Surround Technologies Announces New Accelerator for .NET Version 4.3

Monday, December 2, 2013

Bloomfield, NJ — December 3, 2013 — Surround Technologies announces the general availability of version 4.3 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 4.3 builds on top of the amazing success of its 4.2 release earlier this year. Included in this version you will find generation wizard and code enhancer improvements as well as many new features within our ASP.NET MVC UX which supports desktop browsers, tablets and mobile devices. We are also proud to announce our new Advanced Query Reporting Tool [BETA] further evolving the Accelerator into a tool which can provide endless scalability to any organization’s reporting needs.

Here are the Accelerator™ for .NET V4.3 highlighted features:

    Generation Wizard Plugin — Generation continues to become even more intuitive and more efficient. Each new version adds more capabilities providing developers greater time savings. Version 4.3 focused extensively on Open Generation Technology (OGT). OGT provides developers the ability to customize all aspects of code generation. With existing support for developers to modify generation templates as well as naming standards of created objects, version 4.3 now premieres support for a generation wizard plugin. The plugin, a .NET class, implements the Accelerator’s wizard generation interface. The developer then, through coding, has full control to access all the data that is collected by the wizard including the ability to add rules to modify the initial defaults of the module manager. The ability to default all generation options including rules and standards provides incredible time savings. This new addition to our Open Generation Technology (OGT) reinforces our continued effort to accelerate development by allowing developers to extend generation and add their own repeatable development processes while promoting and supporting company standards and best practices.
    Code Enhancer — Introduced in version 4.2, the Code Enhancer, has been enhanced to support additional intelligence in the analysis of code and database inconsistencies. This added intelligence further extends the Code Enhancers ability to analyze, identify and suggest code enhancements. Analysis of added, changed or removed fields has been extended to include differences in types, lengths, keys and names. This update adds the ability to add or reject recommendations with the ability to update the Accelerator Database and the complete end-to-end code base for the WPF and ASP.NET MVC User Interfaces. The Code Enhancer reinforces our strategy and commitment to accelerate the development and support of Agile Development.
    ASP.NET MVC Browser and Mobile UX — Improvements to the Browser and Mobile views provide easier navigation of the system and data. The ability to filter data in both views adds to the efficiency of narrowing results. Visual feedback has been added to show the number of records returned and the number of records currently loaded. Auto-scrolling allows users the ability to seamlessly load results when the end of the page has been reached. Cloud plugins for module favorites and history are now supported in the Mobile UX. Users can now take their favorites and navigation history with them across all UXs (Windows, web or mobile). Customizable drop downs for all UXs have been implemented allowing developers to configure how data is loaded. Data can be loaded on demand or as the screen loads with optional support for a configurable max-count with a ”more” option optimizing the user's experience with large data sets. Additional options for the new drop down include opening of details and creating new records with the correct security permissions. Additional enhancements include support for Email, Maps, Telephone Attributes and more.
    Advanced Query Reporting Tool (Beta) — The Advanced Query Reporting Tool will allow an end user to build their own custom queries by selecting a primary module from a list of query enabled modules within the system. Without any SQL experience, a user can add selection clauses using columns (or fields) from the primary module as well as secondary modules based on the 1:M relationship model defined in the Accelerator metadata database. With a very simple Query Builder UX, the user can add selection filters and then format the output of the data by selecting the fields, sequence and sort order which will all be saved along with the query definition. The ability to save the query makes it quicker and easier to rerun frequently used reports and also provides a way to distribute information to other users by simply marking the Query as shared. This also allows an Administrator to provide a set of predefined shared queries for access by all Users. The Advanced Query Reporting Tool will generate the necessary SQL code that will retrieve the data from the system and show the results in a newly created tab within the main window. Query results can be easily exported to MS Excel to work with and analyze the data as well as have complete control over its presentation. The Advanced Query Reporting Tool is a system task pane that is always accessible by the user and designed to easily find and run a query. The user will be able to apply different views to see All Queries, Shared Queries or My Queries. A Quick Access tab is also available to show the queries available for the currently selected module in the navigator. From the technical side, a developer has full control over what modules are available to the Advanced Query Reporting Tool as well as what columns (or fields) are available for the selection clauses and output format.
    Continued Support for Continuous Integration (CI) — Continuous Integration is a software development practice allowing team members to frequently integrate their work reducing build and integration problems commonly found in development. The Accelerator Dependency Tool now creates an ”msbuild.bat” which runs the project dependency analysis and creates and optimized build script capable of using multiple processes. This enhancement allows development teams to efficiently automate single or multiple project solutions for use with Continuous Integration.
    Continued Support for Inversion of Control (IOC) — The Accelerator metadata database has been extended to store assembly information for all generated objects. This will allow a developer to access other assemblies without needing to have a direct reference to that assembly. The developer can use the AB_IOC class to return an instance of an object based on the data supplied from the Metadata database. The object reference can then be accessed via its base class or interfaces. This allows the object that gets instantiated to be easily changed via a table entry and will also eliminate any issues with circular referencing.

Accelerator for .NET Version 4.3 continues to build on the existing legacy of developing more, developing better and developing faster. The Accelerator allows for a range of options, from reusing code while building a rich user interface, to completely rebuilding systems, and everything in between. Additional Information can be found here 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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