Rob,

Thanks for the info.

Regards,

Joseph

Does anyone know if 6.0 will be the beginning of the end for Native and customers will be forced into a non-native development environment? It's only fair to start making people aware so they can budget for it.

Hi,

Version 6 will not have the @MOD, @MAIN etc functions for you to edit native.

However, ProIV IDE will still edit native code and you can use this.

There is no conversion and nothing more is needed to use ProIV IDE, I just needs to be installed and licensed.

Rob D.

I have been working with VIP for over 2 years. I have to agree with Mr. Atherton that it is a very poor product. Most things that Northgate claimed VIP could do were ideas that were not fully developed.

1. Northgate claimed VIP was ActiveX compatible, not quite. They do not support design time settings which means that you have to put a VB wrapper around most ActiveX controls just to be able to use them. Improving the ActiveX control interface was requested from the U.S. users group last year and were ignored by Northgate.

2. Limitation to I/O data size is currently 2k. This is an archaic limitation that is inexcusable in this day and age. We are charged with writing a medical records package and the field size limitation is becoming a real problem since a large part of the medical record will be ailment description input from doctors, nurses and medical staff. This item was also at the top of the list of enhancements requested by the U.S. users group. Again this was ignored by Northgate.

Note: These enhancements are not in version 6 and from what I was told by a Northgate exec is that these items are not in the foreseeable future (meaning through version 6.2). The explanation is that the parent companies HR programs wants other changes and until they complete those changes the user community will not get the upgrades we are asking for.

3. True GUI interfaces require Object Oriented programming. To do this effectively you need to have properties/events and methods exposed to the programmer. This is one area where ProIV the language is sorely lacking. This is the reason MR. Atherton received the "Window Close not allowed" error message. The property of the window "X" (close) button is not exposed to the programmer. If the user was allowed to use that button and they happened to be in the middle of record it could possibly cause a database corruption. If the programmer could check for the on-close property of the window then the programmer could clean up on window close. Just one of many properties/events that are not available.

4. "Forms designer" is light years ahead of native, but decades behind about any GUI screen designer on the market. The fonts are proportional but the design has to be treated as if they are not or it truncates the labels. The designer should have been integrated into VIP, and again was asked for at the users’ group meeting. Moving between Forms Designer and VIP is highly unstable process which sometimes locks up the system.

These are just the highlights. I could go on and on. Many more short comings exist that I do not have the room to explain here. I have addressed them with the folks at Northgate support here in the U.S. and some have been addressed in fixes and patches but many others have just been written off or explained away as "ProIV normal". That term has taken on a whole life of it's own, beware of "PROIV NORMAL".

To sum up:
In reality VIP was a bunch ideas that were never fully developed but were put on the market. Northgate has campaigned the last few years trying to recruit new users into the ProIV world. VIP is a sure way to lose those people. Unless a company, like the one I work for, has a lot of time and money invested into existing programs. I would run away from ProIV and VIP as fast as I could.

VIP could be a viable product but Northgate must first be given reason to make the necessary changes. It will require a considerable investment in the product and commitment from Northgate. Unless the ProIV/VIP community informs the company of the need for the improvements they will not happen. Each of you as a user must express your displeasure with the product through any avenue available.

I have done just that with the Northgate executive in my conversations with him, but I am but one voice many more of you are needed to make them listen.