Archives 2017

Cloud Computing is reported as set to revolutionise the business environment, particularly, the way we use information technology products and services.

Could it be the next stage in outsourcing, which certainly gripped the Information technology arena in the last ten years and saw companies essentially outsourcing all their software development/IT support requirements to off shore and even on shore companies to allegedly reduce cost.

Whether these companies derived the so called cost benefits and still maintained quality is highly debatable.

Along comes Cloud Computing which essentially postulates that you can pay for IT services as a utility, on a pay as you use basis hosted in a cloud. Essentially another form of outsourcing where this time you pay a provider to either use their software applications via the Internet (Google APPS is an example) and is known as Software as a service (SaaS). Or to use their Platform as a service (PasS) to build and host your web based application (Google Engine is an example). Or to use their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which essentially allows you to pay a provider to host an image of your application negating the need for you to own your own servers, (Amazon EC2 is an example of this kind of service).

Before signing up to any of the services, it is important that a company clearly understand the costs benefits, identify and implement an entry and exit strategy or plan capturing how to move to another vendor if it becomes necessary or to bring back the service in house.

Hosting sensitive data off site must also need to be considered very carefully and the need to ensure that no regulatory requirements are breached or the customer data act is adhered to in any such implementation. Non mission critical systems are probably the best ones to consider first to be implemented in the cloud.

Test and Development Environments

Of particular interest must be the IaaS, because companies spend a significant part of their yearly IT budget (sometimes as much 30 to 40%) on purchasing new hardware to host new applications, in response to new business requirements.

The cost of maintaining such hardware can also be quite expensive from software licensing to support costs etc.

Test and Development environments which are not necessarily mission critical, (since they are not live environments), can certainly be procured on a pay as you use basis with little or minimal risk, which could significantly reduce IT spending by as much as half or a quarter.

As proven with virtualisation, building test and development environments becomes an easily repeatable process and likened to a factory floor where environments are rolled out on demand.

The same principle will apply to having your development and test environments in the Cloud using the IaaS module and the benefits are as follows;

• Test and development environments tend to be required for fixed periods of time through the lifecycle of a Project and are left idle at other times. You only pay to use these environments when you need to, which can significantly reduce IT spending.

• The effort and time required to set up test and development environments is significantly reduced, as you only need to access your server via the cloud and create your own environments. There is no need to wait for three weeks for the server to be delivered, another two weeks to be set up in the data centre etc.

• The cost of support, from setting up the server in the data centre, configuring it, installing the operating system, installing other security and monitoring software, setting it up on your LAN etc

• The effort required to decommission and re-use these test environments is also minimal.

• Since live data (de – sensitised data can be used on the other hand) is normally not used for testing or development there are no regulatory requirements to adhere to.

• Most IaaS cloud computing vendors offer 99/100% up time, back up facilities, monitoring etc which ensures that once your environments are created, you only need to focus on carrying out your development and testing.

• A company can embark on several IT Projects at any one time, because there is no longer the constraint of available hardware (or rather the need to provision more hardware) to host test and development environments.

Efficiently provisioning, building, managing and scheduling your test/development environments certainly contributes significantly to the success or failure of IT Software Projects.

Paying for your infrastructure as a service at least, eliminates the effort and cost of provisioning, installing and supporting the hardware to host your test and development environments.

Author: V.C.Waturuocha MSC – Freelance IT Environments/Infrastructure Project Manager.

Source by V.C.Waturuocha

Did you ever need to check a date before you typed and insert it into a ocument? Microsoft Word enables you to add a popup calendar in a document. Various types of calendar formats are available in Word. You can select the date and time format as per your requirement.

Let’s start with Word 2007 and 2010, to insert and configure Popup Calander in Microsoft Word without writing any code. This ActiveX control installed with all Microsoft Office versions.

The first thing to do is make sure you have the Developer tab displayed on the ribbon. You only have to do this once. If you don’t see it there, go to the Office Button in Word 2007 and click Word Options. Choose the Popular tab and select Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon.

In Word 2010, go to the File tab and click on Options. Go to the Customize Ribbon tab. In the Customize the Ribbon list under Main Tabs, select the Developer check box.

Once you have the Developer tab visible, the rest is easy. Whenever you need to insert a date and you need to look at a calendar, just place your cursor in the spot where you want it, go to the Developer tab and click theDate Picker Content Control button in the Controls group. It looks like a little blue and red calendar.

