When Holes Occur In Systems, The Tough Do What They Must

Anyone who has ever worked with Tina Kay knows she can succinctly define a problem and make the solution look easy. It never is. This is a story bragging about a DMAC client that took Tina’s comments to heart.

The client is a new one this year. They were converting from a competitive product. Somewhere in the conversion process Tina found that the other system allows special treatment of blank fields. Tina went orbital. She raved for about a week here at DMAC that no wonder data capture has such a name for low accuracy. Then she told the client she thought the treatment for blank fields allowed a tremendous number of errors to go through the client’s system. She even drew upon her masters of experimental statistics education to “beat” on the client.

That is the background. This is the story.  The client sorta became quiet for a while; Tina feared she had insulted the client.

Then lo and behold (holiday cheers!) Tina received a request for help with a problem the client was having with the particular project. “Wow,” she said. The client sent her one of the best-written, most complete, best documented, superlative-in every-way-program.  Two-dimensional arrays were correctly used.  Multiple file output; multiple pass processing. The program sets a new high in understanding of the Unibase by DMAC AID language. Not since Ceridian’s John Hollohan and Dick McGrath has DMAC seen such power and glory in AID programs!

Needless to say, the client took to heart what Tina had to say about plugging holes. DMAC expects we all will hear about the success this client will enjoy this coming year. Our collective hat’s off to the client.

Incentive Systems Based on Net Keystrokes Work;
Using Gross Strokes Requires Extra Care and Concern

For fifteen years DMAC has be pushing Unibase. Finally, one client has found that if he pays keyers incentive pay based on Gross Keystrokes rather than the recommended Net Keystrokes bad things happen. The keyers in his shop have learned they can exaggerate the gross keystrokes on very fast machines.

At DMAC we have been patching “holes” in recording gross keystrokes which appear on these super fast machines. We will keep patching until no new exaggerations appear. 

These exaggerations are easy to spot by eye. But they can slip by if the client is not careful. Any time a keyer’s total gross strokes are more than a given percentage above net strokes, the client started looking. Bingo.

The latest Unibase by DMAC 8.0 has the patches included. Ain’t life great?

Unibase on LINUX Requires Experience; But Oh How Great When It Works Well

Unibase by DMAC on LINUX has received poor reviews at times. DMAC’s developers scratch their heads, cannot come up with an explanation. But this past month, I had the privilege of watching a LINUX installation in a UNIX shop firsthand.  I thought I might report to you all about this install and why it went so smoothly. I did not touch a key on the users keyboard. I watched and kibitzed.

First, the LINUX box was going into a UNIX shop; the experience was present to solve problems as they occurred.

Second, the Gnome user interface would not work on LINUX because the GUI interface had been disabled on the LINUX hardware box.

Third, the user previously had observed every problem that occurred during the install.This problem had occurred on either the user’s UNIX or other LINUX systems.

Fourth, the user understood about the differences between UNIX, LINUX and Microsoft. For instance, wild cards characters on the command line were considered a “No, No.”

Fifth, permissions were set aside until after the install was complete. Everything was installed as “root.”

Sixth, Kermit was used on the Microsoft client computers. Three other packages were available, but since DMAC knew that Kermit would work, the user installed with Kermit and will experiment with the other products later.

Seventh, the issues of upper and lower case file names were understood.

Eighth, the user put off bringing up Samba and WebBase by DMAC until the system was stable and used for a while. (A long while, neither has been attempted yet.)

Ninth, the user had many hard copy LINUX manuals for reference during the LINUX startup.

Is DMAC recommending a LINUX based Unibase by DMAC system? No, not right now. The skill sets are not available in the general run-of-the-mill computer world at this time. Will DMAC sell LINUX systems. Sure, if the user can convince DMAC that they can handle LINUX.

The rewards are many; the risks are many.
 

