SAFE SQL Technical Briefing: A Couple Of Tips
There are a number of smaller features in SAFE 6.1 which seem to have avoided wide adoption, not because they aren't documented or useful, but simply because they don't stick out like a sore thumb. So today we will discuss a few of these in the hope of making at least someone's job a bit easier. Here we go.

Viewing Customer Vs. Corporate Products
When entering sales orders, you have always had the ability to see only the Products linked with that Customer. But now, you have the ability to also view all Products linked to the Parent Corporation (assuming the customer is a part of a larger corporation). To do this, simply select the Query tab when selecting your Product. Et Voila! The default Query will be any and all products linked to any customer within the Corporation.

Say you have ten customers all linked to a Parent Corporation. have harped on and on about how your database 'learns' how best to serve up data. Well, sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. For some queries, the database needs a bit of hand-tuning for best performance. Big companies keep full-time database administrators on the payroll because they know that such tuning can speed processing many, many times over. But you (or we) can do similar magic yourself in many cases using the built-in Index Tuning Wizard included with SQL Server.

Disabling Sites
You can now disable any Site for further use. This is something you probably should use a lot. The disabled Site still exists, but is no longer visible in any screen where Sites may be selected (Ship To or Ship From Addresses). This prevents someone from accidentally selecting a Ship To or Ship From which has been closed.

Disabling Employee IDs
What was just said about Sites? Double Ditto for Employee IDs. You should use this to prevent Employee IDs from being 'selectable' once an Employee leaves the company. Again: you still want to keep the transactions linked to the Employee ID for historical reporting, but you don't want any new work to get into the system using said Employee ID.

Notes Are Now Editable Whenever
It is now possible to edit any Notes field ex-post facto anywhere in SAFE. Although this has been a most asked for feature for a long time, strangely enough, now that it is available, many of you have been slow to use it. It's as simple as this: any note, anywhere in SAFE may now be edited, even if the transaction it is a part of may not be. For example, let's say you print a Customer Invoice but realize before sticking it into it's envelope that the notes have a spelling mistake. You can now edit the Customer Notes, even though the invoice has been printed and posted. [Ed. Note]: This has been thoroughly vetted for compliance with current GAAP.

User Defined State/Provinces
Again, so many of you wanted the ability to assign your own province/state codes it is amazing to us that we still get calls about this. So if you want to sell into various territories in the Bahamas, you can now enter those codes at will [Ed. Note: Please do invite us down for an on-site demo when convenient ;).

User Defined Counties
And while we were at it, we gave you the ability to specify a County/Parish for each Postal Code. You asked. We listened. This gets updated automatically if you have CCH TaxSolver, or you can enter your own County information. Other than for tax purposes, why should you care? Well, if you enter the appropriate information into your Postal Code table, you can run Sales History reports by county/parish that's why. Repeat: fill out the Postal Codes (or purchase the Tax Solver database to do it for you) and you can now sort and subtotal any Sales Report in SAFE by County/Parish.

Quick Vs. Thorough Calculate Usage
Many of you have written to ask the difference between these two new options in inventory. The truth is that there really is no difference in what they do, so long as you have no remote offices. And the 'Quick' mode runs, well, it runs a lot more quickly than the 'Thorough' mode. So, these buttons are a bit of a misnomer. Here's the rule to follow:
1. You should always use the Quick mode unless you are using ROX for Remote Office updates.

2. If you are using ROX, you may still use Quick mode so long as you are not entering new Sites at each branch office. In other words, so long as your branch's list of Sites does not change, you can use Quick mode. You only need use Thorough mode if this is the case, and you only need use it at the Host office; you can always use Quick mode at each branch.

Had Enough?
Hopefully you found at least one tidbit in the above list which came as a pleasant surprise. Want more? Next time, we'll talk about some of our lesser known SAFExtensions in our annual 'When are you guys going to <fill in the blank>?' report. This is always a fun one, as we get to discuss some of our competitors 'Fantastic New Ideas' which we've already been doing for the past several years.

See you then!

Ciaran's Corner: Annual Backup Rant!
Backups are a bit like life insurance: Everyone wants it, but no one wants to have to use it. Which is why many people don't deal with it. But deal with it you will have to; sooner or later. Like death and taxes, needing to restore data is almost inevitable at one time or another. Now, with SAFE SQL, you may want to reconsider your backup strategy.

SAFE's SQL engine can back up data in several different ways.
First, there is the traditional data backup. You shut down all processes and run your traditional backup to tape or disk. If your office has only a few users and you have no 24/7 on-line presence (Ollie or WebSAFE), then this still makes sense. The only difference may be that SAFE SQL uses a lot more disk space than SAFE 5.1, so you may wish to consider a new backup device if your tapes are at or near  capacity. Those of you using Zip Disks will likely want to invest in a DVD Recorder (currently prox. $200) to backup your data.

Secondly, for larger installations, there are In-Use File Managers which can backup all your data cleanly, even if the files are in use. The pioneer in this was St. Bernard Software (which we still love), but you may be able to get a better deal from your original vendor on In-Use options for Veritas' Backup Exec and CA's ArcServe. An In-Use file manager makes sense if you have lots of other documents besides SAFE which are constantly changing (for example, if you have a pre-press or design system in-house with tons of critical images which are constantly being updated.)

Third, you can instruct the database to back up itself automatically at any time of day. This usually only takes 5-10 minutes, even for larger databases. This is a great way to keep a warm backup available and minimize downtime for your on-line presence. This must be done with no users accessing the data (everyone get out of SAFE!) but it minimizes the down time of a traditional backup since you can backup to a free area on a hard disk and then let your regular backup system capture that data anytime, whether users are accessing the live data or not. And since the backup is a single disk file, you can backup to multiple destinations (say to a DVD or CD-R) just in case your tape drive is ahem... 'somewhat less than reliable'.

Incoming Rant
Which brings me to my annual rant on backup media. When was the last time you checked your backup system? How do you know it works? Have you done a test restore on your tapes recently? My guess is that you have not. Suggestion: many of you are required by law to have your fire extinguishers checked yearly. GREAT! When the guy comes to recharge them (or whatever happens) why not do a test of your tapes?

By the way, is there even one person in your office who actually knows how to run a restore? Ah, your dealer does. Great. Does he work nights and Sundays? He better, because that's when you're going to need to do it and you'll feel awfully silly having to call him on Friday night at 6:15PM only to be greeted by an answering machine.

And while we're at it: Who is it who actually has possession of the tapes? Your brother-in-law? Really. And he keeps them exactly where? Oh, in the glovebox of his SUV. Fine. And he is usually where on weekends if you needed a tape in an emergency? Ah, at the cabin, I see.

By the way, you have how many tapes, precisely? Two? How about getting TEN like I suggest every year and rotating them according to a strict schedule so that in case they break or wear out you're not totally hosed.

And these tapes are how old? Hmmmm. Have you ever touched a tape after it came hot out of the drive? All that whizzing causes most of them to begin to have errors within one year.

Sorry to sound so harsh, but I think you get my point. Over the years, what we have found is that Tape Drives have been notoriously unreliable for our customers, not because tape drives are intrinsically bad, but simply because the things one needs to do in order to use them successfully are often 'honored in the breech'. Think of tape drives as being a lot like those home gyms: They work great. If you actually follow the plan.

I'll have some specific case studies in our next issue (and further lectures, ;) ).

Til Next Time,

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume V #20