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Last updated: Monday, October 29, 2001 22:47 PST
Produced by Bryan Green. All content © 2001 Green Software Corp. All rights reserved.
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We had an oh-so-lovely breakfast this morning. It consisted of "continental" fare -- fruit, muffins, coffee, and juice, with nary a meat product to be found. The notable aspect of it all was that we ate al fresco. Apparently, the hotel uses a great big tent for some of their functions. It was air conditioned inside, which was nice -- but the overall humidity remained the same. In all, it was a very refreshing experience. It was amusing to watch those who had imbibed with gusto the night before...
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| Breakfast al fresco... | ...under the big top. |
Brendan Coveney opened the keynote with a moment of silence to remember the events of September 11th. Everyone stood for a very somber moment.
Brendan said that there are developers from 15 countries attending, 16 counting Ireland. A reluctantly repentant Steven Willis pointed out that there were 17 countries counting Scotland, to which Brendan quipped, "Scots are Irish who couldn't swim." (Laughter) The largest contingent are from PowerSchool in Folsom, California, with 8 developers present.
Brendan recognized last year's Attendee of the Year, Keith Goebel. Keith attended every session last year, including two at a time on certain occasions. In honor of this amazing feat, everyone gave a round of applause.
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| The summit banner above the meeting room. | The quiet before the storm... | Brendan Coveney gestures during the keynote. |
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| Keith Goebel, the Attendee of the Year for 2000! |
According to Brendan, last year was not an easy year for 4D. This was mostly due to the condition of the global economy. To exemplify a common sentiment, Brendan quoted a San Jose Mercury News advertisement in which a young software developer laments, "last year I was a 27 year-old millionaire. Today I am 28." (Laughter) Brendan said that 4D's sales were flat "year on year," but that operating income will be positive. [Ed.: this is a very good sign, because so many software companies are having very hard times.] Brendan summarized the year by saying that it has had the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The 4D Partner Central web site received an award from the Association of Support Professionals, and was recognized as one of the Top Ten Support Web Sites of 2001. The site was developed by Kent Wilbur and Joel McComb of 4D, Inc. Brendan quickly reviewed the site, mentioning that last week DIMENSIONS content was added, courtesy of Steve Hussey of Alto Stratus LLC. It is now possible to search past issues of DIMENSIONS on Partner Central.
Brendan said that one of the good things this year was the Aberdeen Group's report on 4D's total cost of ownership as an embedded database. Everyone was provided with a copy. [Ed.: this report shows hard figures on how 4D is a much less expensive solution than many other databases, speaking in "IT executive" terms. It's very useful in educating IT management unfamiliar with 4D.]
Brendan emphasized that 4D has been and will be publishing white papers to assist 4D developers in marketing 4D. As an example, he showed a paper entitled comparing 4D and FileMaker Pro. [Ed.: this white paper is included in the conference packet. Other white papers may be found on 4D Inc.'s web site.]
Brendan said that evangelism has been an important part of the past year. Over the past year there have been three evangelists at work: Rich Gay evangelizing Enterprise Business, Sebastian Frey evangelizing Web Applications, and Christian Cypert evangelizing Plug-Ins.
As well, Brendan said that future evangelistic efforts will include presentations such as the one yesterday on marketing to the enterprise business with Rich Gay of All Bases Covered, Inc., John Beaulieu of PDM, Inc., and John Andrews of Footprints, Inc.
Brendan said that last year Larry White was complaining about the lack of plug-in support. So, 4D, Inc. made a special plug-in support section on the web site (in addition to hiring a plug-in evangelist).
Much work has been done in the past year on providing example databases, Brendan said. [Ed.: more on this later in the report.]
Another important area of improvement this year has been in the tech notes and tech tips. These are available on the partner web site.
Brendan said that partners have asked for more referrals, and so they improved the referral system. So far, 200 referrals have been processed since they changed the system.
Brendan said that in the past year 4D, Inc. has emphasized using the WebEx system for assisting developers in making demos to their clients. They intend to use this even more in the future.
Brendan said, "people say we haven't had any new products this year." Then he showed a list of all the new products that have been released in the last year: 4D Server for MacOS X, 4D InstallerMaker, WebSTAR V, and a whole host of betas (including 4D for MacOS X and 4D Client for MacOS X). [Ed.: he did say that 4D, Inc. has stepped back from some of their other projects in the works, but that they will resume them when they can.]
Brendan brought down the house with his picture exemplifying the ugly: Dave Batton, Brendan Coveney, and Mike Erickson as Charlie's Angels.
