| David Schmucker: Project
Management |
| Build your specs with screen prints. One print per page. Multiple copies
can be made for attendees. You can make notes on the page and give it back
to the programmer. You don't need electronic equipment to demo. Finished
screen prints can be used for training manual and documentation. Tools:
"Print Screen", "Clip Mate". |
| J.K. Adelsten: Oracle 8 |
| Oracle 8 is targeted for ten's of thousands of users. It can use the
Star Schema. It has improved online maintenance and incremental backup. It
supports software cartridges for things like CyberCash and security. J.K has
had successes in launching Crystal reports from the Oracle web server. |
| Tom Linnell: An Approach
to Turnkey Solutions |
| Tom's primary focus is on the client's infrastructure. The better the
servers, workstations and network, then the better chance of success. He
uses Access 97 for his applications. ODBC is used for connectivity to
relational databases. He currently has 9 servers supporting the Welfare and
Childcare services for the District of Columbia. There is one server each
for: SQL Server, DNS, DNS backup, DHCP, WINS. There are 4 web servers for
documentation and bulletin boards. He uses Erwin to engineer and reverse
engineer his projects. He uses an application distribution system that is
based on a "pull" from each workstation. |
| Bruce Parker: Data
Driven Reporting |
| Bruce runs a development company that has many programmers coming and
going. He has developed a standardized approach for training the programming
staff. He provided a handout for the group. |
| Robin Mattern: Picks,
Pans and Other Topics |
| Recommended ActiveHome for turning equipment on and off remotely.
PCAnywhere32. Adobe Acrobat. The Learning Company. Prediction: Browser will
die out. All browser activity will be done from within your e-mail product.
Definition of E-Commerce: "Moving data between company walls. This
eliminates paper and re-keying. EDI provided structured data flow. Now the
internet allows it. XML will allow data definitions to be embedded into web
pages (tags). He showed a demo of Xerox's DocuShare. It it a sort of Lotus
Notes at a more reasonable cost. |
| Tom Meeks: Hardware |
| Tom discussed the concerns that he has about the new 3 1/2 inch drives
and there failing. Raid arrays, backup tape strategies. 60% of QIC drive
restores failed. DAT drives have been good, but expensive. He is now looking
Read/write options including Syquest's SparQ. He said that a new
"Castlewood" 2.GB drive is coming.He recommends a 233LX motherboard with BX
chip set for $279. |
| Luke Chung: Sharing
Source Code |
| Luke noticed that the speed of change in our industry puts a real
premium on reusability of code. Programmers at his company, FMS, needed to
use existing code and not rewrite solutions that have already been solved.
The result was Source Book, which is now available. In source book there are
100's of functions for use in Access. He has a new set for Visual Basic. The
idea is to share. Source book allows you to add and organize you own code
too. |
| Dale Leopold: Converting
Novell to NT |
| Dale provided background on his
project at Phillip Morris. They struggled with the Domain model and trust
issues and decided to use a Master Domain Model with a Backup Domain server
at each department. Each user logs onto the local backup Master Domain.
There was trouble with the MAC's and their 2 GB limit on drives. It took
over a year to implement for 500 users. |
| Bob Petty: Results from
the Search for a T-1 |
| Bob explained his search for a high speed internet connection. We
learned that the full capacity of a T-1 is 500,000 megabytes per month. He
shopped UUNET, CAIS and finally decided on ComStore a GE subsidiary. We
discuss ADSL as a future technology for home to internet connectivity. |
| Bruce Troutman:
Connecting to Data over the Internet |
| Bruce demonstrated the ability of web applications and client server
applications to simultaneous data access over the net. He used a web
application to connect to a SQL Server across town. He then used Access and
an ODBC connection to also connect to that data. The secret is to use
DBMSSOCN.dll and TCP/IP on the SQL Server. |
| Roundtable Discussion:
Fat, Thin and Other Clients doing data on the Net |
| Although we were tired, we summoned a lot of energy discussing the ports
used by the various serves on the net. Port 80 is HTTP, 1433 is SQL SERVER.
We also discussed problems with the Microsoft/Netscape browser wars. No
conclusions were reached, but we are sure to discuss this again. |