The Lesser Spotted Sage Line 50 Developer

I got to wondering about how many Sage Developers there really are as opposed to the 750 odd that Sage claim on their web site. The 750 figure presumably includes Developers for all the various Sage products.

For Sage Lne 50 my guess is that there are probably around 40 paid up members of the Developer program.

I've based this guesstimate on the number of Developers you can find on Google without looking too hard, working on the basis that if you have paid £1500 for a Sage Developers license (then £1200 every year) you are probably going to want people to know about it or have a product that uses the Sage Data Objects.

Enough to give the Sage user a reasonable choice but not as many as you might think.

Vista, Sage 50 just call it Twap

I was bemused to find out a few years aago that Twain (a scanner technology acronym) stood for Technology Without An Interesting Name.

I think we can now coin a new term : TWAP or Technology Without A Point.

Prime candidates for TWAP are the Windows Vista and just about any new version of an existing program. To all intents and purposes software development for PCs is dead. I don't mean new innovations such as social networking etc but things like new versions of Windows or Office.

We only purchased new versions of Windows in the vague hope of getting something that actually worked. Once we got Windows 2000/ XP the job was done. As a business user you would have to be extremely stupid (or a Goverment department) to upgrade to Vista.

And for all you Linux fans you would have to be pretty stupid to migrate to that platform as well.

The single point that people in the computer industry fail to grasp is that most business users really really don't care about computers as long as they work. If I have Windows 2000 / XP and Office something I'm never going to upgrade because it works. Why on earth would I spend money when I don't need to. Windows isn't like a car or the photocopier - it doesn't wear out.

New versions of Windows and other applications such as Sage are now just concerned with generating a revenue stream for the vendors. That's it.

All technologies / industries reach a plateau where they just become part of the wallpaper. PC's are everywhere but they are now commodity items. Nobody is going to write a new OS because it isn't needed and it would just cost too much money.

If it works people won't fix it.

Sage 2008 : Nothing new there then

After the debacle of Sage 2007 you might have thought Sage would be a bit more attentive to getting things right in Sage 2008.

Sadly you would be mistaken.

Sage have already released 2 hot fixes to correct problems with the Sage Data Objects (SDO) that are used by Sage Developers and Sage products such as Job Costing that integrate with Sage 50.

There are also problems with Bank Reconcilation and Departments still appear to be a bit flaky.

I'm impressed with the speed that these hot fixes have been released but I'd be even more impressed if Sage had tested it in the first place.

As I've commented (ranted) previously, it's impossible to release a new version every year that actually works. This doesn't fill me with confidence that the forthcoming transistion to using MYSQL as the backend will work before hell freezes over (despite the effects of global warming).

The technical issues with just getting MySql to install on over 100,000 user machines without falling over are immense, never mind porting the whole of Line 50 to use the new technology. Support just doesn't bear thinking about.

Sage hasn't changed the underlying technology since it was first released a very long time ago. Sage users are by and large a fairly docile lot who are just trying to get the job done. 2007 will have tried their patience, 2008 is likely to try it a bit more and start them thinking about what they are paying for.

As usual the best advice is not too upgrade until you have to.

Microsoft :Malicious or just incompetent?

It's remarkable that my XP machine that has been working without problem for a couple of years suddenly started to lock up with monotous regularity at around the same time that Windows Vista is widely available.

After trying unsuccessfully to ignore the problem (when you're writing code your machine locking up is a tad annoying) I was forced to investigate.

The cause? Windows Update. Despite the fact that I don't allow it to automatically instal updates, Windows Update now causes the svchost.exe process to run at 100% cpu and effectively crashes the machine. Ending the svchost.exe process also causes several other essential Windows Services to stop working making the machine more or less unusable unless you restart all the Services you trashed by ending svchost.

Microsoft KB 927891 has a partial fix but apparently we have to wait until June before we get the final instalment. (the kb patches msi but apparently a new version of Windows Update is also required).

