This Xbase⁺⁺event turned out to be a very unique and invaluable developers conference for various reasons.

All participants enjoyed an overwhelming amount of first hand information, hands-on experiences and real-world deployed samples. Furthermore, the development and fostering of business and personal relationships and friendships, as well as the gathering of lasting impressions and memorable moments were to pleasure everyone at the Conference, too.

This DevCon, having attracted more than 100 visitors from all over the world, has been a great success for the Xbase⁺⁺ community and of course, for Xbase⁺⁺as a product. Xbase⁺⁺ developers had the opportunity to came together and exchange their ideas, present their products and get profound technical knowledge provided by the leading industry experts.

The Conference took place at an originally preserved Mediaeval Castle, and was organized as a two day event (Nov. 12th and 13th 2004) Due to its cosmopolitan nature, most speakers and attendees had arrived already the previous Thursday evening. Thus, having taken advantage of the opportunity to get in touch with friends and fellow developers prior to the offical commencement of the DevCon. The bar turned out to be just the right spot for the social aspect of the event.

The foreseen session schedule turned out be quite intensive and tough for every party: the speakers as well as the participants. With a total of 31 sessions and more than 10 speakers, these two days proved to be packed with knowledge and tips and tricks stemming from years of dedicated Xbase⁺⁺development. Having started at 9:00 a.m. with an one hour break for lunch, the last session ended - according to the conference schedule - at 20:30 p.m.! The late afternoon sessions, however, always had a tendency to be by and large overrun timeswise. The Database Technology session from Steffen F. Pirsig took two and a half hours, covering everything from performance and reliability issues up to new features in the forthcoming Xbase⁺⁺1.9 release.

A lot of new exciting stuff was introduced. Technologies, such as ActiveX integration into Xbase⁺⁺1.9. Mr Cherubini and Its Staff - from Albalog Srl - showed Visual dBSee, a case modelling tool for Xbase⁺⁺ allowing one to generate a full functional GUI application including the database model in only 30 minutes. Turning to SOAP, WebServices or transparent ODBC SQL access using products from Mr. Boris Borzic. Once again, a marvelous job was done by Mr. Roger Donnay presenting his eXpress⁺⁺, focusing upon the possibility to almost instant migration of Clipper applications to GUI applications.

Mr. Clayton Jones introduced his next version of TopDown - a powerful GUI library including its ever growing feature-rich form designer, which on its part allows to create ever more sophisticated user interfaces within its own design environment.

Mr. Phil Ide - best to be described as "the guy who always extends a helping hand next to everybody"!! - elaborated upon security concepts and how complicated it can get to create a secure password.

Clayton, in another session, explained about Windows user interfaces and how they work internally.

Mr. Marcus Hercz from DS-Datasoft showed us how to use XClass⁺⁺ - a GUI class library putting an emphasis on the creation of visually appealling applications.

Mr. Pablo Botella portrayed the current stage of developement of his own Xbase⁺⁺UI library for Windows.

Mr. Joachim Dürr from Extended Systems lectured in great detail about the Advantage Database Server.

Steffen F. Pirsig had the luxury to have held his keynote session in the impressingly decorated interieur of the castle's chapel. Well, there could not have been a much appropriater place for that, don't you think as well? Steffen talked about the history of Alaska Software, elaborating upon why development had not progressed that much in 2002 and 2003, in comparison to the tremendous amount of work which has been achieved in the year 2004 alone! He showed us the current state of Xbase⁺⁺1.9 as well as the plans for the future. Moreover, he emphasized that Xbase⁺⁺ developers ought to get involved actively in the promotion of Xbase⁺⁺and Alaska Software, and when it comes to the enhancement of the product itself. In sum, whenever you got a PDR which you want to have fixed - vote for it on the knowledgebase, as this will help Alaska Software to align resources according to customers' needs.

Steffen also gave us a lot of insight about what has been done to Xbase⁺⁺ under the hood. His keynote presentation is available for download at

ftp.alaska-software.com/documents/keynote_2004.pdf

Besides all, developers could be seen everywhere bent over their laptops, exchanging source code and knowledge, discussing ideas or simply showing their impressive applications to fellow DevCon attendees.

A special thanks goes to all members of the XXP organizational committee for their endless efforts to have made this conference a successful event. The initial goals were more than outperformed, hence the mission has been accomplished very well! Our best regards to all participants, and would-be participants for future events like that.