Possible Applications of Advantage Database Server for Visual FoxPro Developers

Summary:

In our last article, we described our first contact with Advantage Database Server and how we now use it to enable us offer a Client/Server version of our application. In this article, we will explore other possible areas in which you can effectively apply Advantage Database Server as a Visual FoxPro developer.

Introduction:

The Guys at Advantage Database Server have been pitching Advantage to the Visual FoxPro Community for several years now. Some of us who have embraced Advantage as a data store find that as a native ISAM database engine with close compatibility to Visual FoxPro databases, we can apply Advantage Database server in several ways. Using Advantage Database Server has many advantages to the Visual FoxPro developer. This article is a summary of the different ways we have found that we can apply and utilize Advantage with our Visual FoxPro projects. The sub sections that follow will explore the various ways in which Advantage Database Server can be applied.

The Advantage ODBC Driver for Visual FoxPro:

If you have applications that have been accessing your Visual FoxPro database through ODBC, you will quickly find that a major problem is that the existing VFP ODBC Driver (the last one shipped with VFP 6) will not work with VFP 9 if you use any of the new VFP 9 data types that do not exist in VFP 6. The Advantage ODBC Driver is completely compatible with VFP 9.

Before you can use the Advantage ODBC Driver, you must install Advantage Database Server or Advantage Local Server – the ODBC Driver always tries to link to an Advantage Database Server instance. Luckily for us, the guys at Advantage were very helpful, picking a quick interest in us from the very first time we downloaded the product.  They quickly sent us keys to work with a trial version. As soon as the product was installed, we used DBCConvert.Prg utility freely supplied by Advantage to create an Advantage Data Dictionary (.add) – an Advantage version of the VFP .DBC file we were using. The database conversion utility creates the .add file leaving your .dbc file unchanged so that your existing VFP app will keep using the VFP Database through the .dbc file while any other clients (including our Crystal Reports) can get at the VFP Database through our Advantage Data Dictionary (.add) file.

These clients can include any software that consumes VFP data by means of ODBC. In our case, these included applications written in VB 6 that were integrated with our VFP Project – these used the VFP data by means of ODBC while our VFP application was still on the VFP 6 Code base. For the time being, the problem of unfettered access to our VFP data was resolved, albeit temporarily since the version of Advantage we were using was a trial version with a fixed expiry date. If you want to try out the Advantage ODBC Driver, follow these steps:

Ensure that you have either Advantage Database Server (ADS) or Advantage Local Server (ALS) with a valid key and the ODBC Driver (adsodbc.exe) installer packages downloaded from the Advantage Web Site (http://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/dz/content.aspx?key=20)
Install your Advantage Database Server to a windows Server somewhere on your network (or if you want to install a local version on your XP or Vista, this is also possible). In our case, we installed our Software on a computer running Windows 7.
Double-click the file adswin_x86_32 (this is 32-bit ADS. The 64 bit ads is the same but ends with 64). Follow the instructions of the installer to have ADS installed. You will find that the installer runs fairly quickly.
Now double-click the file adsodbc.exe to install your ODBC driver. The ODBC Driver will prompt you for an instance of ADS. Point to your instance of ADS. Even though the ADS documentation says that the file DBCConvert.Prg will be installed when you install the ODBC Driver, we found that it is installed when you install the Advantage OLE DB Driver, not the ODBC Driver. The OLE DB Driver is named oledb.exe. The DBCConvert.Prg is installed in the same folder where the OLE DB driver is installed to. This utility program is written in Visual FoxPro and you will need to run it from within VFP. With these files installed, you are now ready to convert your VFP database (.dbc) file.
Start VFP. Ensure that the VFP .dbc file you want to convert is closed and is not in use either through a Client program or through the VFP IDE.

In the VFP Command window, you may now type DO DBCConvert.Prg. If V FP returns an error message saying that the file does not exist, then you will either have to copy the file DBCConvert.Prg to the VFP Program folder or you will have to use SET DEFAULT/SET PATH so that VFP will search for and find the file. The Open dialog box displays, prompting you to open the VFP Database you want to convert

Select the required database file from the  Open dialog box and then choose Ok. The utility begins generating the new .add file. The file has the same name as your Visual FoxPro database but with the .add file name extension. The .add file is created in the same folder where your .dbc file is located. You will also find the Advantage tables (.adt) files that report the results of the upgrade including FieldUpgradeResults.adt, TableUpgradeResults.adt, RelationsUpgradeResults.adt, ViewUpgradeResults.adt.
You can now create an ODBC Connection in Control Panel by means of the ODBC Administrator using the Advantage ODBC Driver.
You can now make any client applications you write consume your VFP Data using the usual ODBC Connection Information. For example, when you create connection strings in Visual Basic, you can use syntax like ‘strConn = “DSN=MYODBCCONN”‘ and then pass this to your Ado data Connection Object.

Offering a Client-Server Version of your application

Most Visual FoxPro developers are usually accustomed to building complete data management applications (program and database storage) using Visual FoxPro. However, the rigor required of today’s enterprise applications often demand increased storage, strong security, performance and compliance with industry standards. Advantage Database Server can be a natural choice as a Client-Server database engine for Visual FoxPro developers. To begin,  with, Advantage offers extensive support Visual FoxPro table formats and offers tools to access that data. But most compelling is the fact that ADS is also a fast ISAM Remote Client-Server Database Engine.

The objective would be to run your existing Visual FoxPro applications written for a Visual FoxPro database unchanged against an ADS Data Store with little or no code re-writes. You would have to create an ADS Database with the same name and tables as your VFP Database and then  use remote views to access this data. Each view in your ADS would have a name that corresponds to a table in your VFP database. For a detailed description of how you can use VFP in this manner, see our article ‘Test Driving the Advantage’.

