This issue of the BASIS Advantage delivers a compilation of articles that preview the future of our products and recaps the myriad of enhancements made in 2003. Throughout the last year, BASIS provided many new language features, an enhanced development environment, and introduced more streamlined sales policies. Each of these improvements empowers customers to modify, develop, and sell their applications quicker and easier than ever before.

This edition includes articles about the new visual and databound controls and the new record set and form printing objects. Other articles cover BASIS file viewing, data dictionary creation, and the BASIS IDE's newly integrated file and data dictionary maintenance features. To facilitate sales and marketing of BASIS products, this magazine presents an article on b-commerceTM and a briefing on the reseller's road shows that introduces new sales policies. Also included are articles covering training, technical support questions, and a customer profile showcasing the introduction of BBj® into a legacy application exploiting its mobile computing capabilities. Overall, this edition provides a wealth of helpful information for BASIS developers, resellers, and end-users alike.

Rapidly advancing technology places increasing demands on the BASIS development community to modify their applications to accommodate these demands. The new INPUTD date control simplifies the integration of date fields into applications by reducing the amount of code previously required and by offering a built-in graphical calendar for accurate date picking. Similarly, the new databound feature, added to most visual controls, reduces the code necessary to develop a databound graphical application. By using GUIBuilder® and ResBuilder®, developers can now create a working prototype without writing a single line of code.

For those who need finer granularity and control of their databound controls, BASIS gives programmers access to the BBjRecordSet object. This new object supplies developers with the methods necessary to create comprehensive and complex data centric graphical and character user interfaces. Over the years, BASIS received many requests for greater functionality to create printed forms. To answer that request, BASIS now offers a new Form Printing object that enables the creation of printed forms using a comprehensive set of form construction methods. See the power of this new functionality in Jason Foutz's article on the new Form Printing Object.

In keeping with the empowerment theme, the sales and marketing articles in this magazine lay out a road map that puts resellers in control of their product pricing and discount structures. Because advancing technology throughout the world changed customer delivery expectations, customers now expect 7x24 access to on-demand purchasing capabilities. The b-commerce article shows how BASIS facilitates this demand and how easily customers can acquire BASIS products and licenses online.

This issue of the BASIS International Advantage magazine contains articles previewing features and enhancements available in BBj 4.0 that are subject to change. All product and policy enhancements occur as a result of dynamic interaction with our customer base. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming to info@basis.com. BASIS's goal is continuous improvement and great ideas from the BASIS community are what make this possible!

Dr. Kevin King, DM Chief Information Officer