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| If these are the Angels, then who is Charlie? |
Brendan announced some coincidental birthdays: Liz Delgado's birthday is today, and Doug Blew's birthday is tomorrow! Everyone clapped and sang as they received gifts of flower arrangements. Brendan speculated that Liz will be 21, and that Doug will be 22. [Ed.: notice that true to form, Brendan did not specify 22 of what.]
Brendan introduced Tyler Stone of Apple Computer. Tyler is the Partnership Manager for Small Business for Apple's World-wide Developer Marketing, and is responsible for providing the incredibly popular Internet café this year. [Ed.: the café's Airport wireless hub is essential to our ability to update this site. Thanks, Tyler!] Brendan explained that Tyler will also host a special Town Hall meeting later in the Summit.
Tyler said that there is a lot going on at Apple right
now, including a product announcement later today. [Ed.:
how exciting! It turned out to be a combination MP3 player and hard drive.]
Tyler evangelized a little bit, emphasizing that MacOS X is the big thing happening
at Apple right now. He also talked about the Macintosh Products Guide, and encouraged
all 4D developers to register their product with the Guide to increase their
marketing exposure.
Mike Erickson introducedC. J. Holmes, WebSTAR Server Suite Chief Engineer, who gave a report on WebSTAR's progress over the last year. [Ed.: C. J. said much, and we didn't manage to get everything!]
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| C. J. Holmes reports on the features of the new WebSTAR V. |
C. J. said that WebSTAR made a lot of promises last year, and thus it has been very busy for them. The administration application has been the most time-consuming part of their efforts. He said that there is now an API for the administration application so that third parties can add control for their own additions. The biggest change to the admin app is delegable authority. Delegable authority is best summarized as giving the administrator the ability to delegate to another user the ability to do some or all of their own administration. The administrator may decide what the delegates can and cannot change. [Ed.: this feature was really stunning. It appeared to us that on a per-user basis, any or all of the administration rights could be delegated. This means that support-intensive users may now do all of their own administration, making WebSTAR exceptionally suitable for ISPs and large enterprise users.]
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| The delegable authority in WebSTAR V's administration application is exemplified. |
[Ed.: C. J. rapidly explained many other aspects of the new WebSTAR V. We detail them here.]
The new WebSTAR V is multithreaded, fully preemptive, SMP compliant, takes full advantage of Mac OS X, and takes advantage of all the processors. It's a BSD application with a little Carbon mixed in to handle AppleScript.
The new WebSTAR V has vastly improved security, including an updated OpenSSL, MD5-digest, powerful realm options, and an extensible security architecture.
CGI support in the new WebSTAR includes AppleEvents and UNIX CGI/1.1. As well, it has a more flexible configuration.
The new WebSTAR V uses the Onix search engine by Lextek. Overall, WebSTAR V searching is faster at everything, and has optional XML output.
The new WebSTAR V supports WebDAV level 2. (WebDAV is a protocol that has been around for a while, but is now catching on. The new WebSTAR V uses it to become a file server. You mount the server as a disk and just use it. It also supports file locking.) C. J. rhetorically asked "how fast is it?" and then showed a chart comparing Apple Apache vs. WebSTAR V -- WebSTAR V obviously won, supporting 1000 transactions per second with dual-processor hardware!
The new WebSTAR V has a very familiar general-purpose rules module: Welcome, by Andreas Pardeike.
The new WebSTAR V has many new and updated components, and an auto updater that includes resolution of dependencies. It has a new version of 4D Connect and an improved SDK.
The new WebSTAR V has a vastly improved e-mail server architecture. It has editable message queues (plain text, one message per file), text mailboxes (one per account), and human editable settings. Administration is by domain group, and is extensible by third parties. It also includes support for the Real-time Black Hole List.
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| WebSTAR V's extensible new mail server architecture is diagrammed. |
WebSTAR 5.0.1 will likely be available in mid-November.
Next, David Batton of Datacraft, Inc., showed several new examples databases he has written at the request of 4D, Inc.
The first example database was a 4D-only e-mail client. (Dave explained that it uses only the Internet Commands, and no other plug-ins.). Dave said that Brendan told him that the best designs are stolen, and so he made the database look just like Outlook Express. It supports multiple accounts, message categories, filters, and notification with sound. [Ed.: this example is so good it could be a real-life replacement for Outlook Express!]
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| The 4D-only e-mail client emulates Outlook Express. |
Dave next explained that he had been demonstrating the original version 1 of this database. He showed how it was somewhat slow when updating the list of messages, explaining that this was due to the use of grouped arrays to display them. Version 2, he said, uses Powerview! He then demonstrated the new version, and it was stunningly faster! Dave said that the new version of this example will be available this week or next.
