With apologies to FoxNews and Bill O'Reilly for the title of this review, I hope this will be both fair and balanced - although I must admit I have a certain bias towards SoftVelocity's Clarion.  

I have written applications for several years now.  Earliest efforts were with dBase III + and then Clipper back in the "DOS" days.  Later, like many of you, I used Microsoft's Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro and Borland's Delphi.  In fact, I used VB 4, 5 and 6 but have so far said "Nyet!" to .NET.  However, after I discovered Clarion around version 2.003 some years ago, I have had a hard time finding a program I like as much as I do Clarion.  Ownership (and the web site)  has changed at least a couple of times, but currently you can find more about Clarion at http://www.softvelocity.com and I encourage you to do that just as soon as you can!  The latest version of Clarion 6 will soon be released and I think you find it difficult to find a better way to quickly create, fast, multi user ready, intuitive, yet sophisticated, database applications.  

I can't recall how many times someone has used one of my Clarion-developed applications and loved the interface and said "What's it written in?".  When I answer Clarion I almost always get a puzzled look and the next question is "what's that?"  No, it's not a car radio we are talking about.  The SoftVelocity web site puts it like this:

 "The Clarion development paradigm provides dramatically faster, and easier application development... from prototyping to deployment of a production system, and ongoing application maintenance.

Clarion employs breakthrough, template driven technology to create sophisticated database-driven applications. Clarion is designed to help developers ensure standards, reduce coding time, eliminate errors, and bring their projects to completion in record time."

My answer is usually "The fastest way to develop, a fast, stable, multi-user application with the smallest install size you have ever seen".  The balanced part of the review comes later :-)

(I have posted a very simple demo application.  Similar to the database used for the web application on line demonstrations of two other programs reviewed on this site.) 

Developing an application in Clarion starts with a Data Dictionary which is where you define the database tables and field structure and validity checking.  In addition to their own proprietary .tps file format, Clarion supplies native database drivers for a variety of file types, as well as ODBC support, and with the pending release of Clarion 6, ADO support as well.  After designing your database structure, either for a new database or one imported into the dictionary editor, wizards let you quickly create the Browse and Update Forms the application will use as well as Reports, or use the Application Wizard to quickly create a complete database application based on your dictionary.

Things change as you are developing an application.  Client requirements are seldom set in stone, but are more like a moving target.  No problem with Clarion. Modify your dictionary and then just click a button to synchronize the screens and reports.  You can also set the Application you are developing to automatically sync whenever you reopen the application.

Now, I said this would be balanced and I don't love everything about Clarion so here's a few "nits".  The proprietary file format I mentioned earlier is just that - proprietary.  Yes, SoftVelocity sells an ODBC driver but this adds cost to your Clarion developed application.  I would much prefer to see the ODBC driver freely available to include with your application.  This would allow your end users to use their favorite report writer with you apps.  Yes, there is a Report Writer available for purchase from SoftVelocity that would not require the ODBC driver but to be "fair"  don't find it to be all that powerful, although it is easy enough to use.  The ability to output a report to another file format, such as an .RTF, .HTML, or PDF file will be included in the Enterprise Edition of Clarion 6 when released and may also be available as a separate purchase for users of the Professional Edition. 

An additional "nit" is that Clarion, in my opinion, does not easily support the use of ActiveX controls.  There are a wide variety of these controls available but they don't seem to work too well, or easily, in a Clarion application.  On the up side, Clarion provides for the easy incorporation of "Templates" and is really template driven.  For this reason, there is a huge variety of third party products available for Clarion and they allow for greatly enhancing any Clarion application.  They are also for the most part very moderately priced.  DeveloperReviewed.com will soon review a number of these third party applications written for Clarion.