Last year's Summit saw 4D taking a giant leap forward with v11, but it wasn't all there (no 4D Server v11). This year's Summit was more about delivering for the real world and refinement.

4D Server v11 SQL really is pretty cool, and quite powerful. A lot of what it was about was discussed last year, but it's interesting to see cases where client/server is actually faster than a standalone/mono application. And most importantly, it's here now - not a demo of an unreleased product.

v11.3

Then there's v11.3 - If we were back in the v6.0, 6.5, 6.7, 6.8 days v11.3 would be v12 - it really does have some wonderful enhancements in terms of speed, SQL (much improved user management just to name one thing) and SVG (the new component). But the issue, IMHO, is that they didn't completely stabilize v11.2 before doing the enhancements so even 11.3 will probably be a bit of a gamble for a demanding, mission-critical app. At the same time, it's such a big upgrade it is going through a lot of QA, which is always good. It's also good that they said that there will be no new features for v11 after 11.3 - from here on it's all about bug fixes and making the product stable, though I can see them releasing new features as a component like they're doing with SVG.

4D Web 2.0 Pack v11 (the AJAX part of it)

Even though I'm all about using 4D on the web, and I know some of the guys on the 4D Web 2.0 Pack team personally, I haven't ever felt like I wanted to use 4D Web 2.0 Pack. That opinion changed at Summit this year for two reasons. 1) Brendan's mention of Javascript maturing to the point that incompatibilities aren't as huge as they used to be, and 2) Julien's presentation showed that 4D Web 2.0 Pack v11 really has matured considerably. They've had tools to help you build apps before, but their Green Tea IDE really was a big step in the right direction, though they did stress that it's just how you start your app - it doesn't handle everything you're going to want it to do.

Performance

That sorta brings up what was the main interest for me this year - performance. I have a 4D-based web site that gets over 1 million page views a month from real users, plus all the bot traffic (which is considerable - Googlebot alone is over 350,000 pages/month). The client wants to launch another site, integrated with the first one, that will be FAR larger. My rough estimates are that I'll need to support 50 million page views a month within 5 years (that's an average of 20/second). 4D's internal web server can't handle the load I have now, but I need 4D v11 to handle 50 times the current load.

After quizzing Julien Feason and Charlie Vass at a 4D Kitchen session, for high volume uses I need to avoid everything that hits the cooperative thread and hit the database engine as directly as possible - avoiding 4D code whenever possible. That means I have to avoid triggers and the 4D internal web server. Solutions like the AJAX part of 4D Web 2.0 Pack which are based off 4D's internal web sever are a problem - at least for high volume uses. That, and the fact that my client still has IE6 as their corporate standard and 4D Web 2.0 Pack doesn't fully support IE6 means that even though I now want to use AJAX part of 4D Web 2.0 Pack, my use of it will be pretty limited.

However, since you now can hit 4D's database engine directly there are plenty of other options and I'll be rewriting a fair amount of my web app in PHP which can use ODBC to hit 4D's SQL engine without going through 4D code.

4D for Flex (part of 4D Web 2.0 Pack v11)

While the AJAX part of 4D Web 2.0 Pack is a problem for me, 4D for Flex is a tool I can use, since it hits the preemptive part of 4D directly and it works just fine in IE6 (provided you have Flash 9, which as fate would have Flash 9 isn't part of my client's standard corporate build either). The session on 4D for Flex made it seem really complicated, but what I found most interesting about the session were the comments in the last 5 minutes during Q&A... First Tim said that he much preferred working with 4D for Flex than the 4D AJAX framework. Then one of the attendees chimed in saying once you get over the initial learning curve with 4D for Flex you'll love it and think of it as invaluable. He went further saying that the thinking when you work with Flex is more compatible with how you think in 4D than the thinking when working with AJAX.

The Language

One thing Laurent made very clear (without actually saying it) was that the current 4D language is dead - he literally called it "the old language" (even though there's no "new language" yet). If I understood things correctly, all those lines of code you've written in 4D will never execute in a preemptive multitasking manner. There will be a new language, it will be ECMAScript based (like Javascript and ActionScript), and that will be the language that will work in 4D's preemptive multitasking environment. What this means is that current 4D code, while it will be supported for a long time, is a bit of a liability. If you really want to get the most of 4D in the future you won't be running the code you have now.

From my perspective that means the more I do in PHP and Flex, the better. Remember, with PHP and Flex I can hit the SQL engine directly and use preemptive multitasking now, and the next version of 4D will have a code editor that supports editing PHP files, and a web server (based on Apache) that has a PHP processor built-in. So Laurent's comment last year about triggers being bad was probably more about the language used by triggers being bad. Still, getting away from the 4D language is a huge change in thinking for most of us since the current 4D language is like an old friend.

SVG

SVG was the pleasant surprise for me at Summit. I've been wrestling with EPS files that have emedded TIFFs. What I realized is that if I get SVG versions of those images I can do all sorts of things like swapping out the TIFF with a low-res JPG and even watermarking the embedded image and translating the text in the image from data.

Wrap-Up

So, from my perspective it was a useful Summit. 1) It helped clarify strategies to deal with the problems I have now. 2) It let me see that the primary remaining weaknesses in 4D (IMO) are being resolved in the next version.

Tags: 4D Summit 2008
Categories: 4D