My top 5 of GeneXus X Evolution 1

GeneXus X Evolution 1, the new version of GeneXus released a few months ago has many new features, but in this post I would like to summarize them from my point of view, making an overview of the top 5 characteristics and/or features available in this new version.

1) Extensibility: User Controls and GXextensions

In addition to the standard controls provided by GeneXus, you can create your own custom controls! This helps you to build rich, powerful and interactive web applications, giving you the possibility to integrate any control you may need and use it as you use any standard control.

On the other hand, GXextensions gives you the possibility to add packages to GeneXus since GeneXus development environment is an extensible IDE. Patterns for instance are implemented as GXextensions but you can also implement your own extensions like defining new object types, add part to existing objects, define new properties for any object type, add your own menu options and more...

2) Team Development: GeneXus Server.

GeneXus Server is a new product that makes team development easier. The knowledge base can now be centralized by using GeneXus Server, even if its members are in different geographic locations.

Besides, I would also like to mention a new feature that makes a quite complicated task like application customization easier than ever, Change Defender. This new technology helps you to propagate the changes of your Knowledge Base and then import changes done by your customers without loosing any changes you may have made to the Knowledge Base.

3) Developer Experience: A new IDE, integrated debugger and more...

GeneXus provides a new, intuitive, powerful and focused on usability IDE that enhances the developer experience. It also has now a fully integrated debugger, just switch from Release to Debug mode and you are ready to set your breakpoints and start debugging your code. In addition GXflow and GXquery are now fully integrated in the IDE.

4) Enterprise Level Applications:

Full web 2.0, a visualization library based on Google Visualization is available among other extended controls like GXchart, MediaPlayer, QueryViewer, Scheduler and more... Performance optimization in many areas like web and ajax, business logic, http traffic compression, etc...

5) Testing: GXtest

Testing has been an important part within the application development cycle and this new product distributed exclusively by Artech gives you the possibility to automate your tests in a very easy way.

Bonus Track: Completeness! Not only web generators but also GUI (Java, .NET, VFP), Text (RPG, Cobol) and Mobile generators have been added.

I hope that this brief summary gives you an idea of the great new features available in GeneXus X Evolution 1. Now you just need to download it from here in order to convert your current applications or create new ones taking advantage of them.