DevExpress Roadmap 2013

ctodx
22 March 2013

Finally the last discussion was debated, the last long email thread was terminated, the last agreement made, and the last document collected. It was then all up to me to collate all those bullet points and write the DevExpress roadmap for 2013.

Pin in roadmapThis year, perhaps more than the previous ones, there was much uncertainty about what path we should take. Perhaps uncertainty is the wrong word, ambiguity might be a better one. And path implies there’s just one road to take, whereas in reality there were several directions to follow. Despite what you may believe, DevExpress is not a vast enterprise with resources out the wazoo: we do have to pick and choose what we do; and carefully at that.

The first decision was possibly the easiest. I’ve talked about this at length before, but it bears repeating: the web is this giant juggernaut of a train. You miss it at your peril. It’s not just “web sites” anymore. It’s “single page applications”, it’s “responsiveness”, it’s “mobile” in all its wild wonderful forms, it’s the “cloud”, it’s all of these separately and together. So, first of all we are concentrating on our ASP.NET story, and our HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript story in DXTREME.

The second was perhaps equally as important and equally as straightforward: improve our “thick client” offerings, especially WinForms, WPF and VCL. Not all of our customers are writing the next killer web app (someone do Google Reader 2.0, please?) but are heads down in implementing awesome Windows applications. The rich data-fed Windows app is not going away, despite the maturity of each particular run-time. Hence we are spending some resources this year on polishing and enhancing these libraries (the new smooth scrolling is awesome, just as one example), and cementing our pole position as provider of Windows app components, no matter which technology you prefer.

The third decision was to continue to enhance our dashboard, reporting, charting, and data analysis products, at an aggressive pace. We have many innovative ideas for these products, some of which you’ll see this year and some in 2014 or later.

Anyway, for more details, please peruse the roadmap here. Note that it does not and cannot cover every single suggestion or feature that we’ll be implementing, for then it would be tens of pages long and I’d never have finished it. And as I say every year on one way or another, use it for guidance, but don’t make solid plans based on it.

It does promise to be a banner year though; let’s see what develops.

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renejdm
renejdm

It is good to hear that you are continuing to develop your Windows Forms platform. But I have one criticism. I have a subscription to Windows Forms but I cannot use your Dashboard control because it is only part of your Universal subscription.

I am not interested in developing WPF or Silverlight or ASP.NET, so I will not get a Universal Subscription. You should offer your Windows Dashboard control as either part of the Windows Suite or as a standalone component that can be purchased separately.

Rene

23 March 2013
Scott G Blood
Scott G Blood

Amazing, i look forward to the Spreadsheet Engine, this is going to be epic.

Well done guys, i really mean it this time :)

25 March 2013
Peter Thorpe
Peter Thorpe

Sounds pretty good to me. Looking forward to lots this year especially the improved export capabilities that will come from the spreadsheet engine (at least what I am imagining). The PDF viewer will be handy too, forever using workarounds for viewing them.

Will the XtraPrinting EMF and WMF vector image support cover XtraCharts? I know a lot of us are interested in some way of improving the dpi of printed XtraCharts. The 96dpi we can get just isn't enough for anything printed.

As for dashboards we were actually in the market for something like this (upgrading our license). Although we really like the base functionality and would prefer to stick with DevExpress for everything what is holding us back is drill down functionality. Most dashboard products we have seen provide a drill down to see the underlying data in a grid or pivot or even sometimes a sub chart. I realise this is a new product but hope that is in the works.

26 March 2013
Gosha
Gosha

Guys, what about dates for 13.1?

26 March 2013
Thomas Zettl
Thomas Zettl

1+ for the XtraCharts vector printing

26 March 2013
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)

@Gosha: DXperience is still on a two-per-year release schedule, and the dates are the usual June and December. For DXTREME, we're thinking about doing more than two releases per year, but we're still discussing it.

@Peter: I'm nudging Seth Juarez, our PM for all things analytics, to see if he has any other news to impart.

Cheers, Julian

26 March 2013
Geert Depickere
Geert Depickere

Looks like a decent & bold plan, with progress being made on all platforms.

As the XAML controls share a common ground, please try your best to keep the SL components on par with their WPF counterparts. I see some planned features are marked WPF-only...

27 March 2013
Christopher Todd
Christopher Todd

Glad to see continued support for Winforms! Less templates and more controls/features! Maybe some further enhancements to XtraLayout.

