Comet Meeting -- August 10, 2009
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Comet Meeting 2009 – Topics
Comet32
- TCP driver implementation/future of how people would like it to work?
- Xap – 2 flavors
- Comet32 is officially in Beta test phase, the expectation is that it will become the official Comet flavor with Comet Version 2010.
Disaster Recovery
This is a new product which is available for sale now. It provides automatic backup and archiving of customer's data to an SSI server. The data center has redundant power and cooling for safe and efficient operation. A 750KVa diesel generator will keep the facility powered indefinitely in the event that utility power fails. Biometric access controls, key card access and video surveillance ensure a secure, monitored environment. There is a one-time setup fee, then monthly fee after that which includes all inherent server upkeep and bandwidth costs up to 8GB of data transferred. It was suggested that customers should check with their insurance company to see if they offer a discount on the premium if off-site storage is implemented. This could offset the cost of the service. In the event of a disaster the customer has the choice of having the data returned to them or logging in to their account on the CometConnect system and running their business via CometAnywhere until they have restored their hardware.
Report generator
- Jon requested "compile" tool access from UE to run a report when editing .ibr file.
- Steve requested editmasks on the total lines. Jon says he solves this problem with an Excel macro for formatting Reporter data. You can see an example of this on the forum at
http://support.signature.net/messages/6684.htm
- Request was made for an option on the USING statement to opt for outer join. Currently only inner joins are done. Outer join is simulated by forcing the last USING to succeed (ie file link back to itself).
- Carl requested a preprocessor that could prompt the user to supply report specific data such as date ranges, product codes, etc to be used in TITLE and SELECT statements. Optionally the data could come from the result of an entered program. Steve developed such a tool and has used it for years. You can see it on the forum Code Library at
http://codelibrary.signature.net/messages/5.shtml
- Jon requested creating all Reporter temporary files in the TMP directory instead of in the directory where the .ibr resides.
Doc manager -- The Perfect replacement for QSPOOL.
Highlights
Wish List
New Ultra Edit Install
Jim would like to replace the current install shield method with a self-extracting zip file that would take care of installing all files, registry entries, and toolbar additions.
Server Enhancements
- Long file names
- NAS box server
Jim said we were considering supporting NAS boxes. The file server could then serve files stored on them. Jon pointed out that he thought Windows Server 2008 took care of this on the network automatically. Support for a "foreign Folder" would be specified with the following syntas in the comet.ini file:
[DIRECTORIES] 00 = c ,\\server\\NasBox\share\';
- Transaction Log/Checkpoint/Rollback
New Encrypt/Decrypt functions
Streamlined Orders/Certificates
We Discussed the possibility of allowing orders for SSI products to be entered online. It was agreed that all that was needed is a more convenient way to pay. Jim will look in to payment by direct deposit to SSI account to eliminate need to mail a check. For next year's subscriptions we agreed to prepare and email a spreadsheet to each dealer with subscription renewal pricing for each customer. Dealer could then indicate on spreadsheet which will be renewing and email spreadsheet back.
Multitasking Server UIs
The User Interface programs for the Comet servers need to be able to support multiple connections so users on terminal services can see the tray icon.
Timer Event
A new TIMER statement was discussed. This would allow the programmer to set timers that would trigger events when they expired. An event handler could then be written to perform some task such as prompting a user to see if they're still there or even terminating the session to release their resources. Suggested syntax: TIMER TimerId Milliseconds
The Forum
- There was almost unanimous agreement that the Comet Forum was too difficult to search. No real solution was proposed.
Next Meeting - Where & When
The vote for time and location of the next Comet meeting was for October 2010 in or around New York.
