Derby or any other database for this sense, then transfer data to a different database may be difficult depending on numerous factors.

Any speed issues with Aware IM in general - or a specific database?

Again, a system speed depends on too many factors

Anyone built a 'large' system? Say - more than 30 tables, and lots of menus and submenus.

Sure

Really don't want to learn another programming language (Java or .net), we are hoping we can do 99% of tasks within Aware IM, without having to drop to coding - is this reasonable?

It is a reasonable assumption for many projects

[BenchmarkDan]

Thanks Greg, no survey, just trying our best to make a right choice.

[tford]

BenchmarkDan,

Re: concern about "hitting the wall"

While AwareIM does in fact have a lot of automatic generation, I would not be concerned about "hitting the wall". It has a lot of capacity for relatively easy customization of forms, queries, graphs, menus & reports. The upcoming Version 4 (which I have beta tested and have permission to discuss) has even more ability to customize & create very useful dashboard type views very easily. While in V3 there were a few times that I wasn't able to achieve the "optimal" look and feel, V4 is a major release that adds the ability to easily customize in many more ways. I can't imagine hitting the wall with V4.

How automatic is any AJAX functionality

In V4, Ajax is "under the hood" and very automatic. AwareIM users just use various screens to specify various aspects of the UI & AwareIM handles it all. Non-technical users would just say -- "wow, this is fast & looks very professional". Technical users would know that the quickness & professional look comes from Ajax.

Speed and 'large' databases questions

Speed has not been an issue in V3 & V4 is VERY quick. 30+ tables & lots of menus and submenus are a piece of cake for AwareIM.

Key question re: programming

This is part of what I wrote just this morning when AwareIM asked for V4 beta feedback:

AwareIM 4.0 has allowed me to present information online without having to learn PHP, Ajax, HTML, MySql, etc. Instead, I can focus my time on understanding how business processes work & how to best display information on the screen so that it is useful to end users. One amazing aspect about AwareIM is that you can either present information very simply and let AwareIM define much of the look and feel of forms, queries, graphs, menus & reports or you can customize them very extensively.

Re: Greatest strength

From this morning also:

The extensive sample applications provide excellent examples of the power of AwareIM's various features. It is very easy to run the sample applications (which come complete with sample data) in test mode while at the same time looking "under the hood" using AwareIM's configuration tool to see how the various screens and processes were built.

Support & continual active development is something I highly value when deciding to purchase or upgrade a product. The AwareIM development &
support team is top notch. They actively communicate with users and have clearly taken user feedback into account when releasing new versions. Working with the AwareIM team feels very much like a partnership even though I am simply a very satisfied customer.

Hope this helps,
Tom

[BenchmarkDan]

Thanks Tom, very helpful and encourging.

[pbrad]

Hi,

My two cents worth: "What they said!"

Cheers,
Pete
(Long standing, very satisfied AwareIM customer and supporter)