OSAS 7.0 To Be Powered By BBj
I was honored to be present for the big announcement by Open Systems Inc. (OSAS) that the company will release the next version, Revision 7.0, of its popular accounting package in BASIS' BBj®. OSAS Chief Executive Officer Michael Bertini made the announcement at the 25th Anniversary OSAS Reseller's Conference in Minneapolis in August.

OSAS is one of the largest suppliers of accounting software nationwide and a major OEM for BASIS, having been with us for more than 15 years. The company just recently released a GUI client/server version based on BASIS' Visual PRO/5®.

On hand with me for the announcement were more than 250 of OSAS' top resellers as well as a BASIS contingent including President George Hight, Vice President of Engineering Kevin King, and Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jane McKenzie.

George delivered the keynote address and spoke about BBj. He gave OSAS resellers a good overview of Java technology and BBj and ended the keynote by demonstrating OSAS' new GUI version running in BBj in a Microsoft Windows and a Linux environment. This was a hit and it set a good tone for the rest of the conference.

All of us worked at the BASIS exhibit booth, providing demos and product information to the OSAS resellers and gathering important feedback on our products and services in the OSAS market. Additionally, Kevin and Jane met with their OSAS counterparts to iron out the last details of a new contract between OSAS and BASIS.

Just before the start of the conference, I led a BBj Concepts Workshop for several OSAS resellers, in which we ran the OSAS GUI code in BBj, including through a web browser attached to a remote server. We delved into the architecture of BBj and the Java Virtual Machine, which allows BBj applications to "run anywhere." We also covered the use of objects in BBj. Later, I covered some of the same material but more generally as a session presenter during the conference.

On the last day of the show, Jane stayed to work at the BASIS booth while Kevin, I and OSAS Product Development Manager Dave Link joined Michael and several resellers for a cruise on the St. Croix River in Michael's very well-appointed yacht. The beautiful weather and great scenery provided a welcome diversion from the busy conference schedule. The entertainment - Michael and a hit Australian CD - was top of the line!

– John Schroeder

I recently had the opportunity to visit a BASIS Customer, Heilind Electronics, and to speak to the company's information technology professionals about BBj® and other products from BASIS.

Heilind is one of the top 10 electronics parts distributors in the country and has been using Business BASIC since the late 1980s. I spent three days at its Wilmington, Mass., office in an intensive training session on the BASIS GUI tools, GUIBuilder® and ResBuilder®, in BBj. Heilind is working on a new application to enable its salespeople to turn around quotes to Customers faster and more accurately. With offices around the country and a mobile sales force equipped with laptops, Heilind had tentatively decided to use the BBj Thin Client to provide salespeople quick and easy remote access to the data necessary to manage the quotation application.

The company now looks to BBj for deployment of these remote applications. With an in-house group of programmers and consultants, Heilind has maintained and enhanced the original application to keep the company attuned with needs of its marketplace. Chris DeMerchant, a BBX® developer who has been consulting with Heilind for several years, said that the decision to use the BBj Thin Client was based on the flexibility it afforded Heilind in deployment of its remote systems and on the fact that BBj provided a clear development path that the company can count on in the future.

The course was fast-paced and covered the basics of GUIBuilder and ResBuilder as well as the BBj Thin Client and the use of objects within BBj. At the end of the class, the team decided that its tentative decision to use the BBj Thin Client was sound. The team has since begun its BBj development efforts. Team members expect to have the application in salespeople's hands by the end of 2001.

Because the quotation system must access Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Heilind has also decided to use Synergetic Data System's sdOffice product. sdOffice, available from BASIS, provides a gateway into the Microsoft Office Suite from within a BBj application. It uses the socket capability of BBj to get commands from the BBj application and send Office data back. It is a very powerful tool that will enable Heilind to link a Customer's Excel spreadsheet to Heilind's inventory database and provide the quote for the Customer.

– John Schroeder

In the last issue, I wrote about a large installation in Thailand that was looking to migrate its PRO/5® application to version 3.1 for larger file constructs and highly recoverable files. (See "Upgrade in Bangkok," Road Scholar Journals, BASIS Advantage Magazine, 2nd Quarter 2001.) Last April, BASIS Software Engineer Jim Douglas and I flew out to the Asian offices of Tesco, a $33-billion retail grocer based in the United Kingdom, to do some analyses and create a conversion plan. This time, I flew out alone to observe and help with the actual conversion.

Because highly recoverable files add to key and record data to speed file recovery, files become larger, and compromised performance is a common fear among companies planning to convert. In addition to fears about slower system performance, Tesco had concern about down time. The company has regularly scheduled down time for system maintenance, a weekly event that lasts between 8 to 12 hours. It was critical that we hit within that window of time, and only that window, and only after the regular backup was complete.

After the routine backup, the volume of data was taken off-line and conversion done in segments. We began with 65 files with the 4-GB file structure, which amounted to around 80GB total space. These all had to be done at once because PRO/5 version 3.1 accesses large file types instead of 4-GB files. Conversion went off without a hitch. The remaining files, which contained about 100 GB of data, were converted later over a period of several weeks.

The Asian division's President of Information Technology, Doug Rutledge, sent me the graph below that shows the system's performance benchmarks with the earlier PRO/5 and then with version 3.1. As you can see, instead of compromised performance, the system performs faster using the large file format. Time for the company's average sales update improved by 27 percent, and time for the average sales upload improved by 24 percent. And in addition, the company now has enhanced protection of its critical data with highly recoverable files.

This graph demonstrates the system performance results from $33-billion grocer Tesco. Using BASIS PRO/5 3.1 with large file support, upload and update times for sales data improved by as much as 27 percent. Additionally, data integrity is further protected with BASIS' highly recoverable file format. (Click image to enlarge.)

– Greg Grisham