First time I raise my voice in any Clarion forums (except from a user-group in Norway back in 2005ish:)
Strange since I have been using Clarion since 1.x back in the late 1980’s and have had great benefit from it. I have spent hundreds (if not in the thousand) hours with the tool, and the move away from 6.x to 10 was for me the best move. Over the years I have been able to develop a lot of applications with great success. Part of the success has been to stay away from any side-steps (i.e. Clarion.net) and stay with the core product. And for me it has been remarkable stable (opposite to may of the contributors on the hub). It has also been great to work with the CapeSoft products.
Would I recommend the tool to my son? (Re. the discussion on providing a community edition free of charge). No. This technology is not what you would nominate for the University for the last 10+ years. Therefore I don’t think that is the way forward. My recommendation is to target business like my own (willing to pay for license cost) that has internal IT that needs tools to fix something with a low entry level. Then it is “Value for money”. As a general development tool I think you will be lost although I am still amazed that there seams to be no limit to what you are able to achieve in very short time.
So to my question: As I have managed to stay away from all the sidesteps, I am in a danger to do one now as I am considering Anyscreen.
Is it value for money?
In addition to AnyScreen, you might want to consider TSPlus. Same end results for me, though I can imagine AnyScreen MIGHT have some capabilities unique to its Clarion association. However, TSPlus cost was lower and I have not encountered the bugs that were still present at the time my AnyScreen subscription expired after 1 year.
Thanks for your input.
To my previous comment: “As a general development tool I think you will be lost…” I would correct and say that this is not related to all of you who have made Clarion dev. as your way of living, because I think knowing a tool to the fingertip makes you more effective and it will be a great benefit to stick with it (as I have been doing:). For new student, they would probably more look at Python, Swift or frameworks as Angular/React.
Hi Svein,
I’ve been using Clarion since 1988 and doing about the same as you it seems. I didn’t side-step into Clarion.net either. And I use many of the CapeSoft products as well. I like your assessment for using Clarion in an internal IT.
I bought the AnyScreen Server, but it has some issues that need to be improved. I don’t like how PDF report files are handled or how to access other programs, such as viewing Excel workbooks or online help, because they are separate programs.
I have all my Clarion users on a TSplus cloud servers now. I would recommend TSplus to you, either on a local server or on a cloud server. It solves all of the issues associated with deploying a LAN-based system, and has several other advantages.
I think AnyScreen will probably be successful, but for me, I will continue with TSplus. I can use Clarion, with CapeSoft tools, and view Excel workbooks and other things.
The TSplus speed is great, and accessing previous PDF reports is a great feature. And my users can access the server via a web browser (via an HTML5 client) from their PC, Mac, iPad or smartphone.
The only issue I have, with a few users who live in very rural areas, is their very slow Internet speed. But AnyScreen wouldn’t help any for them either. So there are no improvements or advantages with AnyScreen.
Bob Campbell
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Thanks for valuable input.
I most probably will test out the TSplus product. Are you running Azure SQL Managed Instance or do you deploy it on a VM and use a standard MS SQL server (PaaS)?
Svein Bjørnstad
Maybe it would not take a whole lot of effort to test Anyscreen out with your app. You don’t need a license to test it.
Hi Svein,
I just have a Windows Server. No Azure. No VM: I have the whole server. I’m using MS SQL Server on one application and tps files for another application.
So, yes, pretty simple.
But quite reliable and fast. I have 16 GB of RAM which can handle about 40 concurrent users. Windows likes to limit memory usage to 80%.
I submitted a TSplus presentation proposal for the 2023 CIDC.
I’m no expert, but I have quite a few tips and suggestions.
You’re welcomed to ask me any questions.
Hi Bob,
How big is your application? 40 users in 16 GB of RAM is quite a bit higher than we can get.
Rick
Hi Rick,
My application’s exe is 16,578,560 bytes. We’ve had 44 users with the memory usage at 83%. Windows started to complain, “Low memory warning” or something like that.
I have a program that automatically logs off users who are idle for 20 minutes when the memory usage goes over 80%.
Bob
I’ve found user’s complain about the experience when the memory usage gets over 40%.
No. There doesn’t seem to be any slowing down of the program or anything I can detect when we have 5 users versus 35 users running the program.
Our server’s Internet speed is about 950 Mbps up and down, so we have plenty of bandwidth. And the CPU utilization rarely gets above 20%.
-Bob