Anyway, the patch makes no difference. Just go to Control Panel and turn off Automatic Updates altogether and then wait until Microsoft finally fix it.

The big question is whether this was deliberate on Microsofts part?

After all the only reason most people upgraded from Windos for Workgroups to Win 98 to Win 2000 is because it didn't work properly. So if you've got W2K why would you want to upgrade? XP is just W2k with a different interface and license checking.

Why do I want Vista? I'd probably have to buy a new machine, have to reinstall everything, fight with applications and drivers that don't work under Vista and learn a whole new set of tricks for what benefit?

Unless of course my current operating system has started falling around my ears every day and I don't have the time, knowledge or patience to identify the cause.

I can only come to the conclusion that either Microsoft are incompetent and irresponsible in allowing the Windows Update process to introduce a major problem into millions of machines OR it was a cynical process to encourage desperate users to upgrade in the hope of fixing the problem.

More XMHell

After only 8 hours or so, I managed to get some sort of grip on this XML stuff. Then I went to the pub and fortunately the Fat Bloke wasn't there.

There appear to be the usual caveats with Microsofts cunning plan for world domination which invovle making any sane person loose the will to live after trying to wade through what version of what actually works with what.

The good news is that it appears to be reasonably straightforward to write a CSV file without knowing the xml element names.

The bad news is that information on this really basic requirement is quite hard to come by.

The Reluctant Developer never ceases to be amazed (depressed) that he always appears to be the first person in the world to ever want to do a particular, seemingly basic, task.

Just lucky I gueess

XMHell

There we were happily using CSV files and now the world and his brother (and apparently his sister, cousins and even the fat bloke down the pub) want to use XML.

I'm sure XML has some uses but for the traditional Import and Export of ordinary data records it's just a pain in the proverbial. To be fair writing out XML is pretty easy (after you have wasted a few days learning something else you didn't want to know) but importing is just a pointless exercise in using the latest technology just because it's fashionable.

The customers application is going to send us an xml file, which we then have to parse to get it into CSV format so we can import it. Why? It's just as easy (probably easier) for the app to write out a csv file in the first place. So we have a whole layer of unnecessary code that serves no useful purpose and in fact can be a problem with very large import files due to memory usage.

Plus we have to go through all the pain of working out which version of Microsoft XML is available on all Windows platforms otherwise we have additional aggravation in getting the necessary msi installed on our users machines. (To save you the trouble, use MSXML 3.0 - this is allegedly available on all Windows OS as standard)

The way forward appears to be to use XSL files to convert the XML to CSV. I'll report back after I've fallen down all the gotchas. Or I may just go to the pub and have a pint of bitter version 1.0. Unless that Fat Bloke's there of course.

April Fool

Can we just get over the April Fool thing?

The news in the real world is now nearly always more bizarre than anything you could make up.

The world hss moved on, April Fool stories are tired, sad and not in the remotest funny.

My Manifesto

After another day of being annoyed by idiot politicians I thought I'd set out my own manifesto.....

