Enrique Almeida, Gustavo Ulivi y Raúl Caro created Concepto in 1991, and in 1993 they adopted GeneXus as a development tool. The Uruguayan company provides custom made development and systems consulting. We try to get ahead of the curve and be prepared for what is coming up, said Enrique Almeida, in charge of the new technologies area at Concepto; That's why one of our fundamental tasks is to find out about the advantages of the new GeneXus version, since more than 90% of our development is made with GeneXus, he concluded.

Interview with Enrique Almeida

What does a Beta Tester do?
The Beta tester examines the new GeneXus features, and tests them with concrete applications. These are used as  esting bases to which new features are integrated. Most of the  ew features are requested because they are required to do new tasks. For instance, many of the Web Services which are being incorporated into the new version of GeneXus are being used at the Customs Office. So far, we have been doing that in a rough way, and that is why we asked ARTech to implement new features. Other times ARTech proposes a specific feature, and I love that!. I have always done that at Concepto: check the new stuff out there, and then share it with others. Nowadays, I do it in a more formal way; We at Concepto try to be the ones that find & face the problems with the tool, which then we pass on to ARTech. This is our way of paving the way for those who work on things seriously (ARTech's development team).

What interesting things did you find in the new version?
Web Services, but mainly the new types of XML data. We are really  obsessed  on using the XML reading and recording for the Costa Rica Project. There is also the possibility of sending webpanels with the Webrapper object by e-mail, which is also widely used. The new C# language is something with  future as well. We already have three applications in C#: Petroglifo (news application), Métricas (internal-use costs application), and a third project that we have migrated into C# which is Customs Web queries.

Concepto received an award for adopting new technologies&
Currently, we have several applications in production using those new technologies, and we continue to push ARTech to do new things. We have played an important role in forerunning XML. When ARTech released the first version of XML reader  which was not even in beta Nicolás (Jodal) called us to do some testing; and we ended up using those features in our internal applications; for instance, now,  when people request vacations,  they sent a webpanel type of e-mail, which automatically authorizes or denies their request.

Which GeneXus version are you using in Costa Rica?
We have worked with GeneXus 7.5 since the beginning because we are going to read XML.

The Uruguayan Customs Office uses XML to publish results, but it does not receive XML. All development in Costa Rica will be done with GeneXus 7.5 because by  the time the project is completed, 7.5  will have already been released.

How has been your experience with GeneXus as far as development is concerned?
It is the development tool we have chosen because it makes large applications development  easier. Changing  to what now is C#, adapting to  Microsoft's new  technologies, being able to do it ourselves, and migrating the news system into that technology, is a big task with or without GeneXus. However, it takes very little time to do it with GeneXus. It is a big task, but it is done rapidly.

What do you think should be added to GeneXus?
I would add the possibility of doing multi-platform debug, the possibility of checking what the application is doing at the time it's being developed. These days, it is very common to have a  GeneXus program in Visual Basic calling a program in C/SQL, and accessing  different databases. It is   easy to do when everything is running smoothly. The issue is that sometimes, when there is a problem, it is difficult for the GeneXus user to know where it is; AS/400, Visual Basic, C/SQL, etc,. They all have different  debug tools , and the GeneXus developer  for whom it's  natural to make the language change  usually knows how to debug in only one particular language, but not in others.

Something else I would improve is support for large development groups. Knowledge bases grow naturally as new elements are added every year. However, dated features are not removed, and the problems that have to be solved, as well as the number of platforms, increase as time goes by. This causes more people to work on the same problem and, nowadays, with GeneXus, when several people work on the same knowledge-base, some complications  arise. That is why I would like to count on a centralized list of tasks to do, and the possibility of assigning responsibilities, handling security within the knowledge base, and recording changes.