A control will appear on your document. Click the drop-down arrow on the end and a calendar will pop up. You can scroll backward and forward through the months and years, and then simply click on the date you want to enter.

In addition, if you want to change properties of the calendar or the way the date is displayed, simply click on the Date Picker Content Control button and then click on Properties to make all of your desired changes.

Click the ‘Properties‘ button in the Controls group to format the date field if you do not like the defaults. You can enter a different date format, give your field a title and a tag, and select whether you want to lock the control field, Locale to select your locale language and also Calender Type, etc.

Click ‘OK’ when you are satisfied with your choices.

Nice way to add Date and Time in your document.!!

Do not forget to comments for Popup Calander in Word and share it with coleagues help them to save time to insert interactive Date and Time.  

Source by ILYAS QASIM

Microsoft Dynamics GP is SQL Server based application, which opens its resources to SQL Server DBA. Plus you should be aware about Great Plains Dynamics initial architecture, which is Great Plains Dexterity, where first level of event viewing should occur, prior to diving to the SQL Server Performance tuning and events log depth.  In this small publication we would like to review Dexterity level of monitors:

1.       Dex.ini file.  If you got Great Plains upgrade issues, or consistent error messages coming from GP user, which do not allow you to continue normal operation, you should locate Dex.ini file in Dynamics GP (for version 10.0 in Data subfolder) and make the following changes

SQLLogSQLStmt=TRUE

SQLLogODBCMessages=TRUE

SQLLogAllODBCMessages=TRUE

If you make these changes to Dex.ini file, Great Plains User Workstation will create dexsql.log file in Dynamics GP folder.  You should come to the point of getting error message or stacking situation in GP and then just copy this file to cut the bottom of it, where it logs the problem description and in good like scenario the reasons

2.       SQL Server Book online.  Here you can find the description to SQL based error message

3.       GPS_SQL_ERROR_CODES table in Dynamics Database.  Here you can find Dynamics GP Great Plains related errors and their causes if documented in Descriptions

4.       Appealing to Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical support.  MBS tech support works by case schema, meaning that if you are current in GP annual enhancement program and you have Deluxe plus support with unlimited cases per year, you can enjoy free case-by-case support, please check your support level with your Great Plains VAR or Microsoft Business Solutions directly.  If you on budget annual enhancement program, you will have discounted price for each case and you should manage Microsoft technicians to close the case only when case is resolved to your satisfaction

5.       Getting Great Plains Technical support from your Great Plains Reseller.  Your Great Plains Partner is likely more familiar with your Great Plains implementation, customization, integration, custom reporting, data conversion and modified reports.  Opposite to Microsoft, where you pay by case, to your Great Plains consultants you typically pay by hours

Source by Andrew Karasev

SB1, which is unofficial abbreviation for SAP Business One small and mid-size business ERP from SAP is relatively new application and it was designed and programmed with the likely contemporary business models requirements. If you are planning to implement SAP B1 for ecommerce outlet, you should first work on the best scenario selection. Let us give you initial highlights, for further implementation design you should submit your specific case for analysis and recommendations:

1. eCommerce module. If you are launching everything from the ground or if you have really obsolete web site, then you may consider doing it on SB1 ecommerce platform. In this case you do not need to worry about standard ecommerce features, such as shopping cart, catalog, pricing (however if you practice advanced and seasonal price lists and promotions, some additional settings and possibly custom features might be recommended), as all these standard features will be available in integrated module

2. Established ecommerce site. In this scenario, more likely the idea of slashing existing site and redeploying everything on your new ERP platform has less feasibility. You, and your decision makers in IT will be more inclined to re-connect or remap your existing shopping cart and electronic order to your SB1 back end. In this case you will need SAP Business One SDK programming work, which is very common and you are not the first who needs it and many already took this route. Often we hear the question – doe connectors exist as of-the-shelf products? The answer is – yes and no, as the connection often involves programming touch at your e-commerce application, and so the value of the vanilla connector should be analyzed

3. Platform overview. If you are ecommerce developer, you should know that SB1 is available for Microsoft SQL Server and it opens you SQL for querying and various reporting, if you are not comfortable to invest into SDK training and learning curve. These querying techniques might be utilized for down the road integration support and advancements. For example, querying maybe feasible, if you are designing order status on-demand report for e-commerce customer self service

Source by Andrew Karasev

Patients generally judge their medical care by how quickly they can get in and out of a doctor’s office, the bedside manor of the staff and the level and accuracy of care. According to the American Medical Association, it is the office receptionist’s duty to ask patients a series of questions to help doctor’s and nurses give their patient proper care.

