Zen and the Art of Computer Consulting

Catch a wave

2009-06-03T14:43:00.006-04:00

Collaboration is essential in today's lean business model. Every business collaborates its use of data throughout. The business relationship with its data makes or breaks the business. Data should be viewed as an entity with which business processes can talk to, talk about, and recognize the life it takes on. You cannot have a business without data.

So where am I going with this? Google announced a new product called Wave. This product looks to be a collaboration of the services Gmail and Docs. Other services Google may combine with Wave are instant messaging and real time searching. Wave will have a mobile component that will further blurr the line between computer device and mobile device.

The future is getting smaller. Google seems to realize more than other vendors that staying ahead of the curve is essential to survival. Always innovating, always looking to the future and able to quantify what that future will be, at least in the short term, is arguably Google's strength. Development in any organization should keep Google visions in front of their own.... until they surpass Google that is :)

Multi-Value returns in Access

2009-02-18T16:52:00.004-05:00

There are times when you write a function and want to return more than one value. Using VBA in Access you can declare a user defined type that has multiple types within its structure.

Public Type UserType1
Fld1 as integer
Fld2 as string
Fld3 as date
End Type

Function TestAType() as UserType1
TestAType.Fld1 = 1
TestAType.Fld2 = "This is field 2"
TestAType.Fld3 = #2/1/2009#
End Function

You can then reference the value you need in another part of the program.

MyIntegerValue = TestAType().Fld1

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-08T11:05:00.005-05:00

It is that time of year and people are making whatever plans they make to enjoy whatever celebration they celebrate. It can be very joyous time of year. There are many times of year I am reminded how lucky I am to live where I live and have the friends and family that I have. I hope everyone can feel something good and I hope the goodness would last all year long. Everyone goes through some sort of heartache in their lives, I just hope that there is something that can help them through the tough times and that too have good friends and family to lean on.

The world is going through some tough times right now. There are money, conflict, and family issues with which many of us are feeling the pain. It is my wish that all the pain would go away and that everyone could feel not hungry, happy, and safe. I know that is a tall wish, but in my little corner of the earth I will make some donation, help someone in need and try to make someone laugh at least once. I will try. That is all I can do. I hope you try too.

Happy holidays to you! I hope you have a good year, that you live long and prosper!

Your Best Friend

2008-11-14T00:39:00.006-05:00

In these uncertain times organizations are moving into a cycle of trimming costs and maximizing efficiencies. Increase profit margins are going to come from improved processes and leaning out the company. We are in a recession and sales are going to be very hard to come bye. The one bright spot might be from government help.

Automation and improvements in you business processes through technology is a wise expenditure. It is always a wise expenditure, but in these times it is more pronounced because it might be the best way to improve your services to your clients.

Look at ways you can leverage your current assets and integrate these processes. The less the employee has to do the more they can do. The more the employee has to do, the less the rest of the organization knows about the process.

Call on your automation guru, your software consultant, your business process automation specialist, they will be your best friend helping you increase your services to your clients and the bottom line of your organization.

You might be breaking the law

2008-09-10T11:42:00.004-04:00

The No Electronic Theft act makes it a crime to send any copyrighted material to someone or somewhere else. In effect, if you copy a picture from a copyrighted web site or software without permission, you are committing a crime. It was designed more for trying to catch people who copy DVDs or music and redistribute them. But some corporations, like the music industry companies, are using this law with zeal. Music companies have sued and won decisions against individuals for copying music.

HR4279 imposes stricter penalties for infringement. Law enforcement can actual seize property of suspected inf ringers. This law is akin to the drug enforcement laws that let law enforcement seize cars, houses, cash, computers, or any other property of suspected drug dealer. Sometimes these people do not get their property back even after they are proven Innocent or even if no charges are officially filed.

Then there is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. This act makes it a crime to circumvent any copy protection. It does not matter if you do nothing else but break the copy protection. Also, this act makes it a crime to have in your possession any copy protection breaking tools. Just having these tools is a crime.

So watch out for those music downloads and reuse of those pictures from YouTube. If they find their way onto your organization's network, your network might be found in a different physical location and you might be looking out from behind bars. A little drastic I know and probably will not happen to you, but there have been wilder things to come on the evening news.

Your relationship with data

2008-06-27T14:58:00.005-04:00

Your organization and you have a unique relationship that you should nourish. That is the one you have with your data. Your data, how well you keep track of it and how well you use it, will make your business.

You should look at all the ways the people in your organization utilize the data. How they extract, how they compile statistics, how they summarize what they need. If a person is taking some data and analyzing it in Excel consistently, then here is an object of data that your organization might find valuable. This object of data should be backed up and possibly incorporated into the offerings for the rest of the organization.

How you look at data is very important. It is not just a bunch of addresses or sales figures in a table that can be searched. It is the life blood of the organization.

Reporting and querying data is not enough. The end results may need to be incorporated into a unified system of delivery to the rest of the organization. What is important to one might be revolutionary to another.

Documentation

2008-06-06T20:30:00.005-04:00

I just got done doing a documentation project. If there is one thing I dread doing is documentation. It is boring work and when you are in the midst of writing and dissecting someone else's code and you look outside at a beautiful day, you just want to jump up and leave.

I finished the project on time and under budget. I went to the project wrap meeting and the people involved with the databases were passing them on to a new group. Everyone was thankful to have the documents and the descriptions. It had not been done for these databases and there had been many developers with their hands in these databases. The work I did turned out to be very worth while for the organization.

