Archive 2005

There have been more than 100 issues resolved since the RC-1 drop, hence the release of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 is coming closer and closer. Furthermore, you will enjoy an introduction chapter on ActiveX while laying hands on the RC-2; also, you will find a lot of fixes related to the ODBC DatabaseEngine. Beyond that, the RC-2 contains fixes and minor refinements in almost all areas of the product. Thus, we like to ask our beta participants to read up carefully the READ-ME included as well as the list-of-changes in the Online Documentation.

Any customer who currently uses the RC-1 should update immediately to RC-2, since the former stops working on February 28th, 2006.

To download Xbase⁺⁺RC-2, simply employ one of the following links in conjunction with the username and password previously provided to you to download RC1. The corresponding links to your license purchased are: Customers with an Xbase⁺⁺1.82 license registered use the following link: www.alaska-software.com/rc2_Xb . Customers with a valid Foundation Subscription use: www.alaska-software.com/rc2_found Customers with a valid Professional Subscription use: www.alaska-software.com/rc2_prof .

Note: To get access information regarding the appropriate download account, just drop an e-mail to our ESD System (Electronic Software Delivery) with the word HELP in the subject line. You will be immediately provided with an automatic reply containing the required next steps.

Alaska Software does not plan to issue another release candidate, besides the RC-2. Therefore, the final release of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 shall be available approximately 30-60 days thereafter.

If you currently use Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and want to update, please check out our Subscription products.

New to Xbase⁺⁺? If so, buy now Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and get Xbase⁺⁺1.90 for free. This way you get 2 products for the price of one! Should you have any questions, then we look forward to receiving your email.

For more than two weeks now, all of our In-House applications and Web solutions at Alaska Software have been using the latest build of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 as their new foundation. Hence the average transaction time got reduced by more than 30%, and our Web applications handle now a much larger amount of simultanous transactions.

Development at Alaska Software is currently heading towards the RC-2 (release candidate #2) build. The RC-2 shall be availabe in the course of the next weeks and includes a significant amount of fixes and/or improvements mainly having been reported by our esteemed beta-testers. Customers who have deployed RC-1-based code in their production environments or at their customer sites should upgrade immediatly to RC-2 upon its availability.

Alaska Software does not plan to issue another release candidate, besides RC-2. Therefore, the final release of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 ought to follow the RC-2 approximately 30 days thereafer. RC-2 availability will be announced seperatly as soon as it will have passed all regular validation procedures, packaging, etc.

If you currently use Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and want to update, please check out our Subscription products.

New to Xbase⁺⁺? If so, buy now Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and get Xbase⁺⁺1.90 for free. This way you get 2 products for the price of one! Should you have any questions, then we look forward to receiving your email.

We are currently in the process of upgrading all our web-based and in-house applications to Xbase⁺⁺1.9 (RC1). During the upgrade period, the following systems may be temporarily unavailable:

• Knowledgebase
• Online Shop
• Downlod Area
• Xbase⁺⁺Free Trial
• WAA in action

The transition should be concluded within one to two days. We apologize for this inconvenience.

As of today, 2005-10-21, the release candidate #1 (RC-1) of Xbase⁺⁺1.90 is available for download. Whereas past release candidates were made available only to a limited number of beta testers, this time we encourage all our registered customer to get a hold of this release candidate!

While having tremendously invested into Xbase⁺⁺1.9, Alaska Software not only has expanded the featureset of Xbase⁺⁺, but also extended the platform-support.

Xbase⁺⁺1.9 is now validated against Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT/2000, Windows XP/SP1/SP2 and Windows Server 2003, hence does support all of them. In addition, Xbase⁺⁺1.9 also supports systems with Hardware DEP (Dynamic Execution Protection) enabled, nowadays a necessary security feature in modern platforms against malware and viruses. Furthermore Windows XP 64Bit constitutes an integral part of our standard validation procedure, and is therefore officially backed. On the network side, we added Samba to the supported file server systems. The new ActiveX feature of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 has been validated against the so-called COM Interop layer of Microsoft .NET, allowing Xbase⁺⁺developers to fully utilize the .NET framework and its features.

To download Xbase⁺⁺RC-1, simply use one of the following links corresponding to your license purchased: Customers with an Xbase⁺⁺1.82 license registered use the following link: www.alaska-software.com/RC1_Xb . Customers with a valid Foundation Subscription use: www.alaska-software.com/RC1_found . Customers with a valid Professional Subscription use: www.alaska-software.com/RC1_prof .

Note: To get access information regarding the appropriate download account, just drop an e-mail to our ESD System (Electronic Software Delivery) with the word HELP in the subject line. You will be immediately provided with an automatic reply containing the required next steps.

Are you interested in Xbase⁺⁺1.9? If you currently use Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and you want to upgrade, then our Subscription Products might be an interesting offer.

New to Xbase⁺⁺? If so, buy now Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and get Xbase⁺⁺1.90 for free. This way you get 2 products for the price of one! Should you have any questions, then we look forward to your email !

Feedback from Xbase⁺⁺1.90 beta testers clearly demonstrates, that Xbase⁺⁺1.90 is not only about to be a milestone release, but is in fact a steadfast and solid foundation for any large scale mission critical application.

Ever more Beta participants have been reporting successful transitions of large in-house, retail or branch-specific solutions to Xbase⁺⁺1.90. These Xbase⁺⁺applications are currently being deployed at end-user sites to collect more detailed information. While the field tests continue and reports pour in, the development team at Alaska Software concentrates on the release candidate 1 (RC-1) of Xbase⁺⁺1.90.