Make voting compulsory
Ban Postal Votes
Set MP's wages at twice the national average wage. Ministers get 3 times. If they think they can do better elsewhere then so be it. Couldn't do much worse.
Similarly cap Civil Servants and senior council empoyees wages.
Prospective MP's must have held non political paid employment before being eligible to stand. i.e. no career politicians.
Remove all perks for MPs and require invoices for all expense claims.
Make all government employees pensions based on contributions effective immediately.
Make all government employees retirement age in line with the rest of the population.
Renationalisation of essential services i.e. Power and Water.
Renationalisation of the railways.
Make the Office of National Statistics independent.
Reintroduce the 11 Plus. Discard all other testing other than the equivalent of O and A Levels. Project work is not to be counted towards exam results.
Flat Car Tax.
Car Insurance must be displayed in vehicle.
Road and Fuel Tax to be spent on roads.
Parking charges capped at the cost of provision.
Remove all speed bumps and traffic calming other than outside schools. Presumption is to be based on the free flow of traffic.
Remove all speed cameras other than outside schools or proven blackspots.
Speed cameras must be visible and have speed limit displayed on the rear of the camera and painted on the road.
Scrap Road Pricing.
Restrict Mortgage lending to proven multiple of earnings.
Abolish inheritance tax.
All outsourcing of NHS services, particularly cleaning, to be abolished. NHS managers to be criminally responsible.
Bins to be emptied weekly.
All Political funding to be transparent. Obvious scams such as Loans to be a criminal offence.
Chief Constables to be elected.
Require return of local police stations and beat officers.
Council Cabinets to be abolished.
No re-evaluation of Council tax.
Council Tax frozen.
Loan Interest rates to be capped. Usurious rates to be legally unenforceable.
Scrap ID card Project.
Government IT projects to be scrutinised by independant review body (not appointed by the goverment)
Reinstate the Lords
Remove the hunting ban.
Automatic assumption of guilt for any intruder in your property. Onus on criminal to prove otherwise.
Postpone any decision on Trident for as long as possible
No increase in TV license for 5 years.
Scrap turn off of Analogue TV signal.
Restore Capital punishment for Treason.
Try Blair as a war criminal.
Withdraw all troops from the Middle East.
All taxation to be transparent and not for social engineering.
Start building nuclear reactors now. We already have the cost of disposing of the waste and a bit more isn't going to make any difference.
Single parenting to be discouraged as a life style option but supported for those that need it.
Make unemployment benefit actually worth something to the real workers.
Apply common sense to all policies.
And for those that say how are you going to pay for this the answer should be "honestly". No stealth taxes, no huge waste, just common sense and an explanation of what the taxes are being used for. If it can't be afforded if can't be done or the tax required and what it will be spent on should be clearly laid out, not just throwing money at a problem.



I'm sure I'll think of some more....

How to tell if Gordon Brown is putting up taxes?

His lips are moving.

There should be some new signs at ports of entry to the UK. These could simply be "Welcome to Tesco Land" and "Give us all your money"

Despite an apparently booming economy you're pretty much stuffed in England unless you work for the government, big co, are a builder or don't work at all. If you have an ordinary job, or are retired (and weren't a state employee)the bit of money you have got left after paying all the bills is on a drastic diet only supported by immense debt and the false illusion of security if you have owned your house for a few years.

And it's not going to get any better.

Dear old Gordy has stoked up the bonfire of state wages and pensions to the point that it would take the bubonic plague to extinguish it. Or I suppose we could conscript civil servants and send them to the Middle East....

If you dare, just jot down the amount of money you have to find every month to pay the bills you don't have any realistic choice about. Notice how the standing charges are so high that even if you never use the phone you still have to hand over a large wodge. Got a TV, give us some more money. Live somewhere? Pay your Council Tax. What, you expect us to actually empty your bin? Got a car? Boy are you in trouble.

NHS? Want a dentist? Not a chance. But we do have the highest paid doctors in Europe. Just don't expect to see them after dark and be prepared to camp out on the telephone line at 0830 to get an appointment.

Sadly Gordon's bill will need to be paid, but it won't be by him. As with every preceeding Labour goverment we will have years of penury paying off the debt and then just when things are looking Ok again the idiot voters will put labour back in power again.

Adsense Revisited

I guess a lifetime in the computer industry possibly tends to make one a little too cynical and my previous post regarding Adsense was probably too broad a canvas. I have no problem with Adwords and Adsense. The technology works well and I just wish the UK Government would contract Google or Ebay to computerise the Health Service.

What I was alluding to were the myriad of "marketeers" who are essentially promoting pyramid selling deals that are extremely unlikely to make any money except for those at the top of the pile. (Pyramid selling is illegal in the UK)

They are all based on getting lots of traffic to a web site, signing up lots of punters and then selling them a system to do the same thing. My concern is that people should understand that this what is what is being sold by the marketeers and just how difficult it is to drive traffic to a web site.

