Well - it’s HERE! Servoy 4.1 pre-release is now available for download. You can read the release notes on the forum.

What’s the big deal in Servoy 4.1? Well, it’s all about the power of customization. In addition to a bunch of fixes and enhancements, the big “new” thing is the SolutionModel node in the Solution Explorer.

This new SolutionModel node allows you to modify or create new forms and form objects - on-the-fly at runtime! Oh yeah, it also works in the Web Client!

This means that you can modify any form, create a new, blank for - or programatically use form inheritance (new in 4.0) to make a derivative of an existing form. Now, there are lots of other tools in the market that will allow you to create new objects on-the-fly at runtime, however, no other tool allows you to create objects and have them function automatically the way that Servoy 4.1 does.

For example, all the objects you create will automatically “just work” - including data broadcasting and full AJAX functionality -  just by adding a single line of code to your solution.

This will work for all types of form objects including: forms, fields, labels, buttons, and tabpanels (portals coming in b2). You can add whatever controls you want to any form - and for the first time you can even change any of the properties on objects (even the databinding!) on any object at runtime.

When adding or changing forms you can add/change the parts of a form at runtime to create sub-summary reports on-the-fly! You can even assign global methods to all of the form events (onShow, onHide, onLoad, etc.) as well as all of the form methods (onNewRecord, onDeleteRecord, etc.) This really opens up the world of possibilities for customization of your applications by end-users.

There are, of course a couple of caveats:

1. You can only change the properties of an object on a form that is not currently visible;
2. The changes only persist as long as the client session does. So if you want to keep the changes between sessions - you need to code your solution to restore the changes the user made.

Remember - this is PRE-RELEASE software - so make SURE you back up your databases and workspace before trying it out. The best thing would be just do a FRESH install of 4.1 into a new directory and new workspace, and then import the solution(s) you want to work with - that way you can continue your “normal” development in 4.0 and try out the new SolutionModel in 4.1 and not have to worry about it.

We would love your feedback on what you plan to do with this new functionality. Please either leave a comment here - or post it to our Online Forum.

The development team is working hard to put the finishing touches on the public preview of Servoy 4.1. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I’ll keep you in suspense a little while longer.

If you were at ServoyWorld, or attended the last Virtual User’s Group - then you know what 4.1’s all about. If not, then sit tight - we’ll announce the availability here FIRST!

I just got back from a quick trip to San Francisco for an IDC analyst event. It just so happened that Oracle’s OpenWorld conference was taking place at the same time over at Moscone Center - which explains why I had such a difficult time getting a hotel reservation!

Anyway, Servoy’s PR expert Brenda Christensen managed to work with Emilie Ingram from IDC to set up a separate meeting at the Royal Hotel (where the IDC event was taking place) with noted analyst Al Hilwa. This is really a hard thing to do - but Mr. Hilwa was in town for the Oracle event and there was a “hole” in his schedule (I think it was for dinner - SORRY, Al!).

It’s the first time I’ve met Mr. Hilwa in person. We’ve talked on the phone twice when we were briefing him on Servoy 4.0 and more recently on the upcoming Servoy 4.1, and in those conversations things just really “clicked.”

He’s one of those guys that is just crazy smart. He was an analyst at Gardner in the late 90’s and then moved to Senior Product Manager on the SQL Server database team at Microsoft. He has a ton of real world expertise in enterprise computing and the whole application development and product lifecycle management “thing.”

He had some really interesting observations, insights and advice for where he sees Servoy in the marketplace and in particular how our go to market strategy was particularly interesting. Well, needless to say, that hour absolutely FLEW by! Seriously, it seemed like we had just sat down and it was time for him to bolt off to the next customer meeting (Oracle).

Next, it was off to the IDC event where there were 9 more analysts who specialized in all sorts of industries and market segments. There were also about 90 other people from companies of all sizes who were invited to come and get acquainted with the IDC folks.

What a cool event! It was really cool to talk to some of the other business folks there and understand what business they were in, and talk to (and listen to!) all the other analysts. Talk about a great education… so thanks to Mr. Hilwa, Ms. Ingram and the IDC folks for a great evening.

There’s a big temptation when you’re creating a software product: work harder. Do more. More marketing, more features, more platform support, more blogging, more money raising… just MORE.

But you can actually do less - and get more done.

Whether your a one-person-band or part of a small start up - you will have to wear… well… 47 hats! That much is a given. However, if you can apply a filter to your activities - you’ll find that you’re actually able to accomplish more - while doing less work.

