Aware IM User Trends?

MichaelQ

Sorry to keep asking akward questions but...

There currently seems to be a core of perhaps 10 very helpful users who frequently post here, with perhaps a handful of users online at any given time. I couldn''t help but compare this with the Board stats stating "Most users ever online was 192 on Fri Apr 06, 2012 2:30 pm".

Does this indicate that AwareIM was once very popular and that people have moved on to other things. Or does it indicate that AwareIM is so easy to use that the need to consult the forum is unnecessary? 🙂

Is AwareIM on the wane? What is the general trend in usage, quantity of licences etc.

The answer shouldn't really affect a decision whether to use it, but I am inevitably curious about its context.

Michael

BenHayat

MichaelQ wrote
The answer shouldn't really affect a decision whether to use it, but I am inevitably curious about its context.
Michael

Reading [and supporting] many of your questions, including this, it gives me the impression, "You like AwareIM, but you're still on the fence to go to bed with AwareIM" 😃

I understand...
Since I still remember your history as being around for long time and being apprehensive is a good safeguard. And here is an honest truth without kissing AwareIM's behind. If you really have a concrete project in mind and try to do it in any other framework and then try to do it in AwareIM, you quickly come to the conclusion, "Damn, I can do this 10 times faster in AwareIM than anything else and get to the market with a product". Once this light bulb goes off in your head, you will not be posting any of these threads anymore... You'll be busy building app ASAP 😃

MichaelQ

Thanks Ben.

I guess I've been driven neurotic by so many software mistresses who let me down in the past.

Michael

BenHayat

MichaelQ wrote
Thanks Ben.

I guess I've been driven neurotic by so many software mistresses who let me down in the past.

Michael

You're an experience person, so I'm not worried you will fall into a ditch. But my advise is jump in and build an app. This product as been out since 2002 and still in business and the man behind it is full of energy and active. IF the product, meets your criteria, it's VERY solid and stable. I'm starting my second big project with AwareIM, and I learned so much from the first project.

aware_support

The statistics of 192 users at the same time is collected automatically and shouldn't be trusted. Without any doubt 99% of these users were bots.

Aware IM is not on the wane - on the contrary, it is growing, especially after the release of 7.0

Markfre1

Nice logo Ben.

UnionSystems

We've been searching for and testing various Rapid Application Development (RAD) candidates for the last 12 months. In this time we've seriously trialled both Wakanda and WaveMaker and built test Apps using both of them. Both of these tools were (and are) impressive but fell short in some critical capacities that we needed when we starting building 'real Apps'. I do have to admit they both have more attractive 'configuration' UI's than AwareIM and I think that might help them in terms of initial take up. But their UI is the only win I can give them over AwareIM. Once you get the hang of how AwareIM works and discover how complete it is you realise how superficial the initial UI 'look and feel' comparison is.

After being eventually disappointed by both Wakanda and WaveMaker we were lucky enough to stumbled upon AwareIM. One area that AwareIM particularly shines is the way it maps and deploys the data model and particularly relationships. We're now in the process of building a real App for a real client and are still very happy with AwareIM.

Other things that are really valuable to us in AwareIM are :

Its focus on the underlying data model (it's true what Vladimir repeats in his videos and documents...get this right and everything seems easier). We've had a number of instances where refining the data models make the App much more effective and requiring less processes and rules.
Elegance of rule model. Again if the data model is well matched to the real world scenario the rules and processes can remain simple and natural (less is more seems to apply here)
The incredible amount of built in functionality. We repeatedly discover that something we need is already setup in AwareIM (sometimes its just hard to find it...probably because there is so much inside AwareIM).

4.Team Vladimir provides really fantastic support

I know there have been concerns raised about the risk of an AwareIM / Vladimir disappearing but another sweet thing with AwareIM is the underlying data tables are a direct mapping of the original AwareIM model so whilst using them without AwareIM would be a huge backward step at least the basic data content and structure would survive the horror of an AwareIM disappearance (perish the thought). The same is not the case for other RAD tools we've looked at where the underlying database is totally bound to the RAD tool and cannot work independent of it.

Also the user community is not only very supportive and helpful they are a noticeably positive and generally pretty happy mob.

Whilst this community does seem small and it is early days in our AwareIM experience I'm delighted to be joining what I'm now considering as a privileged elite 🙂

BenHayat

UnionSystems wrote
We've been searching ...

Dave, stay away from Wakanda all the way. I know them well from 2011 as one of their active developers. That company is nothing but lies... I say it publicly. The worst company and product I ever dealt with.

As far as Aware data modeling goes, I'm glad you understand the value of spending time to do the correct data modeling and simple rules. As my second large project, every rule I write, I think about it's affect on the performance.

For example in a rule that calculates or updates some attribute, I now check to see of any of the parts were changed before I do the update. No sense of executing codes for nothing. If something can be done as on demand with process, do it via process than rule, otherwise rules can create domino and kills the performance. Make the rules in the LoggedInUser very light and f has dependency with other objects, be sure no to get into "circular" updates. This is a big performance killer.

MichaelQ

I guess I'm just going to have to start working my way through the tutorial then 🙂

Many thanks to all,

Michael

ps: I too have looked at Wavemeaker & Wakanda. Although their IDE styling is much more shiny and attractive than AwareIM, I was underwhelmed.