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Why Use Tornado (ASPdb.Net)?
Tornado FAQ
 

Q:  Do you have a need of an Intranet to publish your company’s information? 
A1:No we do not, this IT activity is too expensive and hard to justify. Seems like everybody here has a PC and is using Microsoft office to generate business information, but we have no knowledge to integrate the information.
A2:Yes, we do but the activity cycle is too long. Too often the time it takes to develop the system to publish the information is long than the life cycle of the information.
A3:We do not understand what is an Intranet. But if I have a way to collect and publish internally the purchase price of all the items we use in this company, all the buyers will be benefited by this information and would result in a big cost saving. This would only work if the information is updated dynamically.
A4:Yes, We do but I filed request before to have my 10 years of material test data published in an organized manner such that the field engineers can be use this information, I was given a quote of $$$ in which I cannot afford and have no such budget. So we are still distributing these reports via company mail and I know they are not use effectively.
A5:No, our business has global locations and our management would like to have some kind of reporting system to inform them about the state of business in a dynamic manner, this would help them make better decisions. We have no big budget either for such an alien task. If this Intranet system can help us accomplish, we are willing to try it.
A6:No, we do not. We have internet because everybody has one and we are even conduction business transactions using the internet. But we do not even have any idea what inventory, profit margin, sales volume etc. are until we got the monthly report. According to our IT folks, it causes too much to extract information from their large computers to our desktop PC.
A7:I am not sure. Computers are everywhere in our company. I always want to publish the inventory list of the surplus equipment as I know our manufacturing staff is buying new items while we have the same items in the list. Image the saving that can be generated from this activity.
A8:We use to. We have a team of programmers to keep it going and now our budget is cut and looks like we’ll lose the Intranet and company staff will be using company mail and phones to communicate.

The above questions are common among ASP-db and Tornado users. If one of the above answer fits your criteria, then you should take a good look at the abundant information in this site and you’ll find your answer there.

 

Q:  What is TORNADO?
ASP-db is the first Active Server Page database publishing product since 1998. The categories of users of the product is horizontal and covers every kind of business and operations in every corner of the world.This piece of statistical information has given us a lot of insight to develop the next generation product, which is – TORNADO. DotNet is the next generation of Microsoft’s development in which the entire operating system is re-written from scratch. The languages are all new as well as the operating system. The primary focus is on the Internet. There are numerous enhancements and new applications as usual. Many of them are just too good to be true while many of them are very attractive. This Microsoft new development has many unusual facts which deserves some attention for software developers.

  • The development time and cost is significant – the word is about 3B and 3 Years.
  • Many reputable business consulting groups have predicted that in 5 years, 98% of Microsoft applications will  be developed in the DotNet framework.
  • The migration of Windows to DotNet is equivalent to the one from DOS to Windows.

With this big event, a lot of confusion surface and a clean cut migration scheme is not obvious. Actually, the ultimate scheme is to re-write the entire code from scratch. That is what happened to us after many failed attempts to “convert” the old code to the new one. While this opinion of ours might cause you to have concern in what is coming verses your ever shrinking IT staff in a slow economy. Should  you take on this new challenge? Can you handle that without increasing your budget? How long before you can conquer the steep learning curve of TORNADO? How soon can you show your management the power of your application running on TORNADO? How can I bridge the Classic ASP application to the TORNADO world? All these questions are addressed in the TORNADO development. The following is the answer to these questions –

  •  Should you take on this new TORNADO challenge?
    If Microsoft products is your main line profession, you do not really have a choice.
  • Can you handle that without increasing your budget?
    You have to be more careful in controlling what kind of tools you use to develop your application. The old mentality of “If the color of the product is not blue, then I would not use it” has to be re-evaluated. Instead, you need to have a tool that gives you the highest performance / (price x time) ratio.
  • How long before you can conquer the steep learning curve of TORNADO and how soon can you show your management the power of your application running on TORNADO?
    If you start from scratch – a long time. If you use a tool like TORNADO then the learning process is very short..
  • How can I bridge the Classic ASP application to the TORNADO world?
    Using ASP-db and TORNADO, it can be as invisible as it could be.

