Alpha Five User Group
Time - 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
2nd Thursday of the Month
The next Alpha User Group meeting is Thursday, May 14 (2nd Thursday) starting at 6:30 pm at 903 N Bowser, Suite 320, Richardson. Click here for a map. Email me if you have any questions. Pizza will be available at the beginning of the meeting.
At the April meeting Dan Blank showed how to install and connect to MySQL.
We also reviewed the creation and use of functions when developing your Alpha
Five projects.
In May Leah Bucher will show us the current status of her application.
Like the application that Nick Oldfield showed a couple months ago, Leah uses
toolbars instead of menus to provide user options. It is always insightful
to get the perspective of what other developers are doing, so come take a look
at what Leah is doing.
It has been a few months since we have showcased a web application. If
you are working on a web app and would like to show it in the next month or so,
let me know.
As always, there will also be time for your questions, and suggestions for future topics.
Bill Parker.
User Group Leader
Background.
For those of you that are starting to use SQL databases as a backend for Alpha Five, there was a link recently on Alpha's message board to a free Sams e-book "Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days". You can get it here.
The purpose of the SIG is to provide a forum for users to ask questions, and share experiences of using Alpha Five and Alpha Four in practical applications. There is always a presentation topic, and a time for questions and answers.
Topics range from introductory to advanced, and cover such things as understanding the user interface, designing forms, reports, and applications, tips and tricks, and efficient design for large and small database environments.
The current month's topic may be posted here, or maybe not, but a notice and timely news will be always (usually) be emailed to our 'interested parties' list before each meeting. Let me know if you are not receiving the SIG's monthly email, and would like to get it.
It is very helpful to hear the perspective of different users, so we are always looking for speakers to talk about an application/technique/product that they use/develop. In fact, one of the best ways to get questions answered is to present your application or problem, and get immediate feedback from others! Let me know if you have an application, single technique, or topic you would like to present.
Recent Articles
Alpha
Five: Data-driven app dev done right, ZDNet, June 27, 2008
Some of the past meetings of the Alpha Five SIG.
April 2008, Alpha Web Development - Setup. Slides
July 2007, SSL Security with the WAS. Slides
July 2006, AlphaSportsWeb. A5 Trail Guide, Part 1 (1.4 MB)
June 2004, Custom Help Files. video (27MB).
January 2003, Data entry in Alpha Five vs. Alpha Four. video (26MB).
December 2002, OLE Automation with Excel and Alpha Five. video (31MB).
November 2002, Runtime prompting for report filter criteria. video (20MB), the handounts - example 2 (259K), and example 3 (361K).
October 2002, Action Scripting vs. Xbasic. video (32MB), and handout (473K).
May 2002, Summarization functions in the Alpha 5 report writer. video. (16MB)
April 2002, New features in the beta version of Alpha Five v 5. video. (23 MB)