Let me explain. Let’s say that you’re working on the next great “it” and you’re working on your own, and you’ve decided to bootstrap it until things get rolling. As we all know - there are 101 things that need your attention and that must be done in order for you to get that first, all-important sales dollar.

If you’re like me - you find yourself pulled in all directions all the time. Between getting the actual product coded there are manuals to write, a website to create, graphics, promotions, Google Ads, blogging, order fulfillment, technical support, marketing, advertising, forums to post to, social media to keep up with - not to mention your social life and family time.

The key to accomplishing more by doing less - is actually very simple. You need to ask yourself a single question before you start down a particular task: “How much revenue will this generate for me?” If you begin to apply that filter to your list of activities - you’ll find yourself changing what you do, and the order and importance of your daily tasks.

Now, I’m not really a big “list” guy. I don’t have a compulsive need to write detailed lists and get them “checked off.” But, I will say - if you ask yourself that (potentially) million dollar question “How much revenue will this generate for me” - you’ll be more focused on what you do, and will be able to make measurable progress toward your goal.

Come up with an outline list of all the things you need to do to make that first sale. For example:

1) Product Development

• Debug login section
• Add paging feature
• Get latest URL to outside testers
• Investigate iPhone version
• Investigate Blackberry version

2) Product Marketing

• Finish website
• Add page for ordering
• Add comment page for support
• Fill out the “about us” section
• Make a version for mobile devices
• Link blog to main site
• Add blog entries
• Post to forums to raise awareness
• Take out banner ad on xyz.com
• Make PDF brochure
• Write “intro” email
• Update social media with blog entries

Of course your list will be more comprehensive - this is only a guide. But in taking a look at all the stuff that “needs to be done” - ask your question: “How much revenue will this generate for me?”

If you put each task through that filter - you may decide that getting the mobile version stuff can come out in 1.x. You can also see that getting your site where people can actually buy something directly relates where tasks like “fill out the about us section”, while important, can wait until you get the basics done.

Once you’ve put all your items through the filter - it may wind up looking something like this:

A) Product Launch TO DO:

1) Product Development

• Debug login section
• Add paging feature
• Get latest URL to outside testers (by Monday)

2) Product Marketing

• Finish website
• Add page for ordering
• Write “intro” email

B) Directly After Launch:

1) Product Marketing

• Finish website
• Add comment page for support
• Fill out the “about us” section
• Link blog to main site
• Post to forums to raise awareness
• Make PDF brochure
• Write “intro” email

C) 1.x Enhancements

1) Product Development

• Investigate iPhone version
• Investigate Blackberry version

2) Product Marketing

• Finish website
• Make a version for mobile devices
• Take out banner ad on xyz.com

D) On-going tasks:

1) Product Marketing

• Add blog entry (1x per week - Wednesday afternoon)
• Update social media with blog entries
• Post to forums to raise awareness (2x per week - Wednesday & Friday afternoon)

You still will accomplish everything on your list - but what you wind up with is a prioritized list of just the stuff you need to do in order to answer the question “How much revenue will this generate for me?” Everything else, no matter how “fun” or “interesting” needs to be put on hold until the appropriate time.

That’s the only part that really sucks. Sometimes you have to do the “gotta’ do” rather than the “like to do.” But, in the end, you’re the only one that can determine how much revenue your actions will generate for you.

David Strom, aka “The Strominator” for Baseline magazine (an Enterprise publication at Ziff Davis) has done a video review of Servoy 4.0

You can see his full review here: http://blip.tv/file/1191843/

David Strom is an international authority on network and Internet technologies. For several years David  wrote weekly opinion columns on eCommerce for IDG and networking columns in Infoworld and PC Week.

He is the author of two books: Internet Messaging (Prentice Hall, 1998 ) which he co-authored with Marshall T. Rose and Home Networking Survival Guide (McGrawHill/Osborne, 2001).

He has written extensively on the topic for 20 years for a wide variety of print publications and websites, such as The New York Times, TechTarget.com, PC Week/eWeek, Internet.com, Network World, Infoworld, Computerworld, Small Business Computing, Communications Week, Windows Sources, c|net and news.com, Web Review, Tom?s Hardware, EETimes, and many others.

In addition to this impressive collection of journalistic work, he is also a frequent speaker, panel and focus group moderator and instructor at various industry events and trade shows around the world including Interop, CMPs Xchange, and for private clients.

David has been a guest on the Fox TV News Network, NPR, ABC-TV World News Tonight and CBS-TV News.

As the adoption rate of SaaS (Software as a Service) applications goes through the roof - it looks like Washington has finally taken notice. There are several issues that are coming to the forefront - including privacy, data security, data ownership and data portability that I think will become hot issues both in the press and in the legal system over the next couple of years.