1. What is your full name and how is it spelled? In order to verify insurance coverage, providers require the patient’s full legal name, spelled correctly.
2. What is the purpose of the appointment? You will need to know about how much time an appointment will take. If lab work and x-rays will be required, a sufficient block of time should be reserved for that patient.
3. Do you have insurance? If so, what is the name of your provider? This information is necessary to verify that the patient has current coverage and to determine their co-pay and deductible due at the time of the visit. Check with the accounting staff to what additional information, such as the patient’s date of birth and current address, is required.
4. When did you last have a doctor’s appointment? Always verify that a patient has accurate contact and insurance information.
5. What is your age? If the patient is a minor, which parent’s insurance plan covers them and what is their contact information? How is their name spelled? Who is responsible for decisions about the child’s care and which parent will bring the child in?
6. What is your work and home phone number and what is the preferred method of contact? If your office gives confirmation calls, this information is very important. It is also useful for getting more information from the patient, such as billing information, treatment information, etc.
7. Where you referred by another doctor? If so, what is the doctor’s name and contact information? It is important to know the name and contact information of the referring physician in order to obtain the patients medical records and other information from their office.
8. Should specific results and records be brought to the office with the patient? It is very important for patients who have been referred by other doctors or who have gotten test results from other physicians to coordinate those records with your office’s records. If your offices use electronic medical records or EMR software, this is much easier.
9. Are you familiar with our office’s policies? Your physician my have special instructions for their patients, especially if your offices is that of a specialist. For example, does the patient need to fast after midnight or take or cease to take any medications?
10. Do you have any questions? It’s very helpful to both you and the patient to get any other questions out of the way before their visit. This can save time on both your parts, as well as save trouble for the physician and other medical staff.

To get information about EMR and scheduling software that makes scheduling easy go to http://www.healthtec-software.com/Fusion.htm

Source by healthtec

Most investors are looking forward to the coming year with great anticipation and there’s good reason to. The good news is that corporate profits are still rising and the bull market scenario will continue as long as earnings go higher.

If you want to learn how to do technical analysis trading than, you should only be looking at the Forex market to trade. As technical trade set ups are far more consistent on the Forex than on the stock markets.

Stock technical analysis software has been helping in the stock market. It works on every aspect of analytics and helps you in deciding about the right investment accordingly based on its picks.

Technical analysis software is a program that takes care of various aspects of technical analysis. This involves the automatic functions such as charting and analysis and other analysis in stock markets. This is a quick and more reliable way to get the analyses and to identify trends in the stock market while purchasing and selling. This ensures higher profits more quickly while making purchases. Stock technical analysis software is useful for both smaller and large companies who need lots of accurate and reliable data as well as guidance, as well for individuals investing in stock market. It is highly beneficial for those who have less experience and can benefit from guidance and advice.

Traders have limited choices when it comes to quality and accuracy in technical analysis software. Many traders use technical analysis programs for trading stocks. The stock market can result in great financial gain if done seriously. It’s essential to have a plan and a proper strategy. Using technical analysis software, even the newbie can earn a lot from the world of the stock market.

Choose the right technical analysis software can lower your vulnerability to risk with your money. The way the stock market moves on a day to day basis is only evident with the right software and the right analysis.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Knowing when Bull and Bear markets begin and end is not an issue of market timing. The earnings indicator is too slow to be used as a market timing tool. But it is a strategic issue. It defines the way you should manage your portfolio.

In a Bull market you should think about buying stocks and ETFs low and selling high. Be more aggressive in buying stocks and ETFs long and less aggressive on selling them. Buy the dips. Go bottom-fishing, i.e., get in at the first sign of an upturn, sell high, wait for another down turn and do it over again. You may also use wider Stops on your long positions. Avoid selling-short.

Do just the opposite in a Bear market. Think about selling stocks short and buying Contra ETFs at the peaks and buying-to-cover stocks and selling Contra ETFs at bounces from bottoms. Wait for the end of another upturn and do it over again. You may also use tighter Stops to cover your short positions on stocks and close Contra ETFS positions. Avoid buying stocks long to open.

If you want to learn about stock technical analysis software and stock analysis, than check out – : http://stockchartingsoftware.wordpress.com for more tips and information.

