Step 2) Introduction to 4th Dimension

Prerequisites
Summary
The Big Picture
Learning Resources

Prerequisites

Basic familiarity with databases, and database development environments.

Summary

4th Dimension is a relational database development environment with integrated web server designed to allow developers to create solutions for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Featuring a modern development environment, with all the necessary tools required to create professional, efficient and powerful business applications which focus on managing data.

4th Dimension is for users and developers seeking a mature, robust, and flexible environment for creating professional database applications which can be deployed as either single user, or multi-user solutions on Windows and/or Macintosh operating systems.

4th Dimension is available in either Standard or Developer Editions. The following chart describes the differences between the two editions.

	Standard Edition	Developer Edition
4th Dimension/4D Server	•	•
4D Backup	•	•
4D Compiler		•
4D Insider		•
4D View		•
4D Write		•
4D Draw		•
4D Open Suite		•
4D for OCI		•
4D ODBC		•

Standard Edition includes the base version of either 4D Standalone (single user) or 4D Server (2 user). Additional 1-User, 5-User, 10-User, and 20-User licenses are available for 4D Server. Developer Edition includes additional tools and utilities to aid in the development of truly professional database solutions. 4th Dimensions extensible plug-in architecture allows additional functionality to be added to the base application to add powerful new capabilities to the development environment and your finished applications. The basic Developer Edition comes with a 2 User license for all the plug-ins.

A variety of Deployment Options are available for deploying and distributing your applications based on your specific requirements.

All versions of 4th Dimension 2003 come with the ability to act as a full-featured Web services client which utilizes the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to facilitate application to application integration, regardless of the SOAP server's development platform.

With the optional Web Extension License, 4th Dimension's built-in Web server can be used to serve both static and dynamic web pages with content from your database application, as well as act as a full featured SOAP server, opening up your applications to wealth of new possibilities.

The Big Picture

Unlike most traditional development environments, 4th Dimension includes tools to create your solution and use your solution in one unified application. To achieve this, 4th Dimension provides three environments; Design, User, and Custom Menus. The Design environment is where you define your database schema, create screens, design reports, create methods to control your application, edit password access and much more. The User Environment is a pre-built interface for allowing access to the tables you've defined, and the Custom Menu environment is available for you to completely control the user experience according to your own design requirements.
The next section introduces the Design Environment's Structure editor and explains how to create tables and fields in 4th Dimension.