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A newer version of Visual DataFlex is available.
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- Average user rating: stars out of 29 votes Back to product review
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User reviews
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
1 stars
Version: Visual DataFlex 12.0.91.8
Cons: It's a bit of an obscure programming lanuage, a mix of "styles". The data access language is very primitive, the database structure hardcoded into your program. Its native "database" is nothing more than a set of indexed files and it's slow and unreliable. In order to connecting to a real database takes a so-called "connectivity kit". For these connectivity kits, as well as for every copy of your program you sell, you need to pay license fees to the manufacturer. You can use COM-objects if you're lucky, but .Net is not supported and it doesn't look like it will be supported any time soon. Please be very careful before you invest thousands of hours of development time and choose a language with a decent licensing scheme and with a future. Just get your free copy of VB.Net
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
3 stars
Version: Visual DataFlex 8.0
"Good for non-critical database development."
Pros: It's very easy to use and has a good interface for design and development. It gives new meaning to rapid application development. Full scale applications can be created in very little time. This is a great tool for business managers and administrative staff to create simple applications.
Cons: The company that provides it seems to always be a few steps behind the times when it comes to updated technology. They force you to buy runtime licenses for every user that runs the application. You are also forced to pay additional runtime license fees to connect to higher level database engines, such as MySQL and SQL Server. Built in database is highly proprietary and needs to be reindexed and repaired frequently. Bugs are usually fixed in next major releases, in which you have to pay to get. Programs are compiled with the runtime embedded in the EXE which creates larger than needed files.
Definately not designed for large enterprise wide applications.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
2 stars
Version: Visual DataFlex 12.0.91.8
Pros: I'm always open to new languages, and Visual DataFlex seems intuitive and easy to use. The IDE seems very stable and easy to work with. There are a lot of wizards and automatic code generation tools that really help speed application development along.
The automatic database connectivity is nice, but it's nothing out of the ordinary now, since other languages have had that ability for quite some time. Also, field validation is nice since it's set up once and available anywhere a field is available on screen. However, this has been available with other languages like .Net, for a while.
Cons: Unfortunately, the free edition is limited to 5 concurrent users, which is a problem with any database application, unless it's single user. If it's single user, you might as well use Access with VBA.
If you happen to purchase the full version, in order to use the application on any other machines, you need to pay runtime license fees. Not good. This really limits who you can sell the product too.
Using COM/ActiveX components seems to work, except when you get into really complex ones. Out of the 5 I tried, I could only get 2 to work well without errors.
The IDE looks nice, but the developed applications look like any other run of the mill software, which isn't necessarily a problem, but it is a drawback when you can't change much of that, especially with the grids.
On a whole, it's not very reassuring that the language is a few steps behind a lot of the mainstream languages. They just recently added the ability to use structures and proper arrays. And by recently, I mean a year or two. When mainstream languages have supported this for the last 10 years, it's not a good thing to see Visual DataFlex just now catching up.
Before sinking a lot of money into this environment, investigate other languages like C# or VB.Net. Application development time is about the same, but you won't have to deal with language restrictions or runtime licensing.
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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
1 stars
Version: Visual DataFlex 2008
Cons: Why do software houses do this? Yet another one on download.com that claims it is a free product with no limitations. But when you download it you find that there is a time limitation and all sorts of restrictions. Grrrr!
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5 stars
Version: Visual DataFlex 2008
Pros: Datadictionary Technology makes my apps solid by making business rules centrally as in the best oops technique, and has the effect of making my applications look and act uniform (except as desired) resulting in a clean deploy and high praise from clients. "CodeSense" (auto-fill as you type) has reduced my compile time to nil, and my product ROLOFLEX based on the personal edition is extremely well received so far!
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