I can see that if you have a "real" web site that Adsense is a genuinely useful way of generating revenue and obviously works to a large extent or the big web sites with huge readerships wouldn't carry adverts. In that respect it's the same as the conventional media such as newspapers and magazines or TV where advertising makes up a large part of the revenue.

The key here is having a useful product that carries advertising, not trying to do it the other way around which is what most of the get rich quick schemes are proposing.

It's also interesting that it is against Google Terms and Conditions to disclose how many clicks you get on Adsense but it's OK to say how much you get paid.

Adsense, Nonsense

After extensive and expensive research I can exclusively reveal the secrets of Adsense.

The secret is it makes Google a lot of money.

That's it.

It also seems to make some "internet marketeers" a fair wodge but after carefully reviewing their proposals it all comes down to getting people to click on adverts on your web page. Your chances of getting people to your web page in the first place are small to the point of non existence and the chances of a click on the ads once they get there even less so.

If you want to make some money go and get a job. Just don't build your hopes on the Internet and all those Get Rich Quick schemes. They don't work except of course for the authors.

Now I'm not saying that it doesn't work. Adwords, where you pay for keywords, are effective (ish). The secret is that you must appear at the top of the page or it's a complete waste of time. It's just another form of advertising and costs us around £40 per week. From this we might get a couple of sales per month.

As for Adsense, the number of clicks we get is pathetic. We have tried running ads for potentially useful information but it wouldn't pay for a pint.

I'm sure some people get lucky, but you probably won't be one of them.

What's more difficult than getting Pandas to conceive?

Unsubscribing from their mailing list is the answer to the question in the title.

Like the male panda I have tried and tried to achieve a successful liasion with Panda although in my case it was probably the very opposite of what the male panda was trying to achieve.

Telling them to f*** off appears to be impossible. I've clicked a multitude of times on the unsubscribe link but this is obviously a complete waste of time.

The Panda needs to understand that no means no as the female panda seems to have successfully conveyed to the male of the species.

Even if it does mean extinction.

The end of the world is nigh

I've just been for a walk in the glorious spring sunshine with the slightly cantakerous dog.

About half way round I was struck by the thought that things seem to be coming horribly unstuck on so many levels. TV ultimately brought down the russian empire because the serfs (sorry citizens) could see that the rest of the world wasn't completely grey but I think attitude will bring down the western empire (and probably already has - the chicken keeps running for a while after you chop of its head).

I'm 49 now and the work ethic (fear) was built into my upbringing. It's not there anymore. The world is full of BFT's (Big Fat Tarts) with an attitude problem. Don't even think about complaining because they don't have to sit and listen to that.

Every public "service" that you can think of is primarly concerned with its own welfare and survival (i.e. wages and pensions) and the ordinary punter is just going to have to keep paying for it. You might be an OAP with no pension becuase Brown swiped it but rest assured the public sector employees (also known as labour voters) will live very comfortably for the rest of their largely stress free lives. I know they think they are stressed but it is fundamentally impossible to get fired from a public sector job and money, or lack of it, is the main cause of real stress.

Big private companies have largely the same attitude. They have milions of customers and really don't care. The only possible way of dealing with them is to get them bad press when suddenly the attitude will change (at least while anybody is watching)

The underclass don't care because there isn't a cat in hells chance of their benefits being cut. The latest wheeze is to make single mothers get a job once their child is 12. All that will happen is that they will have another one when their offspring reaches 11 years and 3 months of age. and anyway what jobs are available to these people anyway in our so called knowledge economy where every job needs a degree because everyone has got one.

The goverment don't give a stuff. Huge pay packets, stupendous pensions and full of career politicians who have never had a real job. Here's a tip - a checklist or target doesn't make things happen, at least not what you expected. The idiot beauracrats which just manipulate the system to hit the target.

Computer companies like Microsoft and Sage either don't care, are incompetent or cynically manipulating the system (or possibly a combination of all three). The net result for the end user is the same either way.

It's a remarkable coincidence that my XP box has just started to play up like the good old pre Win2k days. I'm sure that is nothing whatever to do with a new OS being available but the only reason anybody upgraded in the past was in the vague hope that you might get something that worked. Once it works why would I want a new one?

