Alpha Software is a long-established player in end-user databases, and its Alpha Five Version 6 ($349 per seat, $699 per Web server) leapfrogs over its immediate competitors in terms of Web support. Though it's not perfect, this very flexible solution wins points for excellent wizardry in a well-designed and approachable relational database solution.

Alpha Five installs both a standalone database platform and a Web application server. It runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 on the server, and Windows 98 and later for clients. Setup was effortless, and we were up and running in minutes. Alpha Five reminds us of Microsoft Access, with its tab-based console grouping of tables, forms, and other objects. Alpha Five has wizards (called genies) for tackling most database tasks. In testing, we had no trouble creating several databases from scratch and setting up joins between tables. Wizards sped up connecting and importing data from Oracle (via OBDC) and text files.

The tool also lets you build macros by using its Action Script feature. Behind the scenes, Alpha Five relies on a proprietary, object-oriented version of Basic, called Xbasic, with hundreds of functions. For standalone applications, Alpha Five offers a strong WYSIWYG form editor, which let us design forms and then add Xbasic script to respond to events like button clicks.

New support for building Web applications really shines. First, Alpha Five offers a Web projects control panel for managing Web apps and server configuration. For creating HTML interfaces by hand, Alpha Five is a mixed bag. It lets you add standard HTML form controls as well as tables in a WYSIWYG fashion, but we found a few quirks, such as no support for resizing table columns and a missing Undo function. The environment also does not manage open files very well, so you may end up saving an older version of an edited file and losing your changes. We did like the pop-up help for writing embedded Xbasic code within HTML, and a capable debugger lets you step through your code.

On the plus side, Alpha Five offers some truly impressive wizards for building very professional-looking HTML interfaces against data tables. A grid-builder tool lets you choose data fields, text labels, and the overall look and feel (through CSS); it then automatically generates Xbasic code and HTML. Advanced support for search screens, dialog boxes, and linking grid data to detail views of single records comes standard.

Alpha 5 does well in getting programming-averse users started out of the box, though in this regard FileMaker Pro 7 is still the most approachable solution. But Alpha 5 includes Web support; with FileMaker, you need to purchase FileMaker Pro Server to support Web applications. Compared with Access, Alpha 5, too, has a very mature development language for those users who want to do more with workgroup databases. Access 2003 offers an industry-standard language (Visual Basic .NET) which means a lot more developers can use it without retraining. Alpha 5's XBasic language is proprietary. Both tools will require you to write separate Web-based versions of database programs, but Alpha 5's wizards can jump-start Web efforts, even for non-experts. (Learning ASP.NET with Access can be daunting for newcomers.)

Overall, Alpha Five continues a tradition of being a capable, easy-to-use database. For workgroups or organizations that want to build database front ends on the Web, the new version brings powerful wizardry to the task, all without involving traditional IT.