New in 5.1
Advanced Application Features
- Multi-level menus add sophisticated navigation. Multi-level pull-down menus integrate multiple pages and reports into a comprehensive application. Users will enjoy desktop functionality in your Web 2.0 applications. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
- Rich text editing with FCKEditor. Give your applications advanced text formatting capabilities, including fonts, colors, bullet lists and more. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
- New sign-in bar expedites user login. This new tool bar aggregates the Sign In, Sign Out, Language Selection and Print buttons in a single, easy-to-find location common on many popular websites. (Professional and Enterprise Edition feature.)
- Display rich text in web pages. Choose how to display text fields: formatted rich text or raw HTML source.
Reporting
- Microsoft Word reports. Want to email a table to someone? Just click the new “Microsoft Word Report" button to generate a report that can be emailed and printed! Word Reports use design themes so they look great, and you can easily customize report layouts using simple XML configuration files. Plus, the reports obey the user-selected filter, search and sort criteria, so what you see is what you get. (Professional and Enterprise Edition feature.)
Application Security
- Active Directory security integrates with corporate standards. Quickly add Active Directory security to your applications with the updated Security Wizard. Your users will love the single sign-on capability. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
- Microsoft Access Manager (AzMan) role-based security. Use the policy store created and maintained by the Microsoft Access Manager to control user access to specific pages and controls. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
- Remember Me. This cookie-based feature remembers user names and passwords so application users can quickly sign-in. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
Improved Configuration and Customization
- Intellisense. Explore the full class hierarchy from Iron Speed Designer's code editor, just like Microsoft Visual Studio.
- New Page Wizard speeds page creation. Select database tables, fields, layout style, and a host of other options to quickly create customized pages.
- Configurable column headers and pagination controls. Quickly add, remove, and configure column headers, pagination controls, button bars, and other table panel features.
Database and IDE Support
- MySQL. Quickly create MySQL-based applications. Enjoy the same sophisticated features you've come to expect in your Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Access and Oracle applications.
- Access 2007. We continue our support for Microsoft Access’s latest release.
- Visual Studio 2008 support. We continue our support for Microsoft’s latest release of Visual Studio, including .NET Framework 3.5 application generation.
Iron Speed Designer Version 5.1 System Requirements
- .NET Framework 1.1 application generation discontinued. Version 5.1 will not generate .NET Framework 1.1 applications. However, the Migration Wizard will convert your .NET 1.1 application to .NET Framework 2.0.
Upgrading to Iron Speed Designer Version 5.1
Applications created with earlier versions of Iron Speed Designer will be converted automatically to Version 5.1 with these caveats:
- Iron Speed Designer's Migration Wizard will migrate many of your code customizations. However, code customizations written for Versions 1.X, 2.X and 3.X require manual migration.
- The Version 5.1 code customization model is the same as Version 4.0 and later. No code customization changes are required for applications built in Versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 5.0.
Reporting
PDF Reports Want to email a table to someone? Just click the new “PDF Report" button to generate a PDF report that can be emailed and printed! PDF Reports use design themes so they look great, and you can easily customize report layouts using simple XML configuration files. Plus, the reports obey the user-selected filter, search and sort criteria, so what you see is what you get. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature. .NET Framework 2.0/3.0 applications only.)
Microsoft Excel Export Export formatted data directly to Microsoft Excel in an Excel-readable XML file that reduces the need to format data after import. Just click the Export to Excel button to open the report directly in Microsoft Excel. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature.)
Improved ASCII CSV Export The ASCII CSV Export feature now exports only those columns displayed in the associated table panel. What you see is what you get!
Advanced Application Features
Interactive search See a dropdown list of matching terms as you type. The suggestion list is easily configured both globally and for individual controls. (Enterprise Edition feature. .NET Framework 2.0/3.0 applications only.)
Improved design theme layouts Updated page styles use screen real estate more efficiently so your applications display more information above the fold.
Automatic foreign key linking Foreign key fields in Show Table and Show Record panels are automatically linked to the appropriate Show Record or Edit Record page, depending on your configuration preference. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature.)
Quick Add for dropdown lists Quickly add new items to dropdown lists. After saving the newly added record, you are returned to the original page and the dropdown list is refreshed with the new entry. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
Quick Edit for record panels Go directly from Show Record pages to Edit Record pages with just one click. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
Range filters for tables Automatically generate date and numeric range filters without further configuration.
Go to Page Jump straight to a specific table page.
Copy record A single click pre-fills an Add Record page so you can edit the new record before saving it to the database. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
Refresh table data Get the most recent data from your database with one button click. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature.)
Reset table filters One button click clears all filter values, search criteria and sorting criteria. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature.)
Delete table rows Quickly delete individual table rows with this new table row button.
Save and New button speeds data entry Enter multiple records quickly. The new Save and New button adds the current record to the database and clears the input fields, all without leaving the page. (Enterprise Edition feature.)