Source by Chris Fox

Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 is current at this time, December 2008.  If you are planning GP version update from earlier versions, such as 9.0, 8.0, 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 or from Great Plains Select on Pervasive SQL or Ctree, then you may read this orientation paper.  It is intended primarily to IT departments and not to Dynamics GP professional consultants (as consultants have access to Technical Knowledge base through their GP Partner Source).  If you are IT support technician and you was chosen to lead Great Plains upgrade project, first recommendation is to get access to Dynamics GP Customer Source.  If you are not sure how to accomplish this task, please contact your Great Plains VAR/Reseller, call Microsoft directly or call our office.  Please, read these highlights:

1.       Upgrade path.  If you are on Great Plains version, earlier than 8.0, then you cannot upgrade in one step and you need to develop your understanding on the upgrade path.  For example, if you are on version 7.5, consider either upgrading to 8.0 and then go to 10.0 or upgrading to 9.0 and then go to 10.0.  If you are on archaic versions: 6.0 and earlier, please get support from professional Great Plains consultant

2.       Upgrading to 10.0.  Here, please note this very important message – this upgrade is service pack sensitive.  For example, if you are on GP 9.0, then Service Pack 2 is required (or higher, you can apply 9.0 SP 4 at this time).  If you are on GP 8.0, then SP 5 is required.  Also, you cannot just use GP 10.0 CD to do the job.  Great Plains 10.0 SP 1 is required (SP 3 or 2 are better options in our opinion).  As we got multiple upgrades under our belt, we feel the need to share with you User Security import issues, attributable to Great Plains 10.0 Service Pack 1, so consider SP3 or SP2

3.       Migration from Ctree or Btrieve/Pervasive SQL.  Dynamics GP has special migration tool, which will move your Pervasive or Ctree data to Microsoft SQL Server

4.       Great Plains Registration Key.  Key is required, and it is in direct relation to your status in Dynamics GP annual enhancement program.  If you lapsed in this program, you likely do not have access to new GP version key.  If this is your case, please contact your Great Plains VAR to get information on reenrollment

5.       FRx, ReportWriter, Dexterity customization, eConnect application, Integration Manager Integrations, VBA/Modifier, GP ISV Add-Ons, Crystal Reports upgrade.  Please, try to identify these modifications to your Great Plains ERP installation and include them in the plan

Source by Andrew Karasev

With the introduction of eConnect, such tools as Dynamics GP Integration Manager, being moved to eConnect platform opened the door for you, Great Plains Programmer or Technical Consultant to really advanced, large and complicated data migrations and conversions.  The techniques, described in this article were actually available for old Integration Manager connectors, however they were not practical, until eConnect virtually resolved integration speed and performance.  With eConnect integrations you can move up to ten transactions per second, as eConnect is calling encrypted SQL Stored Procedures, comparing to validating GP logic in OLE driven Great Plains Dexterity forms in old versions of IM.  Let’s consider scenario, when you have to convert the whole year of GL records for large company with several thousand transactions per week.  Here is what you do:

1.       Export data in tab or comma delimited text format and import it into Microsoft SQL Server in the form of staging tables.  Then massage the data in the tables: remove quote marks, for example, where you have Debit and Credit fields.  Next step – consider creating SQL views, which will be the base for Advanced ODBC queries in the next paragraph

2.       Advanced ODBC queries, based on SQL ODBC driver.  You can use Dynamics GP DSN for elegancy.  If you already tried to group, aggregate data in ODBC queries, based on Text Driver, you probably had very disappointing experience.  You should be surprised – in the case of Dynamics GP DSN you do not see those annoying error messages, attributed to poor Text Driver

3.       GL Header Source.  Select transaction number only, plus alternatively use MAX construction to add Transaction date and group by transaction number

4.       GL Lines Source.  Simply use select star statement from your SQL view.  Then link two sources by transaction number field and potentially preview both sources to be sure you are on the right side of the road

5.       Save and Run Integration.  Please, note here, that eConnect integration connector doesn’t require you to close all GP windows (as you remember OLE connector required).  If you are moving huge volume of transactions, you can look at them showing up in GP while integration is in progress

6.       Now you should be at the point, where IM helps you do what you were doing in the past with low level insert scripts and obviously were fighting with data integrity.  As you know IM validates business logic and doesn’t let inconsistent records move in

Source by Andrew Karasev

Adding custom fonts to your website has for a time been very difficult. You get you site looking pretty and then upload it to the server and low and behold it looks great on your PC but looks absolutely terrible on everyone elses. The reason for this is that every one only has a few core fonts in common and if you add non-core fonts to your site those without them cant see them.

