News
eFOCUS - spring 2007
Performa build on the Microsoft .NET framework to improve product quality
Performa will release a new version of PerformaGlobal (PG R3.0) on 31st October 2007. Although PG R3.0 will look and feel totally familiar to end-users, it will have undergone a significant number of enhancements behind the scenes and is technically one of the most import releases of the product since it was launched in 2000.
PerformaGlobal has historically been built using Microsoft technologies, specifically within the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 environment. Microsoft periodically introduce enhanced versions of their development platforms that allow companies, such as Performa, to in turn improve their own software products, leveraging advances both in technology and product quality development approaches.
As part of their continual improvement process, Microsoft introduced an enhanced version of the Visual Basic environment, known as Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET). This resides within a larger technical family known as the .NET framework. Accordingly, PG R3.0 is being built using VB.NET within the .NET framework.
One major feature of PG R3.0, facilitated by the introduction of the .NET framework, will be its closer integration with other Performa products, such as the PerformaXRM (XRM). For example, it is planned that PG R3.0 will provide users with the capability to run XRM built reports within it, thereby allow organisations to distribute XRM built reports within their entire PerformaGlobal user network, as well as providing fully customisable report creation capabilities.
Key Concepts
- .NET is the name for Microsoft's strategic direction in software development. Started in the late nineties, it is a collection of technologies for the development of web-based and desktop applications and is widely considered to be Microsoft's response to the open-source programming language Java launched by Sun.
- The .NET Framework is a software component that can be added to the Windows operating system. It provides a common runtime environment for the execution of .NET programming languages and also a large body of pre-prepared source code for areas such as security, error handling and database connections.
- Visual Basic .NET (VB .NET) is the evolution of Microsoft's Visual Basic programming language towards a fully object-oriented approach. Software written in .NET requires a completely new runtime environment to be present called the .NET Framework.