Limit long text fields for improved layout The MaxFieldLength pass-through attribute limits the amount of text displayed in a table or record panel.
Security Features
URL parameter encryption Encrypting URL parameters masks critical primary and foreign key values from mischevious hackers. (Enterprise Edition feature. .NET Framework 2.0/3.0 applications only.)
Configurable component-level security Component-level security can be applied to all .NET controls generated by Iron Speed Designer, including text boxes, dropdown lists and checkboxes. The component-level security mechanism sets the control’s ‘visible’ property, which you can control programmatically at run-time as well. (Professional & Enterprise Edition feature.)
Application Generation Options
Extensive feature generation control With over 75 configurable attributes, the new Application Generation Options dialog helps you create large applications that require little additional configuration. Configurable options include:
- Quick Add for dropdown lists
- Quick Edit for record panels
- Foreign key linking
- Table and record panel styles
- Table and row buttons
- Filter placement
- Menu styles
- Large list selector threshold
- Page size
- Enable Section 508 compliance
Simplified application creation The Application Wizard now waits until you click ‘Finish’ to perform all application generation steps, including creating application folders, style sheet copying and HTML layout page generation.
Page generation templates drive application generation V5.0 uses template-based page generation to create HTML layout pages in addition to the template-based code generation introduced in V4.0. Template-based page generation merges page layout with code generation allowing new page types and application features to be quickly added to the code generation templates.
Improved Configuration and Customisation
Automatically generated attributes simplify configuration Iron Speed Designer now automatically generates popular pass-through attributes for date, number and dropdown list controls. Go directly to the Attributes tab in the Properties dialog to configure these individual control properties.
Simplified stored procedure calling Call your own custom stored procedures with just two lines of code! Also included are new Code Customization Wizard templates for calling your custom stored procedures.
Faster start-up Like Microsoft Visual Studio, no application is opened when starting Iron Speed Designer, so you can switch applications quickly.
C# sample applications Sample applications are available in both C# and Visual Basic .NET.
Please see supporting documents for features and edition comparison.
Speed development and deploy fast.
Iron Speed Designer accelerates application development for any database-driven Web application, saving days or even weeks in development time.
Dramatically reduce development costs.
Creating applications in a fraction of the time means you can develop and deploy applications faster and more efficiently with less cost in human resources.
High quality code reduces testing time.
The high performance .NET code generated by Iron Speed Designer is consistently high quality, greatly reducing the QA burden. The result is fewer bugs and more stable applications.
100% .NET code aids learning.
Since Iron Speed Designer generates native .NET code, there are no new programming languages or 4GLs to learn. Reading the generated code is a great way to learn .NET.
Focus developers on higher priority tasks.
Iron Speed Designer eliminates routine infrastructure programming, freeing you to focus on your application's business logic.
Keep development ownership in-house.
Outside professional services are often impractical or overkill for application development, and can be very costly both in terms of fees as well as management time and attention.
Single activation per license. Like Microsoft Visual Studio and other programming tools, V5.0 can be activated on a single machine. However, you can de-activate on one machine and re-activate on another as often as you like, giving you complete freedom of movement.
Operating System
Iron Speed Designer runs on:
- Windows Vista Business Edition
- Windows Vista Enterprise Edition
- Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
- Microsoft Windows 2003
- Windows 2003 Server
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 1 or later)
- Windows XP Home (Service Pack 1 or later, local development machine only)
Iron Speed Designer will not run on:
- Windows Vista Starter Edition
- Windows Vista Home Edition
- Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
- Microsoft Windows 64 bit versions
(Note: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 requires a service pack in order to run under Windows Vista. Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 is not supported on Microsoft Vista.)
Virtual Machines
Iron Speed Designer will not run on virtual machines. However, applications generated by Iron Speed Designer will run on virtual machines.
Web Server
- Microsoft IIS
- Microsoft IIS 7.0
- Microsoft IIS 6.0
- Microsoft IIS 5.0
Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server
Requires .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0 (included in Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005) (Optional, on local development machine only)
Iron Speed Personal Web Server
Requires .NET Framework 1.1 (Optional, on local development machine only)
.NET Framework
Iron Speed Designer runs on:
- .NET Framework Version 3.0
- .NET Framework Version 2.0
Iron Speed Designer will not run on:
- .NET Framework Version 1.1
- Web Browser Microsoft Internet Explorer
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
- .NET SDK If you intend to modify the code generated by Iron Speed Designer.
IDE (optional)
(Optional, if you intend to modify or extend the generated source code.)
These IDE's are supported:
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
These IDE's are not supported:
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 Express Edition
- Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
- System speed Iron Speed Designer requires a minimum of 600 MHz with 1 GHz recommended.
- System memory Iron Speed Designer requires a minimum of 512 MB of memory and 1 GB is recommended. There are additional requirements if the development machine also has a database (e.g., Microsoft SQL Server) and an IDE (e.g., Microsoft Visual Studio .NET) installed.
- System disk space Approximately 100 MB of disk space is required.