As I was working on the project I realized so many mistakes that had happened during the development. When you pick apart a database you get a feel for what had happened during coding. If the developers had documented as they went along, most of the problems could have been avoided. Also, the need to pay me to do the documentation would not have been necessary.

I guess the moral of the story is to do your documentation and do it diligently. It will save you time and money over the long run and the next time you see one of my systems.... good luck finding the supporting document :)

Common Ground

2008-02-20T22:54:00.006-05:00

"They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all..."

Attitudes, perceptions, communication... we all have our way. We understand each other differently. Sometimes in the world we call consulting we can be saying the same thing and it us understood completely different.

I sit here watching the lunar eclipse and think, there must be millions looking at this same site. There has to be some common ground between me and all those others looking at this moon. We are seeing the same thing. Here is my answer. You have to find something that is agreable. With this common ground you can work on getting the project moving forward.

Revel in the wonders of the world and find commonality. It may help in more areas...

Pain In The Butt (the PG rating)

2008-02-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

Over the years many organizations have asked me to automate their processes in order to be more efficient and enable their employees to ultimately make more money or service more clients. After all, that should be the goal of any organization, to service more clients better.

When an organization wants to automate a process, they may have their own outlook on how it should be done and that outlook is usually to handle it exactly the way it is currently handled. Now, I know that everyone's processes are handled exactly the way they should be. Well that just may be the case, but more times than not there are efficiencies that are completely overlooked. This is not saying the stake holders are wrong or misguided; it is just a case of being too close to the issue.

When my automation consulting starts, I look for what is going smoothly and I try to quantify the Pain In The @$$ (butt or whatever), or PITA processes. These are the ones that when you automate them will make the people charged with carrying them out very happy. That translates to more excitement to handle the other work required. Now, the PITA processes can take a little longer to automate, but the end result is a process no one is dreading to start. The other processes will benefit.

Your organization may be using an office software suite. Or you may have bought some specialized software to handle some tasks. Those are positive things, but if you are not storing those documents or sharing that data with the rest of your organization (where appropriate) then you are missing some very important and probably unseen advantages. You need a Business Process Consultant (that is me!) to get the best bang for your dollar. You will be very pleased with the end result and when you see a positive return on your investment, you will keep investing and make more gains.

Running into record changed by another user

2008-02-06T18:55:00.000-05:00

Have you run into the problem using SQL Server and your front end gets an error saying the record you are trying to save has been changed by another user? I have run into this many times and you will not think what is actually causing the problem...

If you have created a table in SQL Server and you have a field defined as type BIT you must define a default value for this field. If you do not and do not set it in code when you add a record to the table (essentially leaving the field null), you will get an error like the one mentioned above.

I do not like using BIT types and create my tables using INTs. INTs can have a null value.

So use INT and do set your values either by default or in code. A NULL can cause other problems with reports and queries if you do not think to test for it.

Vista or not

2008-01-30T18:54:00.000-05:00

I have been asked so many times about Vista. To date all of the IT managers I know and talk to regularly are not moving to Vista. XP has been working fine and they do not see the need to upgrade hardware and go through a rollout when the upgrade (I use that term loosely here) offers no actual advantages to the enterprise. The cost does not justify the new cute tweaks.

Now, for your personal use.... If you get a good deal on a Vista machine, why not buy it? Well, if the machine does not have at least 2gb of memory and fast 512mb display card, then you can not compare the price. You will need, in my opinion, at least these two elements to run Vista well. So, upgrade the video and ram and see what you are spending.

If you want some of the "cool" features that Vista has to offer, but do not want to take the financial hit or you are on the corporate network and have no plans to move to Vista, then you can download free tools like Vista Inspirat 2 from CrystalXP. Get the feeling of Vista on your lower cost XP system.

Running Access Queries From Code

2008-01-29T18:51:00.000-05:00

Over the years I have had the need to run queries in Access. Imagine that, huh! Well, I need to run queries without the annoying warning popups and I do it so often that I created a subroutine to handle most of the load.

Here is the code:

Sub RunAQuery(ByVal pQueryToRun As String)

'Written by Stuart Smith

' Seguin Software

On Error GoTo Err_RunAQuery

DoCmd.SetWarnings False

DoCmd.OpenQuery pQueryToRun, acNormal, acEdit

Exit_RunAQuery:

DoCmd.SetWarnings True

Exit Sub

Err_RunAQuery:

MsgBox Err.Description

Resume Exit_RunAQuery

End Sub

I turn off the warnings and when the querie is done, turn them back on. I put the SetWarning True in the subroutine exit area to make sure they get turned back on in case of an error.

Why Access

2008-01-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

Over the years I have used the power of Access to quickly prototype a new development project only to be asked to supply the prototype as the source by the client. I have gone from using Access as a prototyping tool to a development platform. In the beginning around 1999 and 2000 I felt I was not using a legitimate development language. My peers thought I was crazy. Why not use C#, Java or even Delphi? Even VB would be better than Access… right? When I delivered applications to the end user under budget and way ahead of schedule, the clients took notice. When I realized the end user does not care what your application is writing in, they just want a working application. The user does not care at what level you control the screen, just that their piece of data is displayed the way they want it displayed.

I give up some things to use Access. I know this. But the power of what Access can do and the amount of time it takes me to develop is a great asset to me. I combine Access with SQL Server. This way I get the power of Access without some of its annoying limits.

This is my first blog in a series of Access development blogs to come. I hope you keep reading. If you need help developing for your organization or just a quick tip, I may be able to help. You can check some of my resume items on my company’s web site: www.seguinsoftware.com.