Surround Technologies Announces New Accelerator for .NET Version 4.2

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Bloomfield, NJ – August 20, 2013 – Surround Technologies announces the general availability of version 4.2 of its Accelerator™ for .NET software development platform, a premier productivity solution for the development and use of desktop, browser and mobile .NET applications with Windows, Windows Azure, IBM i and IBM System z.

Whether modernizing legacy applications or creating new functionality, with Accelerator developers can Develop Faster, with Better results, and More functionality to deliver the software your customers, employees, business partners, and vendors will love, without limitations, lock in or dead ends.

Accelerator™ for .NET Version 4.2 builds on top of the amazing success of its 4.0 release earlier this year. Launching with this version is the much anticipated out-of-the-box generation enhanced Mobile User Interface. Built on ASP.NET MVC and jQuery Mobile technology the mobile experience will provide everything needed to put your business at your user's fingertips.

Included in this version you will find generation wizard improvements, as well as the all new Code Enhancer utility. Multiple launch pad configurations enables faster access to multi-platform development and a database analysis wizard provides information for quickly and accurately estimating a development project. Also, support for DB2 for .NET has been added and a plethora of new code snippets for even more developer productivity.

Accelerator™ for .NET V4.2 includes several new features:

    Generation Wizard Improvements – Generation continues to become even more intuitive and more efficient with each new version. We continue to add more capabilities to the wizards that provide greater time savings for the developer. Our out of the box generated code continues to incorporate more and more features as more patterns are identified during the post generation enrichment process. Our new version pulls in database relationships and automatically defines them in the Accelerator generation. You can continue to define additional relationships that may not be defined at the database level. Virtual field generation has been added to the wizards and includes concatenation, mathematical calculation, and substringing of data from other fields or literals. All the code necessary to handle the Join Fields from our 4.0 release and now these new Virtual Fields is automatically generated for you. Numerous improvements to the default UX as well as generation speed improvements have also been made.
    Code Enhancer – The Accelerator Generation Wizards have always been fundamental in Accelerating the Development of a complete end-to-end system. While the Generation Wizards generate new code, the Code Enhancer is a new tool that allows a developer to update existing generated code that has already been customized by a developer within Visual Studio. The Code Enhancer compares your database and generated programs to analyze changes, identify impact and suggest code enhancements to keep them both in synch and retain all code customizations. Analysis includes fields that have been added, changed and removed from the database or entities. This analysis ensures programs are fully updated with any changes made to the datastore.
    Database Analysis Wizard – This new wizard is a simplified version of the System Wizard that identifies database Tables(Files), Columns(Fields) and Relationships to produce detailed reports that can be used to size systems, estimate development efforts and create database ERDs. The progress file that is created from this wizard can be used to feed the System Wizard for generation. The reports are also available in the System Wizard Summary Screen.
    Multiple Launchpad Configurations – You now have the ability to create multiple named configurations that can store the connection information for different Data Servers and Accelerator Services. You can create, copy, change and delete these named configurations. This is helpful with different connection information for Development, Test and Production Environments and for developing systems against multiple data sources and servers.
    ASP.NET MVC HTML5 Browser Menu – There have been numerous user productivity enhancements to the HTML5 Browser View including a new design for the Main Menu. The Main Menu can be collapsed to provide maximum desktop space with the ability to have quick access to the items as a fly out. By providing the ability to access navigation, search, attachments and more with a single click from any screen at anytime, users are able to more efficiently interact and multi-task with the HTML5 version of the Accelerator than ever before. Customized favorites and recent lists follow the user from desktop to browser and mobile so you can pause what your doing, and get right back to it from your mobile device without missing a beat.
    ASP.NET MVC HTML5 Mobile UX – The wizards now support generating a jQuery Mobile view in additional to the already supported browser view. This new ASP.NET view uses the power of jQuery Mobile to provide a complete User Experience for Navigating modules and their relationships as well as selecting, inserting, updating and deleting data. The Mobile UX has overlooked no small detail. Users are provided a full set of tools they have grown accustomed to in both their desktop and browser versions in an intuitive smaller form factor design. A custom mobile view aims to deliver a smooth UI that allows users on the go the ability to do their job while on the move. Data is delivered in pages with simple back and forward navigation and easy to understand menus to traverse systems large or small with ease.
    DB2 for .NET Provider (IBM.Data.DB2) Support – Adding to our long time support for the DB2 for IBM i .NET Data Provider (IBM.Data.DB2.iSeries), we have now added support for the DB2 for .NET Provider that is licensed with IBM's DB2 Connect. This provider supports enterprises that need to access DB2 on both the IBM i and the IBM System servers.
    Code Snippets – Code snippets are small blocks of reusable code that can be added to your code file using a simple context menu command and/or hotkeys. Code Snippets can help Accelerate your development by saving you time from typing commonly used pieces of code. This cuts down on common mistakes and typos that increase development time to debug. The Accelerator Code Snippets follow the same coding standards as the generated code to ensure consistent coding format for all developers. The Accelerator Code Snippets are installed with the product and can be shared with all developers. We will continue to grow our library of snippets in future releases.
    Here are some of the snippets that are currently shipped with the product:
        Logging Snippets
            aslog - Code snippet for writing a log message.
            astrylog - Code snippet for try/catch that includes writing a log message for the exception.
        Datamap Snippets
            asrelationship - Code snippet that adds a Relationship Map for a Join Relationship in the Datamaps.
            asmap - Code snippet that adds a map entry for a Property in the Datamaps.
            asjoinmap - Code snippet that adds a map entry for a Join Property in the Datamaps.
            asvirtmap - Code snippet that adds a map entry for a Virtual Property in the Datamaps.
        Entity Snippets
            asprop - Code snippet that adds a Property in the Entity.
            aspropfull - Code snippet that adds a Property in the Entity that fires property changed.
            asvirtprop - Code snippet that adds a Virtual Property in the Entity.
        Business Process Snippets
            asinargs - Code snippet that adds an InputArgs inheriting from AB_InputArgsBase.
            asbpproc - Code snippet that adds a method that takes an AB_ProcessRequestInputArgs and returns an AB_ProcessRequestReturnArgs.
            aspselect - Code snippet that adds a Custom Select method for use in a BP.

Accelerator for .NET Version 4.0 redefines the environment in which users can perform their work and the workspace that they can create for themselves. It expands an ever-growing list of features created to develop new and modernize legacy systems. The Accelerator allows for a range of options, from reusing code in the background while building a rich user interface, to completely rebuilding systems, and everything in between. Additional Information can be found here www.surroundtech.com/SoftwareSolutions/Accelerator_Development_Solutions.aspx or by requesting additional materials from Lee Paul, Media Contact for this release at info@surroundtech.com.

About Surround Technologies:
Surround Technologies is a software innovation business with solutions and services to substantially accelerate the development and delivery of state-of-the-art software for companies of all sizes and in any industry. Surround’s Accelerator Development Solutions is a complete suite of Open Frameworks and Tools that empower developers to Develop Faster, with Better results, and More functionality to deliver the software customers, employees, business partners, and vendors will love. The resulting systems allow for the seamless integration of .NET with IBM i or Windows servers to enhance user experience and productivity, and drive greater growth and profit for the business. Learn more at www.SurroundTech.com.

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