GeneXus two years from now

"The world of information technology changes completely every couple of years, operating systems become commodities and cease to matter any longer. In two years time there will only be two execution environments, Java and .NET. The two main characteristics of these environments are portability –which we’re not interested in because we can get that from GeneXus- and being able to forget about  installation”, said ARTech’s President, Breogán Gonda.
"Our job is to do the best for Java and .NET, and it’ll be you or your clients who will choose what’s best for you”, said Nicolás Jodal, ARTech’s Vice-President.
"We’re currently working in Mexico on a large banking project in a joint venture with De Larrobla&Asociados. As this project deals with large numbers, it is only possible to develop it in one of these execution environments; and it’s being implemented in Java. It is a banking project for more than 3 million individual users, 300,000 small businesses, and it will start off with 20 thousand medium and large businesses”, said Gonda.
Last year, when Microsoft introduced .NET, it also launched a program (ISV Early Adopters Program) to select 20 software companies around the world to participate in .NET’s development and be the first to adopt the technology. ARTech was one of the companies selected and now “Microsoft is paying attention to what we’re doing” said Jodal.
ARTech’s President said that in two years time “both environments will run on all known operating systems. That’s a good thing. It’s good for us because we’re very good at Java and because .NET greatly improves our relationship with Microsoft. In my opinion it’s a smart move to start making .NET applications to be able to get in there first. When will .NET come into action? Well, we think that the biggest impact will be next year”, said Breogán Gonda.
"Microsoft is trying to get applications out in C# as soon as possible, so in my opinion there is an interesting business opportunity for all of you”, Jodal advised the distributors. “The C# generator is working, but right now we’re the only ones who can use it, as we’re using a non-public .NET version. That’s why the beta test process of the C# generator is not associated to the Solís version but to the beta test process of the .NET.” According to the schedule for this process “we will release the beta test for the C# generator in June and the generator at the end of the year”, announced Jodal.
At the moment, however, there is a drawback in the C# generator in that it does not run in a Windows environment, so the application must be passed to Web and then to C# language, Jodal reported.
"We’re going back to Redmond in September, and we don’t want to take two millions lines of code with us, but several C# applications", declared Jodal. The two million lines of code in C# language in the application for GXVision cable operators were developed in two months by two members of ARTech’s development team and presented to Microsoft last January.

The immediate and long-term futures
As far as the next version of GeneXus –which will be called Rocha- is concerned, Jodal announced that it will take some time because of some major changes. “We’re at the end of a cycle with the Solís version of GeneXus. In our opinion our clients’ short-term needs have been fulfilled (Internet, Intranet, Windows), so we now have the opportunity to devote ourselves to things that are important, not just the urgent ones", he said. Nevertheless, he did not rule out the possibility of releasing upgrades of the Solís version.
The two important –non urgent- things to take into account for the next version of GeneXus are: to migrate the GeneXus language to object orientation (so every user can define his own data type; handling a transaction as an object); and to separate the specific functions of the user interface. "We would like to start working on a GeneXus version based in GXPublic. We’re doing the foundation work for what would be the rewriting of the user interface," he explained.
Moreover, Gonda announced the launching of Gxplorer Query at a very low price to achieve a solid market penetration . “We are in excellent conditions to increase our sales in the rest of the year with traditional GeneXus and also by selling - to our established base and to the 20 or 30 thousand clients from the software houses who do not have GeneXus, but who do have applications generated using it with the resulting knowledge bases- our new product, Gxplorer Query", he asserted. “In my opinion it is very important to reach a good penetration with Gxplorer Query, so we’re thinking of launching Gxplorer Query at a very low price to reach that scale” assured ARTech’s President.

Where and who we are
"We are very proud and happy of what we have achieved. The truth is that we are still a small company seeking wider opportunities in the world, and one of the ways we are exploring to get there is via an association with Microsoft and IBM so they can get us an introduction to the rest of the world. But I think there is also another way, the bottom up revolution”, said Nicolás Jodal. "We are making a small revolution and one of the components of that revolution is the awareness of the GeneXus community", he pointed out. “There are 60 messages a day in the GeneXus Forum, there are 430 members of the GXOpen project with 47 projects and 1300 downloads, there are 2500 subscribers to  GeneXus news, and there are 8000 logins per week in the Technical Area of the GeneXus site. All these figures indicate that we are on the correct path, but we still have a long way to go " said Jodal.