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Access Able Help Desk Pro Edition

By: Dennis Baggott and Sons
Platform: Win2000, WinXP
Access Able Help Desk Pro Edition features an easy to use and attractive windows based interface as well as .asp and .html pages for quickly recording, updating or searching data via browser. The GUI in this version has been enhanced to make data entry even faster. This version now uses SMTP for emailing from the windows app - no longer relying on a particular email client to be installed The wide variety of reports include graphical and analytical reports to see where most of your support issues are coming from. The reports can also be easily exported to a variety of file formats and emailed to upper management. The browser interface requires Microsoft PWS or IIS There are still no additional per user charges for either the windows interface, email module, or browser based interface. All are included in the site license price. An Open Report menu option let's you access either your own reports created with Crystal Reports 9.0 or custom reports designed for you by the developer.

Creating Graphical Reports

Part one of article:

By: Frahan Zia

Some of the power that Microsoft .NET provides to accomplish converting business data into reports using Crystal Reports.

Editor's Note: This article's code has been updated to work with the final release of the .Net framework.

Reports are an integral part of many applications. Business activities like monthly sales, collected receivables, etc., are usually presented in reports. All to the good, then, if the reports can be presented in a graphical format - graphs allow us to take in data more quickly and spot trends more easily. In this article, we will take a simple but fully functional example of a business web application to create the scenario for displaying such reports. Our application will be a 3-tier model. We will be using ASP.NET with C# code behind pages to accomplish our task, with a Visual Basic .NET middle tier component and SQL

XML Data Type

Author: S.Y.M. Wong-A-Ton

Publsihed: 10 January 2007

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 introduced a new data type, the XML data type. Now you can associate an XML schema with XML table columns to force them to adhere to constraints defined within the specified schema. Such XML table columns are ideal to save InfoPath forms in, since InfoPath forms are based on XML schemas and have XML data as output.
In this article we will set up a database table that has an XML column associated with the XML schema of an InfoPath form. We will then use an ASP.NET page to submit and save InfoPath forms to the database table. We will also discuss common challenges you may encounter when trying to set up such a solution.
This article assumes that you have experience developing InfoPath forms, working with SQL Server and Internet Information Server, and that you are familiar with C# and ASP.NET.

XML Vakudator Buddy

Author:Ewa Ciecierska

Summary:Learn how to do XML batch validation using ValidatorBuddy

Take a look at spycomponents.com to see how you can do quick and easy XML batch validation using ValidatorBuddy.

Use ValidatorBuddy from the command line and deploy the results anywhere you like.
Use ValidatorBuddy within XMLSpy and do additional processing to the results such as XSLT processing, export to Database or any other possibility offered by the XMLSpy API.

Server Technology

Part 4 Server Technology
by:Reports guru David McAmis

And at long last there is a single merge module you can use to deploy your application, which makes creating installation and setup packages much easier. There has been a renewed focus on this area with this release and it is now possible to setup packages that install right the first time.

On the Java side of things, the enhancements are along the same lines, with the exception of dynamic parameters which didn’t make it in time for the first release. However, there are enough new features though to keep most Java developers happy, including a new JavaServer Faces(JSF) Viewer and set of custom JSF tags to cut down on development time.

There are a number of enhancements to the Java API itself, with additional methods that give more control over the data source and location. There is also an updated version of the Java Reporting Component that brings it closer to rough parity to with the other platform API’s.

Updated Server Technology
This version of the product not only includes new features, both for report design and application development but also brings together the platform components from Crystal Decisions and Business Objects. Business Objects bought Crystal Decisions over a year ago and this version represents the first “combined” product featuring the tools and functionality from both product lines.

The first immediate benefit for application developers is Crystal Reports Server, which provides a subset of the features and functionality found in Business Objects Enterprise, which is an enterprise framework for publishing reports to the Web, as well as scheduling and distributing reports in a secure environment. And in addition to the subset of features, it is also a subset of the price, at around AU$12,000 for 5 concurrent users.
Crystal Reports Server brings the core report scheduling and distribution framework and functionality to application developers, which they can use to create scalable, multi-tier applications for small to medium-sized user bases. And when scalability to thousands of users is required, there are only minor changes required to use the same code with the full-strength Business Objects Enterprise.

It also bears mentioning that the licensing within both Crystal Reports and related products has been simplified and now is much more competitive with other products in the market. For most internal applications you won’t need any additional licensing and if you are developing applications for commercial distribution, there is a free runtime for thick-client applications and simplified process for any components that are licensed and would require a software license.

Summary
So in the end, this release offers a little bit of something for everyone. Report developers will love the new look and feel and features found in the report designer itself, while application developers can look forward to an updated set of tools and technologies to help them easily integrate reports into their application.