 



 

Q:  Who should buy the ASP-db and TORNADO? 
The following are the profiles of customer using the ASP-db and services –

  • If your O/S platform is W2K, XP-Pro or Windows2003.
  • Publish world class Web databases reports with very low budget.
  • Knows little about the http stuff and have hardly any budget but have a need to post database or spread sheet information to the Web.
  • Program for profit and not for the love of the technology.
  • Uses other middleware tools but want to increase the profit margin.
  • Needs to produce prototype on a real time basis.
  • Have problem with supporting applications developed by contract programs after they left.
  • Have the need to integrate real time Intranet information from various sources. (Machine output or departmental publications)
  • Work as a consultant and need a powerful tool in order to compete with the big guys in contracts bidding.
  • State of business is continuous instead of discrete, therefore in search of  a tool to collect and disseminate information in a continuous manner.
  • Have a small technical staff but handles a large amount of users in a company.



 

Q:  How to justify the purchase of ASP-db product and services ? 
The cost of the tool is often insignificant in comparing to the time, effort and risk in adapting the tool. The longer it takes to get up to speed is using the tool, the higher the risk. It is a common horror story that programmers being sent to the “official” middleware training offered by the big database companies “multiple times” are unable to produce an meaningful work after the training. The following are some recommendations for you to verify the ASP-db product –

  • Ask your leading programmers to check out our site’s example gallery (www.aspdb.com). There is no known products on the market that offers such a variety of colorful Live examples. We have been doing this for 3 years and we are still going and even stronger.
  • Ask the programmer whether this kind of application can be done in your domain and whether it is helpful to perform this kind of applications. For example, Does you management prefer to see real time business charting of the performance of the company or a simple paper report send to him in the company mail will be satisfactory.
  • Make arrangement to obtain a full featured copy of ASP-db or TORNADO for evaluation. Or if the requirement is urgent, contact USIntertech for an on site demo.
  • Send in one programmer for a three days training and if he or she can beat out all other programmers in the group, then the verdict is clear. Our 3 days training class guarantee the student to produce world class work right after the training.



 

Q:  Is ASP-db a proprietary language? 
No, ASP-db and TORNADO is pure ASP and ASPX code.



 

Q:  What does my basic development environment need to be like in order for me to use ASP-db or TORNADO? 
The minimum environment for ASP-db development is a deployment server with WIN2K, XP, or Windows.Net O/S loaded with IIS and MTS activated. The programmer can then create the ASP or ASPX file in a Notepad and then upload to the server for execution. It is recommended that the programmer should have a local similar workstation such that all the code can be developed and tested locally in order not to disturb the server. For TORNADO, ASP.NET 1.0 or above has to be loaded also onto the server.



 

Q:  What does my client-side environment need to look like in order for my user to use application generated by ASP-db and TORNADO? 
Just a plain Java enabled browser with Netscape version 4.08+ or IE 4.0+.



 

Q:  Does ASP-db run on UNIX? 
No, ASP-db and TORNADO runs only on the Microsoft platform.



 

Q:  Why should I use ASP-db instead of JavaScript, Java, HTML or ASP? 
JavaScript, Java, HTML and ASP are basic programming languages. There are no business functions in any of these languages. The bottom line distinction is that if your company runs on a set of business logics on the computer to conduct your business, you should use the most efficient computer tool to represent these logic. It is hard to justify programming from ground up and create a computer software development department within your company. ASP-db is the most comprehensive tool you can find today to perform these tasks.



 

Q:  Do I need to have an IDE such as Visual Studio to use ASP-db? 
No, Notepad or any text editor is all you need or you can use the Tornado TED code generator.



 

Q:  I currently have data on Oracle, can ASP-db connect to Oracle? Sybase? DB2? 
ASP-db hooks up to the data sources via ODBC, OleDB, SQLClient and OracleClient drivers supplied by either Microsoft or the database vendor directly. The difference in database operation syntax have been resolved internally in ASP-db such that user can switch from one datasource to the other just by changing the DBType property.



 

Q:  Does ASP-db run on AS400? 
ASP-db runs on AS400 if the AS400 is running the W2k or above Microsoft O/S.



 

Q:  What is the main difference between ASP-db and TORNADO? 
The difference is the operating platform. TORNADO runs on ASP.NET framework and ASP-db runs on the classic ASP environment. The program mode is identical while syntax difference is minimal.



 

Q:  Do you have a free trial period for using your product prior to us making any payment? 
Yes, You can download the trial version from www.aspdb.com. The evaluation version is identical to the Enterprise version. ASP-db Gold version is not available for evaluation and requires a company PO or consignment PO. The trail version expires at the end of every month. If you need to have a longer trail period, you can just re-download the DLL.



 

Q:  What kind of security does your system provide? 
ASP-db is a pass through. It inherits all the security measures from the O/S. TORNADO has also two Login modules to help you streamline the login security.