Featured Article
Asckey Web Hosting
is going from strength to strength, with increased interest in both Electos web sites, particularly the new shop features, and web application hosting.
Our main story focuses on data synchronization that is proving extremely effective, and attracting new interest almost month by month.
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 Welcome to our new format email newsletter. As you can see we have changed from our previous "Go get it if you want it" style to something we hope will be much more immediately informative.
Our intention is that e-News from Asckey will provide highly informative news views and comments showing how our range of products and services can be used to provide genuine improvements to the businesses of our customers.
If you have any interesting stories relating to Asckey products, like the one on Data Synchronization, we would be very happy to hear from you.
See the menu on the left for further information on this edition's contents.
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Data Synchronization
Still using faxes and emails to communicate between different branches of a business? Exciting news from VDF Developer Martin Kelley of DM Software about two new synchronization applications that provide selective, virtually real time automated update of application data over an Internet connection.
In one case, the 100 shops of the Jonathan James retail shoe chain synchronize and back up their cash till transactions to a central stock and ordering database. Each till can function whether on or off-line, resynchronizing automatically after any communication breaks and even rebuilding the complete local database automatically if a cash till needs to be replaced.
Antony Kilford, Systems Manager for Broughton Brothers, the parent company says "Before we had Martin Kelley's system, our data exchanges with shops were time consuming and needed technically aware staff, being based on manual, dial up communications, and only once a day. Now, it is completely automatic, and much closer to real time, with every shop exchanging data hourly, with no operator intervention. This has made our management much more efficient, and the staff are much happier not having to manage the manual updating system"
 In the second Fimex Ltd, a Socks and Nightwear distributor in the UK with a manufacturing operation in Turkey exchanges detailed order records that track the process from order inception in the UK, through manufacture of the goods to despatch and then confirmation of goods arrival at the UK warehouse.
Adrian Dobbs, Fimex's IT manager says "We used to coordinate orders and production instructions via e-mails, with couriered documents taking 6-8 days when needed. Now, we are effectively running one production management system between two offices thousands of miles apart, with virtually instant update, and all we need is an Internet connection at each end. The system has never lost a transaction, and because the ordering software validates the creation of orders, all the problems of misinterpreted e-mails that used to arise have disappeared. We are now intending to bring a second manufacturing site onto the system, this time in China."
In both cases, the ability to operate off-line and to generally be able to ignore occasional Internet related communication problems with automatic re-synchronization has been a big bonus. The selective nature of the transactions that are synchronized is also highly significant, especially where two departments or even, as in the second case, independent businesses are involved, making this solution rather different to either using a single common database, or batch synchronizing off-line.
With the Internet making such business to business communications possible, DM Software's web services based synchronization solution combined with Asckey Data Services Ltd internet application hosting takes this from "possible" to highly practicable.
DM Software now has two more similar implementations in the pipeline, confirming a growing interest in this kind of facility.
See here for the full story.
Contact us if you could use a similar solution.
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 Visual DataFlex applications set for a big face lift.The major Synergy conference of Visual Dataflex Developers held in Miami in May foreshadowed the potential for a big change in the look of Visual DataFlex Applications. VDF has always been a top class tool for producing complex bespoke business systems, but it has rather concentrated on "works good" rather than "looks good". The up-coming v12.1 release looks set to allow developers to make big differences in application look and feel for relatively little developmental effort. In fact, the techies will tell you "for only two lines of code" but probably a little more will be involved in really putting the new CodeJock derived capabilities into use. But the potential for a big step forward really is there. Click here for a screen shot of what is possible, and this link takes you to more details if interested. (If the screen shot looks blurred initially, allow time to download then expand to full size.)
Web applications get a big boost in v12.2 with the Ajax framework implementation release. "Ajax" is a collection of tools and techniques that between them will make Web applications nearly as interactive as Windows® ones, and is a hot topic in developmental circles. It involves rather more development effort than making Windows® applications look pretty, but it definitely brings a step change in what web applications are capable of and how they will look.
All in all a busy time ahead for VDF developers, and a really good time to think about bringing older systems up to date - or looking at new requirements.
If you are interested in the full story, including "Before" and "After" pictures, see here.
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Electos - now includes Web Shop facilities
The new Electos v3 provides a good web shop implementation, but how good we had not realised. Our first web shop implementation is now well under way, and our client can't wait for the better facilities that Electos provides to go live.
When we looked at their existing shop, we initially thought that it was "not bad at all", if perhaps a bit "busy", with rather a lot of material on each page. And the catalogue was perhaps a bit disconnected.
We found out why!
Beware low cost limitations
Typical of a low cost web shop, the web site was severely limited in the number of pages it allowed, and the menu system was purely one-dimensional. This made it very difficult to build a well structured site that users would find easy to move around in, with sensibly sized pages.
And, the catalogue had no shopping cart! You could buy, but only one item at a time!
Electos - No Page Limits, no catalogue Limits!
In contrast, Electos provides an unlimited number of web pages, catalogue items and levels of site organisation. The new site is going to give a much better visitor experience.
Electos's catalogue of course allows for multiple purchases. What shop keeper would throw you out after you had bought one item?!
More on this in the next issue (we hope!) Meantime, if you are looking for a web shop, or a better web shop, Electos has a lot going for it. Try this for an example
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 Asckey Hosted ERIC Application Sails Through The End of Year Peak
The end of April always sees Asckey Data Services Ltd technical staff poring over the stats as the ERIC data collection system hits its annual peak of traffic, with 7,000 users from approximately 400 NHS Trusts all making last minute additions to their annual return. This year it included new features such as multi-year data validation which has considerably increased the server workload from the earlier validation which allows more intelligent cross checking.
As a result, every year sees a re-assessment of the server capacity in the light of the current year's data entry workload and a great deal of interest in server performance as the crunch day approaches.
On deadline day - no problem! With a total of five servers running, ERIC sailed through. Changes to the ERIC application and increasing the server memory meant that user experience remained barely affected, despite the workload.
ERIC is powered by the Visual Dataflex Web Application Server engine, which handles all the data collection and validation. It has given us five years of solid services handling an ever growing database and an increasingly complex application.
Do you need high quality web applications? Talk to us!
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That's all for now
We hope that you have found this first edition interesting and will look forward to similar e-News in the future 
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