IX to XII GeneXus Meetings:: The Meetings through time :: Years 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001

Over 1,200 participants — including 300 participants from abroad — took part in the IX International Meeting of GeneXus Users held at the Victoria Plaza Hotel Convention Center on September 15-16.

Artech had 2,400 customers worldwide by then.

GeneXus 6.0 is released and its advantages in three areas are highlighted:

- Knowledge reuse
- Data Warehousing
- Workflow

GeneXus JAVA generator is introduced. Within a context where JAVA is divided between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, Artech researches and develops a stable product that generates JAVA for any version in use.

This time, the already traditional awards presented at the Meetings give recognition to those academics that have influenced computer technology and mathematics in the country and teachers from the first computer technology university courses — which the University of the Republic started offering in 1967.

In addition, recognition is given to De Larrobla and Solur for their success in the international marketing of GeneXus knowledge bases.

“This is not about miracles. It’s about faith and hard work. It’s not about genius. It’s about every day research work,” Breogán Gonda says at the closing of the Meeting when explaining the steady growth of GeneXus and its user community.

GeneXus in the short and medium term

Just as every year at the closing of the Meeting, Nicolás Jodal addresses GeneXus’ tendency and its relationship with the growing complexity of the different scenarios: client, server, Internet and Data Warehousing. 

The X International Meeting of GeneXus Users is held at the Victoria Plaza Hotel on September 13-15 with over 1,500 participants.

The invitation sent to users and software companies provides an overview of the technological field towards the end of the 20^th century:

“Many things have changed over the last 10 years — while applications used to be mainly centralized, developed in COBOL or RPG and with text screens, today they use multiple languages, architectures and servers and very sophisticated dialogs.

Systems are now much more complex and their development is much more complicated as more elements and actors are involved. Being able to describe them and discuss them at the knowledge level means a great advantage to us. The chance to acquire helpful knowledge in the market is crucial.

The knowledge business — initially received with skepticism — is today a reality and an achievement that benefits everyone in the GeneXus User Community. Systems are becoming increasingly complex but GeneXus hides this complexity and allows for them to be developed in a simple way.”

More than 1,700 participants attend the XI International GeneXus Meeting held on September 11-13 at the Radisson Victoria Plaza.

More than sixty presentations are given. In addition, the VII Knowledge Base exhibition hosts twenty-five companies that showcase their solutions.

The president of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle (2000- 2005) is in attendance at the closing ceremony.

The catalog of GeneXus KBs includes more than 100 solutions, 30 of which are for the GIVS (GeneXus Internet Virtual Space) environment. In addition, KBs for use in electronic commerce settings are presented. 

It’s the first time that labs are held, with the objective of developing applications using the new technologies offered by Artech.

Some of the high-profile keynotes included presentations given by the then president of ANTEL (National Administration of Telecommunications), Engineer Fernando Bracco, and by representatives of Oracle, Microsoft and Informix.

Paullieronline, a website developed with GeneXus to operate in Latin American stock markets, is launched.

“The year of the Internet” Breogán Gonda said

“This is the year of the Internet. A few years ago, the market gave some small first steps, adopting the Internet with curiosity, but with caution, and many users published small websites based on static pages that were developed manually. Later on, new websites were developed. They combined these static pages with dynamic pages and accessed the database. 

Many people considered Web applications as something completely different and isolated. However, almost all companies need systems that have Web components which are integrated into their general systems.

We at Artech have looked closely at the market and have continuously developed new technology. At present, we are performing the last tests of the new GeneXus version that contains, among other important elements, Web Objects that represent the combination of the best of both worlds: the graphics world with a powerful editor where we can introduce sophisticated graphic elements developed using the leading products in the field and the intelligence to access the GeneXus database.

But, at the same time we are adding a new option to the classic static or dynamic pages: static pages which are automatically generated at the right time. In many cases we will display static pages, which are the most efficient option, but these pages will be automatically generated and refreshed, using GeneXus when changes to data require it.

At the same time, XML, a language of self-described messages, becomes a widespread standard. XML is becoming the key tool for B2B applications, so we will see the specific possibilities offered by GeneXus in this regard.”

“The beginning of the end” Nicolás Jodal said

“At the beginning of the Internet, the existing model implied that a good idea was enough for a company to go public. Once this stage is over, we would witness a period of massive exclusion in which, even if many companies go bankrupt, very few types of business enterprises disappear.

Eric Raymond, the author of The Cathedral & The Bazaar talks about an economy of abundance, instead of the economy of scarcity in which we have been educated. Even though in both economies people seek status, Raymond says, in the economy of abundance status isn't achieved by those who have the most resources, but by those who are more generous. Generous with what is scarce; that is to say, time and knowledge. In this sense, an unexpected revolution has taken place with Napster, a small program designed by a 19-year old kid who discovered a new way of doing things and in little over a year he was able to build the largest music database in the world, making the music recording industry stagger.

Clearly, we live in a time in which processes take place, and these processes are based on interconnections between people. What’s important is to take advantage of the opportunity that this generates, and be capable of reformulating the business. How do we find the opportunity? It’s simple, and depends on our own capacity to learn.

What was going on in the technology field?

The dot-com bubble burst: Dot-com bubble is the name given to a strong speculative trend that developed between the years 1997 and 2001. As part of this process, the stock markets of western nations experienced a sharp increase of their value due to the growth of companies connected with the new Internet sector and the so-called "New Economy." The period was characterized by the creation (and, in many cases, spectacular collapse) of a new group of Internet-based companies known collectively as dot-coms. The combination of a sharp increase in stock prices, individual speculation and wide availability of risk capital gave rise to an exuberant environment. The burst of the dot-com bubble marked the beginning of a relatively mild, albeit long, recession in western nations.

The first export of Uruguayan software is made by Artech.