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Nick
1-Apr-2010, 02:54 AM
Dear pre-release testers;

We apologize for the delay in delivering the RC III of VRW.

Before continuing with the schedule after RC II as it was, changes were considered based on your input. We have decided to change the schedule and:

- Add Verify Database
- Enhance Change data source location (via API)
- Enhance Control Printing behavior (via API)

It is not usual to add features and make big changes in software at this phase of development. However, we feel that this is needed to be able to deliver you a better and completer product.
The availability of RC III is estimated to be in the week of April 12th. We hope that we can count on your continued support with regards to testing the new RC III when it becomes available.

DavePorter
1-Apr-2010, 03:33 AM
Thanks Nick,

I was just started to wonder how it was going, as things had been very quiet!
But guessed the verify database issue was the show stopper!

Appreciate the update.

Dave Porter

Michael Mullan
1-Apr-2010, 06:45 AM
quite so. I'd rather wait a bit for the above mentioned features.

Michael.

Bob Worsley
1-Apr-2010, 07:36 AM
I also agree, verify database is critical, it's already bitten me, thanks for making the right decision.

BO Lincoln
1-Apr-2010, 10:50 AM
Please add me to the list of those who applaud your decision to alter the delivery schedule and include these features.

-BO Lincoln

Garret Mott
1-Apr-2010, 01:25 PM
Please add me to the list of those who applaud your decision to alter the delivery schedule and include these features.

-BO Lincoln

And me... Thanks!

Marco
7-Apr-2010, 07:18 PM
I guess enough said, but my opinion is too, that a version 1.0 release is very important.
If it is not stable or has enough features it can do much more damage than an increased timeline.

Just provide information, so your potential customers can adjust their schedule and are not caught with promises to their clients.

Cheers,
Marco

Michel Boisvert
14-Apr-2010, 08:29 AM
If Microsoft were using the same quality standards, it would still be looking after it's first Billion. You should know that marketing "good enough" products allows you to be earlier on the market.. and respect your promised delivery dates.. it's the update path that should be easy and fast so you can eventually get it perfect.

I would have been happy with a "good enough" version to releave the pressure, in the waiting of a perfect solution that may be months if not years away, making your update contract more valuable.

Sorry, i've got pressure from my sales department.

Michel

Garret Mott
14-Apr-2010, 08:49 AM
If Microsoft were using the same quality standards, it would still be looking after it's first Billion. You should know that marketing "good enough" products allows you to be earlier on the market.. and respect your promised delivery dates.. it's the update path that should be easy and fast so you can eventually get it perfect.

I would have been happy with a "good enough" version to releave the pressure, in the waiting of a perfect solution that may be months if not years away, making your update contract more valuable.

Sorry, i've got pressure from my sales department.

Michel

And if all of us here liked MS practices we'd be programming in VB not VDF.

I respect DAW for holding off delivery based on user/developer input and IMO, verify is important enough to warrant holding off. How happy would you be to have deployed VRW & then have to delete fields in 100 reports simply because you added a new field to a table? I bet the Sales department would be furious when you told them it was going to take 2 weeks to make the necessary changes to reports.

Look where the Sales Department has gotten Toyota.

My 2 cents....

Nick
15-Apr-2010, 04:21 AM
Michel, we promise that the first version will not be perfect, ok? :-)

Kidding aside, you are right, "good enough" is _better_ than perfect. But I feel tempted to explain a little bit more and that is that we started the project with a different scope than we cover now.

The intended scope of the project was that we wanted to deliver a "basic reporting tool". It needed to have full visual design capabilities and become the foundation for developers to build reports in Windows applications. For future, we would extend to web and "enterprise". All this was explained when we first announced the project at Synergy.

The very first designs did not support formula's, nor sub-reports, among quite a list of other things. But we think we're there now. It's going to be more than the "basic reporting tool" we started with but we think it's the "minimal set of mostly wanted features" that our customers need.

seanyboy
15-Apr-2010, 05:13 AM
From what I've seen, it's an amazing piece of work. Kudos.

Of course - The first thing I tried to do (add a box which overlapped sections) didn't work. I'm not complaining. I can wait for it to do this.

The reason that I brought it up is to ask if you've considered using something like uservoice or getsatisfaction to get an idea of which features are most important to people.