Last time, I mentioned how we have had to move past an all-Microsoft vision. So now, the future is increasingly looking Open Source&#8212. But not entirely.

The first issue in moving towards Open Source, which we have just solved, is getting a Windows application to work easily (and well) with databases on the web. Microsoft, for all their talk about ‘openness’ has never wanted to make it easy for Windows programs to play well with web-based databases. (Why should they, right?) The other side of the story is that the open source community has been absolutely dreadful in doing the necessary plumbing so that databases like MySQL and Postgre can ‘talk’ to Microsoft applications. In other words, instead of working more closely together, the worlds seem to be drifting apart. Drove us crazy. Both sides refuse to work well together. So we wrote our own.

Now that that bridge is crossed, we can continue to have great Windows-based desktop apps, but with an Open-Source back end that can work easily with any web application (hooray!)

Finally, we have to deal with the third leg of modern computing: hand-held devices like phones and tablets. To that end, we have to put our main ‘Smart’ support towards Android. Because it can be programmed Open Source, like other web applications.

So…
In the office, continue using SAFE over Windows with the Win7 UI… or go to Windows 8, but skip ‘Metro’.

At home or via remote offices? ThinSAFE will continue to be popular, but WebSAFE is getting better and better as the web itself gets better.

On your phone or tablet? For now, use WebSAFE and by the end of the year, PDAXtensions will be ported to Android Ice Cream. PDAXtensions will continue in its current scanner incarnation, but my guess is that most of you will want to use the Android version.