News

EDI Error Checking - July 2009

A client contacted me because they were spending too much time checking for user errors from an Atlas EDI interface. They receive approximate 500 orders per week from each public house owned by a major chain. An equal number of advanced shipping notes are sent prior to shipping. Upon delivery of the goods each client pub edits the ASN and returns it via their head office as a goods receipt note. From this GRN an invoice is generated. Problems arise because the GRN is not always returned, or the GRN has data lines missing, resulting in lost revenue.

I was able to write a bespoke Access program that can automatically checked each line of each order in a matter of minutes.

Joomla - November 2009

Recently I have taken over support for a website built using Joomla. This is my first exposure to Joomla and my overall impressions are that it is a pretty mixed bag. Yes you get a lot of features for free, but editing page content to the standard I am used to in Dreamweaver is not easy and much more cumbersome. Moving items around in the menu was a real pain and I found it easier to update the underlying database directly.

The complex nature of any CMS with sufficient power will require a lot specialised knowledge to produce a really profession looking website.

I have developed a number of websites with Dreamweaver and Contribute. Whilst not perfect (particularly Contribute is slow as it creates a lot of ftp traffic, copying and locking many files referenced by a page when you edit) I feel it may be a better option.

IE 9 Browser Development

Interesting article on the future improvements in IE version 9:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx

The following chart (taken from blogs.msdn.com) compares browser script performance.

Browser Script Comparission

Also interesting is the discusion of how different pages require very different processing eg scripts or graphics rendering.

How to Charge for Bespoke Software

- Advice for someone starting out

Estimating is a very imprecise business.

Software usually takes far long than you think, unless you have been doing something similar.

It is a mater of striking a balance between paying for your time and what the customer will pay and there what values the software will deliver to them.

Pay close attention to areas of uncertainity, either in terms of specification or how the solutionwill be delivered.

Interactions with other software, other organisations try to be precise and to the limit of responsibility.

Access 2007 with SQL Server

There are 2 ways in Access 2007 to use SQL Server data:

- Linking

- Access Data Projects (ADPs).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178973.aspx states:

"The preferred way to connect to SQL Server is MDB file format or ACCDB file format. This enables you to use the full flexibility of local tables and local queries, while leveraging the full power of SQL Server. In addition, MDB and ACCDB files link to multiple SQL Server computers and a wide variety of other data sources. Office Access 2007 contains many new features that are available in both MDB and ACCDB file formats, but only a subset of those features are available in ADPs."

The file format for ADP created with Access 2007 is still Access 2003.

ADP files do allow direct design changes to SQL Server objects via graphical designers for tables, views, stored procedures, and database diagrams. ADP does not support SQL Server 2008 updates as it was realeased later.

When working with Linked Tables you must use the SQL Server Enterprise Manager included in to make changes.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb188204(SQL.90).aspx is an indepth discussion of issues arround using linked SQL data.

To get the adp to see the SQL server need to enable the TCP protocol via the SQL Server 2008 Configuration Manager.

Differences with SQL Server 2008 Express from 2005

Surface Config Tool is removed

The Server Agent cannot be started even though it is installed.

Testing SQL Server 2008 Express with Access 2007 Linked Tables

Created 4,000,000 records (15 fields, non trivial data) 850 Mb Data file. 2000 records created for each day, going backing 2000 days. Running the query in Access via a linked table:

SELECT Sum(dbo_job.totalSale) AS SumOftotalSale, dbo_job.date1
FROM dbo_job
GROUP BY dbo_job.date1;

Took about 2-3 seconds.

Created a huge log file 1.7Gb. Running the script:

use gpt
dbcc shrinkfile (gpt_log, 1)

Takes size back to 1 Mb.