Simplicty and flexibility!

DG3 - An independent child.

DG3 is not an upgrade! It wasn't even created as an upgrade migration path for existing DataEase users.

With DG3 the idea of DataEase has been re-invented. All the DFD versions are just evolutions of the same product. DataEase for Windows is what it is, but a genuine idea and direction is not what you primarily associate with it. In my mind it is a little like a chronic disease, you live with it but would rather be without - this is of course a private view and

DG3 was born from wishful thinking - "Imagine if we had DataEase for the Web". And when the idea was born the people that gave birth to it were not even remotely associated with DataEase or Sapphire. They were just dreamers chopping logs on a farm discussing an especially tricky web project involving SQL Server, SharePoint and difficult customers with flagging minds. One thing led to another and a little more than four years later the first version of DG3 sees the light of day and the same guys are heading the development of DataEase - fairytale or nightmare? Web Publisher was an attempt to have a Web product in the "traditional" sense. As you all know, or now will know, it failed magnificently. It turns out that trying to do DataEase for Windows for the Web was not a good idea. We should have known because we had already tried to do DataEase for DOS for Windows, and that didn't turn out that well either. With DG3 we started from the end. We wanted to make a "state of the art" web development environment, where what we call DataEase would be where you stored all the data you need to put somewhere, and where you execute the transactions that you would want executed as the development proceeds. We were tired of the traditional development where you have to know and plan everything before you get started with the fun stuff, and where any unplanned changes along the way could mean a full redesign of the system. We simply wanted to have fun and to have a tool that would pick up the slack and cater for lack of planning and people changing their mind. We looked for such a product and since we couldn't find it we decided to develop it. Have our cake and eat it too.... But DataEase has always had its annoying sides too, and another task we set out to resolve was it "invasiveness". It is said that the goodness in garlic is the same stuff that make it smell, so without the one you cannot get the other. Luckily it turned out that you can have smell free garlic full of goodness, and we think that we can have DataEase without its invasive framework. In DG3 we separated the developer client from the runtime client. In fact there is no visible trace of DataEase when you run your application because it is basically just like any other website, and why shouldn't it be? In our minds, a web development framework should develop a web application, not some encapsulated modules that can be loaded in a web browser. In our Designer tool, you design and maintain your application, but the user never has to know or relate to any of that. You can of course test and run your application from inside the designer, but when you are happy with it, you publish it and the user simply access it from his browser without having to download, install or configure anything - it is the 21st century after all... But every rose has its thorn... The focus in DataEase for the last 15-20 years has been on moving the existing user base forward not on recruiting new users. With DG3 that line has been broken. DG3 is first and foremost a new product that leverages the original DataEase idea on the web. There is no migration path to DG3 from previous versions, simply because there is not a viable way to move a DFD or DFW application to the web automatically. In fact there is no viable way of turning apples into pears either and very few people ever try. This doesn't mean that existing users cannot move forward with DG3. Rather the opposite. When we have laid the impossible idea of migration dead, we can start talking of what we can and should do. What we always should have done. DataEase with DG3 is finally compatible with itself. DG3 can bridge DataEase versions from DFD 5.x via DFW 6.x to DFW 7.x. You can leave your applications as they are where they are, and you can share data with DG3 and publish them on the web, or edit them on the web. You can stop worrying about the money you have sunk in old DataEase solutions in the safe knowledge that your investment is safe. DataEase is finally committed not only to move you forward into the 21st century, we are also committed to ensure that all the time and effort you have invested in our products over the last 4 decades is both useable and safe for future generations. You are welcome!

Published: 21/10/11 - 10:03:02 (Ulrik Jacob Høegh - Krohn)

Last changed: 21/12/11 - 12:15:18 (Katia Robinson)

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