As for Sage, I supect that they come under the incompetent category, combined with extreme avarice. I'm not surprised all the original founders have long since run away. They could probably see the writing on the wall.

The west is morally bankrupt and pretty soon will be in a financial sense as well. Better learn Chinese real fast.

And another thing

I seem to have been doing a lot of complaining lately but that's probably because I've been trying to get some work done.

When I was slightly less wise I was stupid enough to develop a couple of applications using Access. But developing things is not so much of a career as a sentence and my once happily working Access database was presumably missing me and decided to throw random errors on just one customer machine.

Anyway, 3 weeks later and more diagnostic code than you can shake several sticks at I tracked it down (cornered it more like) to a Timer event than runs every two hours. Once the event has run, subsequent code fails on a random basis on a subform with Error 91. And just to make life interesting you could only trap the error with a form level error handler.

As we can't reproduce the error, I thought I would try and fool it and rewrote the timer event so it was doing more or less the same thing but in a different way. Unfortunately we now get the same error but also in a slightly different way.

Along the way I discovered some other interesting foilbles like trying to a access a control on a subform when the parent form is minimised doesn't work no matter what syntax you use. Error 2455 in case you are interested.

Searching the internet showed an interesting catalogue of Access woes but predictably I seemed to have scored another world first. (funny how often that happens).

So the upshot is we have turned off the timer for that machine, end of problem, except of course several weeks of time spent trying to fix the problem which we won't be getting paid for.

VB6 sir, that'll do nicely.

Don't ACT!

Why is ACT! Development now so difficult?

Up to version 6 of ACT! the product was based on a fairly simple file structure and the developer interface was well documented and easy to use. Most of the functions within ACT seemed to be reasonably straight forward to implement. I wrote the original Phonix to ACT interface in a weekend and it worked very well. We obviously then spent a lot of time enhancing the interface but it wasn't rocket science.

ACT Professional introduced 2 major changes. Firstly the simple file system was replaced with SQL in an effort to "improve" performance on large systems. Secondly, the whole thing was redone in .NET. As Sage have also discovered in Line 50 2007 this isn't necessarily a good idea. This change to NET means that ALL previous add ins will no longer work and need to be totally rewritten in .Net. This is a huge task. The programmers have to learn a completely new language (that seems to be obscure just for the sake of it), purchase the new development tools and then rewrite the addin. As if that wasn't enough a lot of the functionality that was there in version 6 can't be replicated in the new version. Just to make life more interesting the ACT Professional documentation appears to have been badly translated from the original Klingon version by someone who really wants to make your life as difficult as possible. And the product itself is full of bugs anyway.

Still we pressed on and redeveloped our interface. It only took 3 months. And we sold two.

We get the odd marketing survey from Sage asking what they can do to improve the developers life but strangely they never respond to any issues raised. Nor do any of the Sage / ACT management respond to any phone calls or emails. Presumably if your face fits you get a response as an ACT add-in for another version of Sage recently won a Sage prize. Makes me feel so much better about paying our Sage Developers fees every year.

Stupid is as stupid does

For some time now I've had the largely uappreciated (because I didn't notice) convenience of just being able to get on with my job. Since Windows 2000 I'd generally just been able to load the machine and use it.

Then I stupidly installed Internet Explorer 7.

Deep joy.

Now accessing a web site has an element of Russian Roulette. Will it work? Will IE just hang for no obvious reason? Perhaps Microsoft were getting bored and wanted to get back to the good old days of crap software.

Well here's the news. I've been doing this for 34 years. I don't have the time, inclination or patience to sod about with stuff that doesn't work.

Just switch your licensing model. You need a revenue stream and I'll happily pay if you just make the things we have work. I don't want a new one, I just want one that works in a predictable and reliable way. I don't want to have redevelop all our products because you've got a new OS or a new language that delivers no tangible benefits other than to your bottom line. Making it add up numbers in a consistent way would be a bonus.