RC-1 availability is anticipated for second half of October 2005. A dedicated announcement will be made soon. A list containing new features and changes related to Xbase⁺⁺1.9 can be found here .

If you currently use Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and want to upgrade, please check out our Subscription products.

New to Xbase⁺⁺? If so, buy now Xbase⁺⁺1.82 and get Xbase⁺⁺1.90 for free. This way you get 2 products for the price of one! Should you have any questions, then we look forward to your email l!

We have reached the finishing line for the pre-finals! The Fourth BETA DROP of Xbase⁺⁺V.1.90 has been released. What has happened in the meanwhile?

• More than 160 Issues (PDRs) have been resolved!
  
• The List of Changes comprises more than 150 Positions !
• The documentation has been greatly extented, clarified and enhanced.
• Development has benefited greatly from the agile feedback provided by our beta testers. Again, the very productive and mutually fruitful cooperation has provided valuable feedback for enhancing the Xbase⁺⁺product.

Currently we are working on the designated Release Candidate (RC-1) which ought to be released as the next step towards Xbase⁺⁺1.9. So swing by. If you have questions or need more information, drop us an email .

The meetings of the Dutch Xbase⁺⁺- the XXP Netherlands - are quite an instituion by now! Last Friday your Dutch Xbase⁺⁺colleagues met again in Utrecht.

Take a look what they have talked about, since Till Warweg and Andreas Herdt from Alaska Software's development team had gladly followed an invitation to join this meeting.
Of course they shared an array of news, tips and trick all around Xbase⁺⁺!
Curious by now? Well, check out some of the topics talked over.

Currently Alaska Software is working on the final beta drop of Xbase⁺⁺1.90.

Initially we envisaged for the Xbase⁺⁺1.90 release merely new features, such as ActiveX and enhancements related to the database engines. However, as it turns out now version 1.90 of Xbase⁺⁺is truly going to be a milestone in its history!

Alaska Software will be participating, i.e. holding a few sessions about Xbase⁺⁺& Advantage Database Server at the upcoming European Advantage Conference 2005.

Please take a look at the Conference Schedule .

The Conference will take place on April 14th and 15th, 2005 in the outskirts of Frankfurt/M.
Hope to see you there! You may want to sign up right here: Register Me .

Those of you who are located in the vicinity of London, please be advised that this Conference will also be held on April 11th and 12th, 2005 in London, but without an Alaska Software Speaker!

We are going to perform maintenance on our T1 line over the following days. Due to the constantly increasing demand of our customers, a bandwidth upgrade to T2 is going to take place in the following days. Although we tried to ensure that the upgrade procedure does not affect current operations, irregularities may occur.

We apologize up front for any connection problems with our server systems during the transition phase.

With regards,
Alaska Software

Make sure you check out the second BETA DROP of Xbase⁺⁺which has gone online today! This second beta drop (beta-2) for Xbase⁺⁺1.9 contains the following major modifications:

• All Add-On products, such as ADS or ODBC DatabaseEngine, the XbToolsIII, WAA and Visual Xbase⁺⁺2.0 pre-release are now available.
  
• The paint/re-paint behavior was revised to avoid flickering when GUI dialogs repaint; Furthermore the ActiveX control paint behavior got optimized.
• NULL/NIL value supporting functions were added. The automatic database field transformation for NULL/NIL values to/from empty field values were also added.
• ADS DatabaseEngine now supports ADT tables including dictionary connections and transparent NULL/NIL value support.

To download beta-2, simply use one of the following links corresponding to your license purchased:
For registered customers of Xbase⁺⁺1.82: www.alaska-software.com/beta19 . For customers with a valid Foundation Subscription: www.alaska-software.com/beta19_found . Customer owning a valid Professional Subscription: www.alaska-software.com/beta19_prof .

Your web-browser will display a dialog asking for username and password. Please enter username and password as provided to you by the ESD system. In case you have lost your authentification data please send email to esd@alaska-software.com with HELP in the subject line. The ESD system will guide you through the process. Alternatively, you may want to send an email to info@alaska-software.com in order to get access to the Xbase⁺⁺1.9 beta-2 drop; do not forget to provide your CID!

Currently we anticipate providing to you a third beta drop; availability to be announced. This third beta drop is meant to be the release candidate for Xbase⁺⁺1.9 - more details will be put forward in due course.

Have fun!

Starting today you may use our Online-Shop at a 24/7 basis to place your orders. Remaining work regarding our mail-servers are going to be completed by the end of this week.

As you surely have taken a note of, the Visual-ActiveX BETA (Build# 1.90.314) has gone online for download just in time for the Christmas Holidays. Eligible for downloading this BETA-Drop for free are all registered Xbase⁺⁺Version 1.82 customers, as well as all our Professional and Foundation subscription customers. Please log on to www.alaska-software.com/beta19 and use the Username and Password which you have used for the original product. In case you do not have these access-codes readily handy, just drop an email to esd@alaska-software.com with the word HELP in the subject line.

We also like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for the overwhelming feedback received in response to this last BETA drop.

Moreover, we like to remind you that each customer purchasing Xbase⁺⁺1.82 today, will automatically be receiving Version 1.9 free of any further costs. This way you will be receiving two versions of Xbase⁺⁺for the price of one!

Check out the detailed component description of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 .