Dave then showed his second example, a time and billing database. It tracks billable hours and send bills to your clients. This example's features include tracking of projects, clients, and tasks. It supports multiple users and prints invoices. The invoice uses 4D Chart, and is editable by the end-user. As well, the database is localized according to the language that 4D is using. Dave showed how the same database operates in French, German, or English depending on the version of 4D. Dave explained that this database and version one of the e-mail database are on the Summit CD.
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| The time and billing example in action. | The 4D Chart-based editable invoice. |
Sebastian Frey of 4D, Inc. and Alban Liger of 4D SA introduced the 4D Business Kit. It is an e-commerce solution that enables 4D as an application server to be very separate from the database.
[Ed.: I attempted to record all of Sebastian's somewhat expeditious comments, but I simply didn't get them all. I encourage you to download the demo of 4DBK when it comes available, as it looks very useful.]
The 4DBK supports the following features: a catalog, a shopping cart, multiple currencies, payment systems (for example authorize.net), multiple tax systems, multiple stores, and multiple languages. It uses an optimized version of the 4D tag language. It has a wizard that is analogous to the form editor.
Sebastian and Alban demonstrated a whimsical example of 4DBK in use at a Chinese restaurant. Sebastian explained that each store has a unique four-character code. He then showed how to import data, use a setup picture, and build thumbnail pictures and icons. It took about one minute to generate the site using the wizard. The site supported DHTML menus, and had a very nice shopping cart and checkout feature.
Sebastian then showed how to customize a particular item, a soup. He purposely introduced an error, which caused the web browser to show the 4DBK Javascript debugging window.
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| 4DBK's system architecture | How 4DBK fits between WebSTAR and 4D. | The 4DBK configuration screen for a catalog item. |
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| The 4DBK Javascript debugger. |
[Ed.: Sebastian and Alban showed much more to 4DBK. It is really a very exciting product, and the demo, whenever it becomes available,will be very popular!]
After the 4DBK demonstration, the keynote address was over!
There were a lot of booths and classes! I tried to get a picture of all the booths and as many classes as I could quickly visit. It was good to meet Carin Taraleskef of 4D, Inc., and to see the new DataPulse by Eternity Software. If you haven't seen it yet, you really should. John Foster has added many valuable new features to this already very interesting product. Check it out at the web site: http://www.johnjfoster.com/
I had to pause and look twice at the next booth: Foresight Solutions. Wow. It is really, really good to see them again. Tim Lau and Dan Beckett were showing the new Foresight Financials suite to many developers.
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| 4D, Inc.'s booth, hosted by Carin Taraleskef. | John Foster (left) and Bob Finnerty pose in front of the Eternity Software booth. | Tim Lau and Dan Beckett in front of the (ahem) Foresight booth. |
Try as I might, I couldn't ever find anyone at the MDG booth. I think that means that Mike Ginsburg was busy teaching classes! In any case, the Web Server 4D product line is looking good.
The Internet Café was very interesting -- lots and lots of developers used over the course of the Summit. There were several iMacs (in interesting color schemes) and many laptop users. The laptop ratio was quite interesting -- despite the oft-quoted statistic that most people were hosting on Windows NT or 2000, most of the laptops at the Summit were Powerbooks or iBooks. What does that say about 4D developers, I wonder?
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| MDG's booth. | The huddled masses in the Internet Café. | Look at all the laptops! Those smug Airport card users... |
I visited Deep Sky Technology's booth, where Jim Crate, Rob McGoye, and Steven Willis were demonstrating their 4D component products and ITK. While there, I noticed a hard-working Debbie Brewer changing the signs in front of one of the classrooms. And, on my way back across the booths I couldn't help but notice Doug Blew holding his lovely birthday flowers. He looked so cute!
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| Deep Sky Technology's booth: Jim Crate (left), Rob McGoye, and Steven Willis. | The intrepid Debbie Brewer, hard at work (as usual). | A sign of true affection: Doug Blew holds his birthday flowers. |
I also dropped in on a few classes to take some pictures: John Beaulieu's very popular class on 4D and ORACLE and Juliet Oberding's very important class on internet privacy.
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| John Beaulieu conducts his class on ORACLE and 4D. | Juliet Oberding teaches developers about internet privacy. |
Lastly for the day, I visited Lincoln Stoller and Indra Sena at the Braided Matrix booth, David Erickson at the Automated Solutions Group booth, and watched from a distance as Aparajita Fishman showed Active 4D to a very interested crowd and John Foster showed DataPulse to an equally interested bunch.
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| Lincoln Stoller (left) and Indra Sena pause during a rare lull at the Braided Matrix booth. | Aparajita Fishman (center) demonstrates the new Active 4D to an interested crowd of developers. | David Erickson holds down the fort at the Automated Solutions Group booth. |
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| John Foster (center) shows DataPulse to a crowd of interested onlookers. |