Not very EasyJet

Well OK, the jet bit was pretty easy but the Europcar car hire part of the transaction was a less than wonderful experience. I've obviously never tried a career in the secret police with a specialist subject of interrogation but even if I had I doubt whether I could have found out what the ****** car insurance costs or covers.

The EasyJet web site offers optional Piece of Mind cover to top up the CDW which apparently doesn't. Nowhere on any of the web sites can you find a definition of what this actually covers but clearly it isn't piece of mind. Still, hey ho, you can ring a premium rate telephone number or send an email that will be completely ignored.

Unsurprisingly, on arrival at Luton Airport I was invited to pay still more money to get Europcar Piece of Mind cover which is apparently is a different type of zen like calm than that offered by EasyJet. I couldn't pursue this much further as the Europcar operatives English was only marginally better than the helpful French security officials at Bordeaux.

Still I'm glad that I had the zen option because it was pitch black and it would have been impossible to check what the state of the car actually was. Lack of a radio aeriel would have been on the list. Local radio is such a joy.

Unfortunately the zen option didn't cover the houses in the rest of the street who were introduced to the cars alarm system very early the next day when I foolishly used the key to unlock the door. For those of you hiring a Kia something or other the button to disarm the alarm system is on the side of the ignition key which you may not notice at 0630 in the morning.

The people on the Europcar help desk don't know where it is either....

And another thing

As one didn't appear to have much choice I've now updated to the new improved Blogger software.

I'm tempted to go and look up the word "progress" but I'm fairly sure it won't have "new blogger" in the definition. Maybe it'll say"waste another few minutes of your life for no obvious reason".

I have two Google accounts because of the cack handed way Adwords and Adsense were handled. Would the upgrade accept my preferred account? Nope. My password was apparently wrong, incorrect, rubbish. Sigh.

So once we'd entered our alternative account all is apparently well. Except I can't search all blogs anymore. I'm sure there's a way ; I just can't be bothered to waste any more of my life looking for it.

Message to all developers. If you must provide new featues don't hide the old ones. The clutch is next to the brake. It's not in the boot, glove compartment or in the centre console. Life is too short.

But then you're probably American.

And don't know what a clutch is....

Another Day, Another Patch

Just got an email from Sage that Line 50 version 13 Update 4 is available for download.

I'm 100% behind Sage on getting these fixes out asap but it would probably be helpful for the average Line 50 user if Sage made the update process a little easier.

The download page says in big red letters that you can only apply this patch if you have version 13.02.17.0126 and to be fair does tell you how to check which version you have.

What it doesn't do is to tell you what to do if you don't have this version......

Given most Sage Line 50 users are just trying to their job (which isn't technical support) I think Sage could devote some of their considerable revenues into coming up with an easy to use update deployment mechanism that checks what it needs to apply. End users shouldn't need to have this level of knowledge and frankly I don't see why I should need to either.

*ankers Rounding

I should have known so I'm trying to resist the temptation to throw all my toys out of the pram....

Well, they're all on the floor now so..

You would have thought that even Microsoft couldn't make something so simple as Rounding numbers an exercise in absurdity. At this point, there's a load of programmers looking smug saying "I thought everyone knew that" but as Microsoft choose to a) keep it secret by not documenting it in the help files for the product, and, b) Implement it differently by product I'm going to file them under the category of smug.

What am I stamping my feet about? Well, let's say we want to round .925 to 2 decimal places. What would you expect the answer to be. I'm betting 9.3. Nope, in the Microsoft VB world it's .92

Why? Because they use Bankers Rounding which means "Round to the nearest Even number".

So presumably (because I'm to annoyed to test it) .935 would be rounded up to .94

I'm going to stop now and take a deep breath.

OK, I don't care how they implement it as long as they tell us before we screw up and have to go looking on the Internet for the reason.

For those with anorak tendencies Microsoft KB article 196652 describes the mess.

And for those of you with a nervous disposition just think how many times you have innocently used the Round function...