27 March 2013
NHIF
NHIF

Please add GridControl for HTML5/JS .

Also show how to add login to HTML5/JS application and an example using Breeze js would be a nice one.

28 March 2013
James Zhong
James Zhong

Thanks for publishing DX Roadmap 2013.

I'm glad to know you will introduce SpreadSheet component into WinForms. Hope there will be a lightweight version of SpreadSheet in ASP.NET platform too.

However, it's very disappointed that you have no plan to introduce Ribbon control for ASP.NET platform. Your competitors had released Ribbon for ASP.NET a few years ago. Lacking Ribbon control for ASP.NET decreases XAF framework's value for business applications, because many and many comprehensive business applications need to provide many 'actions' that should be grouped into Ribbon Pages/Groups (current Web implementation in XAF is the 'standard' toolbar).

28 March 2013
Crono
Crono

I sure hope that slimming down the ever growing list of feature/bug fix requests for Winform is the top priority on this platform anyway.

Some have been reported eight years ago and still haven't got any feedback from your team.

1 April 2013
Eduardo Quintana
Eduardo Quintana

Hi,

The roadmap surely looks interesting. I just wonder when we will see the 13.1 version.

As a WinForm developer, who targets large enterprise clients, I am relieved to know that this platform will continue to be supported by DevExpress.

I would like to know if there would be any definition for the Report Server licensing and pricing. I was going to upgrade my Enterprise subscription to the Universal one to have access to the Report Server, but I was unable to understand the licensing and pricing required to install this server in my clients. Therefore, I am waiting for a definition from DevExpress on this matter.

As an attendant of the Microsoft 2013 Build conference in San Francisco, I am wondering if DevExpress will be present and if new announcements will be made there (such as version 13.1). Also wondering if there will be any DevExpress party this year, as the ones I have attended in the past conferences.

Eduardo Quintana

3 April 2013
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)

Eduardo: 13.1 will be released in June, as in previous years.

Regarding Report Server pricing and licensing, I'll get Seth Juarez to reply.

Regarding //build/ in San Francisco, it's way too early to comment what we may be doing (booth / party / etc): we only knew about the conference when everyone else did and we still have to discuss and make our plans. Some of us will be there though (we booked that part yesterday).

Cheers, Julian

3 April 2013
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)
Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)

Eduardo: On the Report Server licensing...

The Report Server is not a product you are allowed to install on behalf of another company. It is licensed as a product. With each Universal purchase the purchaser is licensed to install the server as well as 5 additional users. Should there be a need for additional users one can purchase an additional Universal License to acquire 5 more. Should the license count exceed those numbers we can certainly discuss volume licensing. This will soon change as the Report Server was always intended to be a standalone product.

Cheers, Julian

3 April 2013
Eduardo Quintana
Eduardo Quintana

Hi Julian,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Indeed, I was wandering about you plans for selling the Report Server as a standalone product, and your marketing strategy (how the product would be sold), and the timeframe for it.

I see it as another opportunity to offer new solutions to my clients. This way, I could have my clients install the Report Server, I would develop some solution for them, and they would acquire the required number of CALs. This would be an opportunity to drive more business for DevExpress and for my company.

As it is now, they would have to buy a Universal license. I thought this would not be required for a standalone product. Maybe, they would only purchase the standalone product license itself and the required extra CALs.

I don't know if this is in the DevExpress plans.

Thanks,

Eduardo Quintana

3 April 2013
Michael Thuma
Michael Thuma

One point. Concerning FireDAC support. I don't in how far you follow EMB's communication. I finally decided to move away from Delphi Enterprise because the official statement was - new FireDAC only with new latest Delphi version. This made me put things on hold and wait with renewals.

At the moment there are still back versions included in the FireDAC installer - but this is subject to change according to Marco C. If you are thinking of supporting the amazing high speed database access you already provide via the server-mode based on FireDAC too - makes perfect sense in general from a technical perspective - be aware that your users will be forced to upgrade to the latest Delphi version.

You will fairly waste lots of computing time and rely on the comp layer. At the moment there is fairly evolution in the area of DBs but this can change anytime soon.

If you  support FireDAC in fashion of simply providing a TDataset compatible add-on to the grids this point does not hurt.

For the sake of simplicity I simply use .net now.  

Agreed on anything else concerning the roadmap. Will have to check XAML controls. Question. Do you know anything about a new Windows version or a new Visual Studio and realistic release dates - better guesses than the official roadmap from MS?

6 May 2013

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