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Peter A Donovan
25-Jun-2005, 11:09 PM
Greetings: The Northeast DataFlex Consortium Invites You To Attend The Northeast Migration Event 2005

For More Info: www.NEDataFlex.Com

Regards, The NEDC.

Peter A Donovan
3-Jul-2005, 09:47 PM
Brochures Now Available:
Please visit www.NeDataFlex.Com / Contact Us to request one if you like.
Regards,
Peter

Peter A Donovan
18-Sep-2005, 11:27 PM
Hi All,

The Northeast Migration Event sponsored by the NEDC (Northeast
DataFlex Consortium) was held at the Sheraton Portsmouth New
Hampshire, USA on Friday September 16th and a general outline of the
meeting is as follows:

The moderator for the event (Paul Fernandes of BRAVA Enterprises)
guided us thru the presentation of a vertical market application
conversion done in teams by the NEDC and featured a follow-up time
for individual needs of the attendees.

The vertical market application is a client-side portion of a direct
mailing application for non-profit organizations by Development
Associates, Inc. of Wellesley, Massachusetts and was ported from 3.2
DOS to VDF11.

How to organize the beginning of a legacy application was presented
using proprietary software of Sonata Software that reads in a
Menu.Dat and data entry of source code by date with an end result of
a PDF file listing all the source code to be converted was the
beginning of our task. The PDF listing was divided up into teams of
the NEDC plus value-added components to upgrade into new technology
were unveiled to Development Associates who were highly impressed
with the results.

Data Entry of donations, Entry of new prospects, Quick entry of
donations by ID were crafted to match the "no-mouse" habits of the
current users with hotkeys for main functions, and usage of freeware
packages such as Peter Bosh's coloring of indexed fields (colored
fields allow find keys to be used), Vincent Oorsprong's checkbox
column grid for multi-selecting of parent records and was presented
by Peter Donovan of Sonata Software.

Upgrades to the existing software featured auto-dialing from windows,
the addition of email interface, and a COM/ActiveX interface to
mailmerge co-developed by Garret Mott of AutoMate Software and Sonata
Software were unveiled. The application will enable the users to
automatically run mailmerge without being trained in MS-Word
mailmerge techniques since if features a 2 step approach:

1. Batch Processes To Create The Mail Recipient Data.

2. A "pick a data CSV to be mailed" and "select the letter to mail"
Mailmerge System were merged into a single process for the users
utilizing a wizard that guided the users thru the process.

A WebApp designed for a new website coming soon was developed by Doug
Lawson of Lawson Enterprises and featured a coordinated graphic
design with the application, collected information on prospective
customers, and was scripted "server-side" to immediately notify
Development Associates via email (from a user controlled sysfile) of
the inquiry for product information. Doug also created a VDF-side
companion data table and UI to manage the leads, and demonstrated a
highly complicated web application that is currently in use by Texas
A&M for accepting orders for printing and controlling inventory which
drew a few "ah's" from the group.

Another presentation that raised eyebrows was the development of a
global subclass for rich-edit text that moved 90% of the code out of
the object into the class, and allows for drag n drop richedits that
come with a full toolbar automatically. The richedit controls of
this application will now easily be maintained in a central spot and
all look, feel, and act in the same exact way.

The reporting side of the application featured Crystal Reports and
coordination of fonts, display techniques, and general appearance was
coordinated by Joe Coley of KAMCO Northeast and Paul Fernandes in a
show of coordination, with output to PDF, MAPI, Word, etc. as allowed
by Crystal Reports.

A serious and well-presented discussion from Bo Lincoln, Garret Mott,
and Joe Coley about the competitive advantages of VDF versus
microsoft based tools highlighted VDF as a well-deserved choice in a
decision to be made by corporate IT managers in determining the
future of their legacy applications yet to be converted was presented
and was well received.

The application will now go to Bo Lincoln of Lincoln Systems for
final testing for quality control ,general appearance and
common-sense presentation and then be presented to Development
Associates as a polished beta ready for test-deploy.

The NEDC was overwhelmingly pleased with the coordination of talents
in the group and the nearly-finished product, and want to thank all
of the members of Data Access Corp for the publicity, general advice,
and especially to Fern Bazerghi for organizing the brochure mailing
to the Northeast, and Mari Doherty for her help in organizing our
group.

In addition to the actual event, the NEDC has received a number of
inquiries about using our organization to coordinate and help others
with legacy conversions and therefore brought additional success in
bringing the competitive advantages of Data Access Worldwide to be
discussed.

Lastly, Garret Mott tested our beta application with the VDF11.1 beta
release, and found that it successfully migrated and improved the
general XP standards of look and feel so that depending on timing,
the application may be delivered to the customers in 11.1 rather than
the developed 11.0.

Thanks to all who participated in our event and for others who wished
us well but were unable to attend.

Sincerely,

The NEDC

The Northeast DataFlex Consortium
www.NEDataFlex.Com