Ben,
I didn't know that a two-day advanced training session in Columbus, OH last week, would get you to write such a wonderful summary on R:BASE 7.5 for Windows.
Yes, I had to get a few extra hours of sleep since I have been back from Columbus <g>.
You forgot to mention that I had more fun than all of you in that class.
Hope you all enjoyed the jump start on R:BASE 7.5 for Windows!
Very Best R:egards,
Razzak.
At 03:07 PM 4/22/2005, Ben Fogt wrote:
I'm working on a document for our company to explain why we need to get all of our internal products up to version 7.x of R:Base and why version 7.5 has value over 7.1, even with the added licensing costs. This is the part that deals with R:Base 7.5 in particular.
I plan to make some examples of what we can do with 7.5 that is so much better than in 7.1, but it's been a busy week. If you haven't seen sub-reports and Report EEPs or the new form controls, get yourself to a class or at least get a 7.5 license for yourself. I'll try to make up some samples and blog them next week. Right now I need to head up toward Mike Byerly's part of the world.
Without further delay, the tail of my recommendation:
As our business grows we need to make sure that our internal systems are 1) Easy to learn and use, 2) solid, requiring very little maintenance and revision, 3) doing as much decisioning as possible and 4) providing the most bang for the resources used.
Migrating to the R:Base 7.5 platform will provide us with tools that will help make our applications easier to use than they are now. Currently, we use a second sign-on procedure to access important applications. There are some applications where password protection was not included at the start and the job of integrating security is not envied. With 7.5, we'll be able to utilize the Windows login ID and hopefully group permissions to determine the access level that a user will have in these critical applications. The side benefit is that we will also remove the required sign on procedure in some of our current applications.
7.5 also gives us R:Themes which can allow us to customize colors and screen sizes to fit the needs of our employees. With an age range frequently between 19 and 70, all types of eye conditions need to be considered. Instead of choosing something only slightly uncomfortable for everyone, we can tune our schemes to best fit the individual's needs.
Beyond our own use of the systems, we will be able to print reports that have exactly the information a client needs to know. Subreporting will allow us to combine data from different areas of our databases in one report. No longer will a client get three reports that they then need to reconcile against each other for the whole view of their account with us. Being able to execute programs on detail and break levels will help us to highlight exactly the things that a customer needs to see.
All of this will help to reduce the overall drain on our resources.
The updates to the R:Base engine through different stages of version 7 have been notable. Programs that we have migrated from 6.5++ for DOS now execute in a fraction of the time on the same systems. Since our update to version 7 on many critical and high volume transaction processes, we have yet to need to repair our structure files or recover from a backup. This was a common occurrence in the past. Moving everything onto the latest platform will help prevent critical errors in our database that could devastate our business for weeks.
Moving to version 7.5 also acts as a bridge to migrate to version 8 and lose the limits that remain from the DOS days. As we seem to bump up against the 2 Gb limit on an annual basis, we could benefit from that migration in the future to prevent an unexpected mid-day crisis.
With all of the form level controls available in R:Base 7.5, we can now let the program help guide employees to the functions they need. An example from our current applications is my help menu in our ACH Processing program. Clicking a Help button opens all of the groups needed to execute the operation in the help text. Adding to that, with 7.5, we can summon more objects, change more colors, and lock more areas away than before. Giving our employees fewer options and making the programs more streamlined on the fly will help us get fewer processes wrong, but also get them completed quicker and with more consistency. By implementing these tools, we will have the full power of our applications in the hands of all of our users and no longer need to queue up special requests to managers or IT "dudes" because these tasks are complicated and easy to goof up.
The last reason for updating to 7.5 is that we'll be able to concentrate our resources in a central area. Right now, supporting disparate systems, we need to take hours to determine what needs to be changed in an existing system. I have spent countless days going through DOS code to figure out which menu executes which submenu and finally which form to print which report. By moving everything into one platform, we'll be able to see these pieces much clearer. We will also be running software much faster and geared to the speeds our workstations currently run. We won't take as much time to teach our systems to new hires and as a result will have fewer questions to answer down the road. By upgrading we will be able to reduce some of the effort that our company expends just trying to keep us running.
This is why we need to move forward with migrating everything to R:Base 7.5.