Purchase of Unibase by DMAC Online; Soon To Be Available

A year ago DMAC paid money to consultants to enable prospective clients to purchase DMAC products over the web on a 24 by 7 basis. The project failed. For the past year we have studied the reasons for the failure. Slowly we have approached that wall of ignorance and uncertainty again and again. Each time we find new reasons to go slow.

Now we think we are getting close. Let us review some of the issues that we have had to resolve.

First, we had to come up with a new method of authorization for product and for adding number of users to a Unibase by DMAC, Unibase Imaging and WebBase by DMAC license. We settled on an RSA based public key, private key approach. Naturally, the older approach had to still work also.

Second, we had to find a secure site to process the payment. After much thought and investigation, we settle on “PayPal.”  As part of our investigation, Fred opened a PayPal account. Then to see how it worked, he had to buy “stuff” on Ebay. Actually had to learn how to bid; but he did it. Tough job Fred does.

Third, DMAC had to redesign its web sites to actually do the processing. Wow, that took work. We think we have the authorization codes going out automatically when the payment clears PayPal. No human intervention. If we had allowed a human to send the authorization code, we could have had this process up and running in May.

Forth, we had to build new databases to track the sales. Naturally, DMAC plans on using DMAC products for the databases. These databases will be automatically populated as part of the payment process.

Finally, we have to test and test and test the process. That is where we are now.  So soon, you will have more convenience in the acquisition cycle.

Washington’s Space Needle Attracts Fred; DMAC Welcomes New Seattle Client

Every since it was build in 1963, Fred has wished to eat (Fred loves to eat!) in the Space Needle’s restaurant in Seattle, Washington. Finally, a prospective client’s presentation and demo brought Fred to the Needle restaurant. Food and view were great!

Now you all who think Fred is slightly daft, remember that Fred’s a mechanical engineer and the Space Needle is a wonderful engineering feat. First in 1963 it shocked the world with its one horsepower revolution system (puny?). Then the complete refurbishment in the 1990's was also a great feat. 

DMAC also achieved some wonders while Fred was there also. A sixteen user system was up and running in just seven minutes. Tina accomplished this. The install speed was not bad at all. Also, against a great competitive field, Unibase by DMAC was chosen as the product to be installed early next year. 
 

Tightwads Can Learn New Tricks; XP Professional Has Its Place

Microsoft Windows XP Professional has reversed Fred’s tightwad instincts. XP Professional is worth the extra cost when compared to XP Home on a network with a domain server. 

Sorting through the hype on the Windows operating systems, especially with Windows XP has been difficult. For at least the past year DMAC has purchased E-machines with XP Home as the operating system. Every time a new one was installed on DMAC’s network, DMAC’s users complained how slow the system was. So much finger pointing made Fred think of a puppet show. Sorting through the proposed solutions was tough.

After trying every tweak DMAC people could find, XP Home did not run faster for long. Finally, DMAC’s people noticed that Microsoft said that XP Home uses NetBios for networking while XP Professional uses true TCP/IP protocol.

DMAC found that XP Professional could be used to upgrade XP home. Finally Fred broke down and bought a copy of XP Professional. No speed improvement happened when XP Professional was first installed. But quick investigation showed that the new XP Professional computer was still a member of the workgroup. When moved to the domain, by golly, the speed jumped forward, just like Microsoft said it would.

Of course, the full-speed-ahead approach had its “gotchas.”  Had to get on the E-machine web site and obtain the display driver. XP Professional had lost the display driver and reverted to 640x480 default generic driver mode.

And all the desktop icons disappeared.  Don’t know where they went. Was able to create new shortcuts; so just a small pain.

And don’t forget, you can only install one copy on one computer with XP Professional. DMAC must buy a copy for each E-machine. Oh well, DMAC will get used to immediately upgrading a computer when it is purchased. Just add the software to the cost of the new machine.  Of course if low cost vendors were to sell machines with XP Professional installed instead of XP Home, we would all win.

Definitely worth the money, inconvenience and effort. The speed makes one proud to have a computer again. This XP Professional over XP Home becomes a minimum requirement for network based XP Windows operating systems.