Now it has changed it’s much easier to add custom fonts to your webpages with cufon. Cufon is a javascript that replaces default fonts with the font stored in a javascript file and its included with the theme so everyone can see them.

The plugin for wordpress can be found in the wordpress.org/extend achieves called wp-cufon. Just upload the plugin to your plugins folder and create a fonts folder in the plugins folder  wp-content/plugins/fonts. The fonts folder is where you can upload your custom fonts to.

Your fonts will need to be changed into a format recognized by cufon to use. Thankfully there is an online utility that will do that for you. Cufon font utility. Currently only TrueType (TTF), OpenType (OTF), Printer Font Binary (PFB) and PostScript fonts are supported for conversion. Make sure that you use royalty free fonts or that you have the right to use it. The page for the conversion is very self explanatory.

I normally tick the following boxes.

Uppercase Lowercase Numerals Punctuation WordPress punctuation Basic Latin

and add my website address in the security area to limit where the fonts can be used and leave the rest as are and press the Lets do this button.

Save the file and upload it to the wp-content/plugins/fonts folder on your server. Open the plugin settings page on your wordpress installation http://YOURDOMAIN/wp-admin/themes.php?page=wp-cufon.php or go to plugins and in the plugin activation area there is a link beside the plugin to that page.

When using the wp-cufon plugin the font should be showing in the Your Fonts area of the settings page.The font name is usually the first word of the file name but if for some reason it doesn’t work when you implement the replacements below, you can check the name by opening the yourfont.js file that you uploaded to the wp-content/plugins/fonts folder. Just search for something like this near the top or on the first line

cufon.registerFont({“w”:205,”face”:{“font-family”:”Vegur Bold“, …

the bold part here is the font name.

To change the fonts all you need to do now it add code to the Please enter your source for the replacements: text box and save.

A quick cufon example image

In this example I have used the font called ADVENTURE to replace the logo text and all <h2> formatted text. The command

Cufon.replace(‘h2,#header #logo’, { fontFamily: ‘Adventure’ });

could also have been used to group the two pieces together. On the settings page are a number of examples of how to change part or all of your text to certain fonts. You can use firefox firebug plugin to find the id’s or classes of the .css elements to change or look in you themes style.css file.

Source by Collaborate

Three years ago there were few products on the market that could support remote access for 3D graphics and deliver 3D application remotely. The few that were on the market required at least 5Mbps and latencies below 75 milliseconds. We wanted to build a product that provided a usable experience with 2Mpbs of bandwidth and tolerate up to 150ms round trip latency. We wanted to create the best 3D virtualization platform. We feel that this product has now been created- XenDesktop 4- a breakthrough desktop virtualization platform for 3D graphics.

3D graphical applications like CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER, Autodesk, etc. are used daily by CAD/CAM designers in the manufacturing sector. Research scientists use 3D graphical application for oil exploration in oil and natural gas companies. These are computationally challenging applications that need high end GPUs (graphical processing units) manufactured by companies like nVIDI and AMD. These applications often require the most advanced workstations- fastest possible CPU and GPU and the largest amount of memory.

3D applications are difficult to virtualize because performance is key in these applications. The CPU-GPU interaction has been designed to optimally deliver the highest number of frames per second (fps). Any software that is inserted in the middle can reduce the fps delivered to the user and cause a poor user experience. For example, for some complex models with hundreds of thousands of rendering triangles the workstation may create 2-3 frames per second. If the virtualization platform reduces the display rate to 1-2 fps, the difference is perceptible, and the end user will not want to use the application.

In XenDesktop 4, the latency tolerance optimization has been extended that what is already presented in the HDX technology and has added a few new compression algorithms, including some that use the GPU itself to do compression. The result is a 3D virtualization platform that meets the market requirements and delivers the best possible user experience. On the LAN, our solution can perform even better than locally installed application, because server side GPUs can be more powerful than desktop GPUs. On the WAN there is no other solution that can deliver a usable experience at 2Mbps with 150 ms round trip latency.

You will see this technology platform bear fruit in other areas that affect larger number of users. The new Microsoft OS-Windows 7- leverages the GPS to deliver cool 3D graphical user interfaces. Our experience with high-end 3D graphics will help us effectively solve these problems for millions of users as they migrate to Windows 7. Stay tuned!

Source by Victor Thu