By Paul Rony on 6/20/2006 8:06 AM

It has been a while since my last entry.  I have been working so hard on the reporting module that I simply could not spare the cycles.  In any case, progress is good and we hope to have a beta release at the beginning of July.

The SplendidCRM Reporting module will use the Report Definition Language (RDL) that Microsoft created a few years ago.  RDL is an XML-based specification.  This is going to provide unsurpassed flexibility when it comes to report generation.  SplendidCRM will have a reporting module similar to that of SugarCRM, but it will also have the ability to import and export a report in RDL.

Microsoft has indicated that they will release Reporting Services as part of SQL Server Express, which suggests that there will soon be a free report designer. 

Eventually, we should be able to take advantage of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services with the reports stored on the server, but we will not do so on our first release.

 

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By Paul Rony on 5/3/2006 1:59 PM

We have just completed development on the ACL system.  ACL is a critical component of any CRM, so we are pleased to be able to offer it so soon after the release of our 1.0 product.

If you are interested in a preview, please send me an email and I will see if we can included you in our private/internal beta testing.  Otherwise, look for a public beta in the next two weeks.

 

By Paul Rony on 4/21/2006 1:56 AM

We were making great progress porting SplendidCRM to Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 15.0, right up until the Sybase provider failed. 

The hard part is usually converting the SQL scripts to the Sybase format.  It was a bit painful writing SQL functions in Java, but we did it.  And we resigned ourselves into accepting that Sybase does not allow stored procedures to accept a text field as an input.  But it is always frustrating when we have to debug another company's product.

The Sybase ADO.NET driver has a problem when parameters are used through the IDbDataParameter common interface. An Input/Output parameter throws an exception when the Value parameter is accessed after procedure execution.

We have posted a bug on the Sybase site, but we are not optimistic that they will fix the problem any time soon.  Until they fix the bug, we cannot continue.

 

By Paul Rony on 3/22/2006 10:47 PM

While working on a component that will allow the SplendidCRM installation utility to update an existing database, we ran across an obscure Oracle bug.  Here is the error:

            PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "" when expecting one of the following:     return

 

The error prevented all of our functions in Oracle to compile fine, but be marked as Invalid.  This had a cascading effect of causing our views in Oracle to generate an compiler error stating that a dependent function was invalid.

 

After hours of research and experimentation, we narrowed the problem down to the use of the carriage-return line-feed pair (CRLF) that is common to text files used on the Windows platform.  Whereas the rest of the world generally treats the CRLF pair as whitespace, Oracle does not.

 

The solution was to simply replace CRLF with LF before creating executing the scripts in Oracle.

 

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By Paul Rony on 3/6/2006 11:08 PM

On March 6, 2006, SugarCRM officially acknowledged the threat posed by SplendidCRM. It has done so by deleting all posts that reference or mention SplendidCRM on their forums.

We could not think of a better way to be acknowledged as worthy adversary.

As we bow to show mutual respect, we simply say to John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, "thanks".

By Paul Rony on 3/1/2006 12:13 AM

Here is the quote from their web site:

"Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer."

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/index.html

We are currently testing against Oracle 10g Release 2, so we are not expecting any additional development effort.  We will, however, need to create a new VMware instance and regression test against XE.

It is a good thing we are developing a regression testing tool, because we have a bunch of databases to support:

SQL Server 2000 SQL Server 2005 Oracle Database 9i Oracle Database 10g Oracle Database XE IBM DB2 Express-C MySQL 5 We would add Ingres to the list, but they do not support User-Defined Functions.

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By Paul Rony on 2/23/2006 4:19 PM

We are hoping that the hefty installation requirements will not limit its use.  The worst part is all of the license agreements that you must navigate through during installation. 

 

SplendidCRM Plug-in for Outlook 2003 is almost identical to the plug-in from SugarCRM, but adds the ability to use Windows Authentication when communicating with SplendidCRM.

 

The only disappointing point is that, for compatibility purposes, we use the same SOAP interfaces as designed by the SugarCRM team.  I use the word disappointing because only a PHP developer would be satisfied by sending or receiving a record in the form of a 2-dimentional array of strings.  SOAP is an incredibly flexible and powerful transport with the ability to use strong data types, yet we are stuck storing everything in an array of strings.

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By Paul Rony on 2/22/2006 12:32 AM

Special thanks to Keven Goldman of Goldman Design.

By Paul Rony on 2/11/2006 3:02 AM

It has been an exciting week as we build our infrastructure to support regression testing.  We got a couple of HP/Compaq ProLiant DL360 G4s with support for 64-bit Windows.  On top of them, we installed VMware GSX Server 3.2.1 and proceeded to build testing operating systems to test SplendidCRM against SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, IBM DB2 Express-C and MySQL 5.

 

VMware GSX is not as powerful as VMware Workstation 5 when it comes to managing snapshots, but we needed a better way to run multiple simultaneous operating systems on a single machine.  In any case, VMware GSX is rock solid as are the DL360 G4s.  VMware has recently announced the release of a free version of the GSX product that they have renamed VMware Server.

 

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By Paul Rony on 2/3/2006 4:35 PM

On January 30, 2006, IBM released a free version of their DB2 UDB database. Here is the quote from their web page: "DB2 Express-C is completely free to download, develop, deploy, test, run, embed, and redistribute."

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/edition-expressc.html

I simply could not resist the temptation to add support for DB2.  This was a personal challenge as I have never developed for DB2, but had wanted to ever since they added the ability to support stored procedures a few short years ago.  SplendidCRM now supports all the major database platforms; this is something that SugarCRM has yet to accomplish.

So, for the last 4 days, I've been working on porting the 110 tables, 20 functions, 190 views, and 290 procedures from SQL Server to DB2.  Although I have yet to begin testing, my progress has been nothing short of phenomenal.  Here is a summary of the hours it has taken:

   7 hours...

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