According to a September 2008 report from Pew Internet - 69% of all Internet users have either stored data online or used a web-based software application. And from the following statistics - that number isn’t going to be shrinking any time soon:

• 51% of Internet users who have done a cloud computing activity say a major reason they do this is that it is easy and convenient.
• 41% of cloud users say a major reason they use these applications is that they like being able to access their data from whatever computer they are using.
• 39% cite the ease of sharing information as a major reason they use applications in cyberspace or store data there.

Unfortunately, I also suspect that as cloud-based solution adoption continues to grow - it’s inevitable that government will get involved at some point. We all know that there will be lawsuits - that’s a given. The good news (if you’re an ISV) or the bad news (if you’re a major SaaS/PaaS player) is that the big guys will get it first.

There are a whole host of issues that have not yet been worked out - either from a legal perspective, or from a marketplace “common practices” view point:

• Who owns the data?
• Should law enforcement have easier access to cloud data than data on a PC (hint: they do right now)
• What happens if you want to move your data to another provider with similar services?
• What is the liability limit if the host gets hacked and sensitive data is made public (or just stolen)?

The best defense is a good offense. Make sure you plan from the beginning how (or if) your users will be able to extract their own data from the system either for backup purposes or for moving it to a different system. How will you handle record deletion - really delete or just “hide” the records for easy “restore?” How long will you maintain a customer’s data after they cancel their account? How will you handle security and data privacy? Does your insurance cover you in case of data breach?

Thre are lots of things to think about - and you should get some advice from both legal counsel and also talk to your hosting provider and see if they can help point you in the right direction.

From a tech point-of-view: if you’re building your SaaS application in Servoy - you’re already ahead of the game since Servoy is flexible enough to allow you to do on-premises as well as hosted SaaS; is already cross platform and multi-database aware; allows you to script exports easily, etc.

By choosing Servoy at least you know that the technology side is handled… now if only the other parts of your business were as easy!

We’ve been having a look at Google’s new browser called Chrome - and the good news is - it appears to work with our test suite just fine - meaning that your Servoy applications should run great without any modifications. On Windows. For now.

Of course we’ll have to re-test when the Mac and Linux versions come out (like we always do) - but in the preliminary analysis - it’s a thumbs up.

Servoy and Chrome have a lot in common: they’re both based on open standards. Both pieces of software work really well for SaaS/web 2.0 applications - and both are really responsive. The nice thing about Servoy browser-based applications (Web Client) is the fact that it’s pure HTML and CSS on the client side. As long as browser makers adhere to standards - then all Servoy applications will be instantly compatible.

It’s the same thing when new core architectures or chips are made available. Our client/server applications (Smart Client) worked out-of-the-box the first day multi-core processors hit the streets - because Java was available on those new platforms. Since we use a single code base for both client/server and browser deployments - SaaS/web 2.0 vendors have one LESS thing/platform/browser/chipset/architecture to worry about.

We’ve just wrapped up our Servoy vs. .NET Real World Comparison project. I wish I could say the results were surprising, but they weren’t.

We first got the idea for this project back in April 2008. We’re always getting asked by potential customers and existing customers how Servoy compares to .NET in terms of getting a solution written and deployed (and the ease of maintenance on both).

We have heard from our customers that Servoy is between 5 and 10 times faster than .NET in terms of development speed - with only 1/3 or less lines of code. But, we didn’t have anything we could really quantify - so we decided to create a project from scratch and do our own test.

We wrote a specification for a bug tracking system - code named Bugger (sorry in advance to our UK friends for the rude reference!). By creating a functional specification with UI guidelines - we set out to see what would happen if two sets of teams wrote a solution in their tool of choice: one team in Servoy and one team in .NET.

You can get the whole scoop - and download the actual solutions and source code for both projects by heading on over to http://www.servoy.com/dotnet.

Famous IT-journalist Robert X. Cringely blogs about Servoy

The ability to create (and maintain) a single code base for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix desktops, as well as a variety of browsers, could save software geeks oodles of time and money. Servoy claims its customers can develop Web apps many times faster than by using Microsoft’s .Net, and for a fraction of the cost.

Servoy would like to thank Darren Clarke from The Support Group for the August Newsletter’s Servoy Tip — Eclipse templates speed Servoy development. Are there blocks of code that you find yourself typing over and over when working on your Servoy projects? With the templates feature of Eclipse, you can banish this repetitiveness from your coding forever. To read more details in the Servoy Forum about this tip, click here.