Perhaps I’m cursed when using Valentina. I’m using version 4.2 of Valentina Studio Pro for Mac OS X. I’m trying to test out their new Reporting tool because it’s part of my presentation at the Colorado REALbasic Summit. Whenever I attempt to drag a picture object or chart object onto my report I get a hard crash.
It’s very hard to evaluate and report on how well it works if I can’t even use it for more than 2 minutes (and no, I’m not running into the 10 minute demo limit). It really makes me wonder what their QA process is or if we’re the QA guinea pigs process.
I’m doing some research for my presentation at the Colorado REALbasic Summit at the end of September. One of the Reporting tools that I’m excited to take a look at is Valentina Reports. Valentina has been around for a long time in the REALbasic community and I’ve used them in the past for several projects and I’ve more or less kept up-to-date on updates but recently stopped because I hadn’t used it for a long time.
There are a number of things to really like about the Valentina database. It’s fast – there’s no doubt about it. Valentina is truly a relational database (you cannot say that about SQLite or REAL Server) and it comes with a file (single connection) version as well as a server (multiple connections) version. It’s been around a long time in REALbasic and you can use Valentina in a variety of ways including a class-way that is very object oriented. It is also strongly type-cast meaning it won’t let you put a string into an integer field and so on (again SQLite and REAL Server are NOT like this).
There are a number of reasons why I stopped using Valentina but the biggest was bugs. In one of my projects I got caught in a transition between db formats and because of my project deadline I was forced to use beta versions. Which meant, of course, that they’d fix one bug and create another. It was an ugly couple of months and it’s (obviously) left a bad taste in my mouth. And yet I keep coming back for more….
It’s been a few years and I was really hoping that it was a nice stable environment. Alas, I can’t say that it is. I downloaded Valentina Studio 4.2 (their general admin tool) and decided to import my standard SQLite demo database for reporting tool comparisons. Everything started off fine but when using their import wizard and hitting Finish it just goes *poof* (hard crashes) and a standard Apple error dialog comes up.
I suddenly remember why my eye tick comes back when I start working with Valentina. Hard crashes were a common occurrence when I last used Valentina and is still obviously an issue (at least in Studio). When you can’t perform a simple data import using a standard text file it makes you wonder what’s going to happen with your database.
It’s a trust issue, really, because the first experience with the product is the admin tool. Instability in the showcase application (in my opinion), hints at deeper problems in the entire database. Hard crashes are evil, bad things because it means the app quit in an uncontrolled fashion. What happened to your database write just then? Is the data good, bad or in some unknown state? Either way I have a hard time telling a client that things will be okay if it happens to them.
If you are a Valentina and REALbasic user I’d like your opinion. Am I just having a bad day or do you have these same frustrations as well? Have you used the new reporting system? Do you like it or not?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but requests for quotes for REALbasic projects has been through the roof the past couple of weeks. Between the REALbasic Developer Network (i.e. the Find a Consultant web page) and the ARBP Find a Developer web page it sure has been busy. I can only find one “help me learn REALbasic” post in the past month or so. This is a good thing since there used to be a bunch of them.
I don’t know if RS marketing efforts are leading to these requests or if the ever-increasing Macintosh presense in the business world is making more people want cross-platform applications but something seems to have changed. (Or it’s a combination of everything!) Of course there’s nothing to say if the requests dry up in the next month or so. Only time will tell.
I find it interesting that a lot of the recent projects are converting from either FileMaker or 4D. RB can make a nice database application (assuming you know what you’re doing). RS is always looking to enhance the user experience and I encourage RS to enhance their database tools. I, however, do not want them to become another FileMaker or 4D because a generic application environment can do things better than a database-centric application, in my opinion. Likewise there are things that FileMaker, 4D and MS Access do better than a generic application environment like RB. It depends upon the requirements, in the long run.
Since I help run ARBP you can take this criticism with a grain of salt. One of my biggest beefs with the RS developer program is that it’s simply a forwarded email. If you signed up today you’d miss everything from last week (if you did sign up I’d certainly ask for all recent posts since $1k is nice chunk of change). With ARBP we keep them around for a while (which is a problem all by itself that I’m trying to correct). Another point is there isn’t a whole lot of information in the posts. A contact information (name, email, phone) and a brief description of the project. It would be nice to get more information. What platforms? Is it an existing project? Is it a conversion project? From what language? Is it commercial or internal software? I could probably continue on what I’d like to see, but I’d be repeating myself.
As a consultant, are you busy? Better yet, are you as busy as you’d like to be? Have you seen any trends in the past six months?
I installed everything on Mac OS X (Leopard) using the standard Mac installer. I didn’t have any issues. There are two other parts of the installation package, a startup item installer allowing the db server to start at startup and, a prefpane that allows you to start/stop the server from System Preferences.
MySQL has an optional package that installed the MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser applications. It’s obvious from both of these tools that they’ve spent a lot of time and effort in making these tools usable and for the most part I was happy with their smoothness in Mac OS X. They definitely don’t feel like a port of Windows apps to Mac OS X. (Without using them in Windows I can’t tell you that the opposite is true or not, however.)
The REALbasic MySQL Plugin now available from Alacatia Labs at http://alacatialabs.com/products/realbasic-mysql-plugin/ and works with the Community and Enterprise Edition. I had absolutely no problems connecting to my newly installed database (after adding a new db and user using the Administrator tool).
If it weren’t for the stupid licensing issues that accompany MySQL I’d recommend it for everyday use. Alas, the licensing issues make that problematic. From the Alactia Labs website:
It allows access to community installations of MySQL database servers using REALbasic’s built-in database API. While we are not lawyers, our interpretation of the GPL is that it is viral, and any applications that are distributed publicly must also contain the source code of the application and plugin. If you are in doubt about how the GPL applies to you, please consult your attorney.
Emphasis added by me.
That sucks because I think they’ve got some things going for it. I know a lot of RB developers have stopped using MySQL due to the GPL licensing rules and I can’t say that I blame them. Oh well, I guess it’s time to look at PostgreSQL or maybe MS SQL Server.