When you use Remote Views with ODBC, you can even reuse your old Visual FoxPro database by simply pointing the ODBC connection to it.  Since VFP is such a great data store, what are the benefits you get by using Advantage as a data store instead? One clear benefit is that you will at least rid your application of the perennial problem of database and table corruption so prevalent with File-Server databases such as Visual FoxPro. Secondly you now have a client/server application that could potentially scale to any size. Third, you deliver the benefits of increased storage capacity and data security to your clients. Unlike VFP, you could apply Login information to your Advantage Database Server. Fourth, you put your data in a format that is easily accessible by other xBASE tools as well as non xBASE tools such as Visual Studio .Net/Visual Studio 2005/Visual Studio 2008.

VFP provides other means to enable you build VFP applications that run against Advantage Database server. For example, you could use Cursor Adapters or SQL Pass Through (SPT) technology. However, if you need to get existing applications running quickly with minimal code amendments, Remote Views is the way to go.

Application Convergence and Migration:

Since Microsoft’s announcement of no VFP 10, any VFP developer worth his salt will be concerned with how to stay in business. How the VFP language evolves or whether it even survives will remain to be seen, but every VFP developer must decide on a way forward for their own portfolio of VFP applications. Advantage Database Server is also helping us in this respect. We are able to keep using and deploying our existing VFP applications while getting at the Visual FoxPro Database through Advantage from Visual Web Developer 2008.

From Visual Web Developer 2008, you can get at your data by using the Advantage Ole db Provider for .Net which connects through the Advantage Data Dictionary file (.add). in this way, we are rewriting (migrating) our applications while ensuring that both the existing windows based VFP application and the new web based version done with Visual Web Developer 2008 use the same database (convergence). This approach allows us to remain in business by selling our existing Windows applications and even enhancing it in VFP while doing a new version in another language. The existing VFP Database will eventually be converted to an Advantage Database so that the existing VFP app will be carried forward as a Windows version of the system while the new version done on Visual Web Developer will be marketed as a web based version.

Conclusion:

As a VFP developer., Advantage Database Server helps you in many ways. Most especially, you will be able to stay in business by selling various versions of your existing VFP apps and even reaching for an upscale version. You will also get an opportunity to develop new versions without breaking compatibility with existing applications. Reach out for unlimited opportunities….gain the true database advantage for Visual FoxPro….

Customer service can be an advantage in Managed hosting explain

There are often doubts rising in the minds of the website owners about whether they should go for managed hosting as the service provider for their websites. If you are also having the same doubts, then consider one factor. You should only think about the customer service that is provided by the managed hosting. No other web hosting service provider can provide such services to you.

Once you have called the customer service of your managed web hosting service provider for anything, you never have to call them twice. The moment you call, the call is answered, your query or problem is heard and the solution is worked upon until you get the solution. This prompt service makes these managed hosting companies stay in the business successfully. Since in one call all the problems are fixed thus you can see you are not only getting good server but also good service too.

Another good thing about the customer service provided by the managed hosting is that you would always get help from experienced IT professional and is not directed to any junior technician or helpdesk executive. This means that your problems would be understood and immediately catered too.

Some managed hosting service provider provide another service free of cost to their customers who have complex hosting configurations and that is Technical Account Manager Program which would be of great help to you if there is any problem related to the hosting configuration. For accessing this facility you can dial a direct number and avail the facility for 24 hours.

Another great advantage that is provided by the customer service of any managed hosting service provider is the use of the latest technology in solving the issues. With the help of such technology they can access the server directly. Thus the data in your server remains secured and all the actions taken by the customer service team is tracked.

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Unlimited Hosting, Limited Advantage

There are plenty of web hosts providing numerous shared hosting plans to webmasters. Some hosts have multiple plan levels to suit even a “single page” website to small & medium size businesses with full ecommerce features. There are some web hosts that also offer Unlimited Shared Web Hosting Plans. So what is “Unlimited Web Hosting” Plan? Let’s digg deep and find out more about the plan and its advantages.

What is Unlimited Web Hosting Plan?
Usually, Unlimited Web hosting plan refers to a web hosting plan that offers Unlimited Disk Space and Unlimited monthly Disk Transfer or Bandwidth. With more and more web hosting companies offering Unlimited space and bandwidth, the competition has intensified and now many web hosts are offering unlimited domain hosting, unlimited sub-domain, unlimited email, unlimited mysql database, etc as a part of their Unlimited Hosting package.

Literally offering every feature with no restristions. These plans are also very competitively priced. One can sign up for such plan for under per month.

Such plans are very attractive and mean that the webmaster can venture out with no restrictions whatsoever. But these type of plans are surely unsustainable for any hosting company, so What’s the catch in Unlimited Hosting.

Unlimited Hosting and The Catch
If a web hosting company offers “Unlimited Hosting” plan and every one stores infinite data and attract tens of millions of visitors, then the hosting company would need have infinite number of data centers and servers to meet such usuage and demand. But do web hosts that offer unlimited plans really have such capacity? The answer is NO.

It’s technically and financially unsustainable and impossible. So When they offer Unlimited Hosting plan, the host ensures that there is always a way to restrict use. How do they do it? They do it by referring to their plan’s Terms of Service (ToS) and Fair Usage Policy (FUP). That’s the catch!

So the real advantage of “Unlimited hosting plans” is short lived when web hosts enforce fair use policy. What is fair use is dependent on so many factors and only known to the hosting company. So whenever they want to press FUP, they can to restrict almost any feature in the so called Unlimted Hosting.

Ways in which Unlimited Hosting advantages are limited by Web Hosts
As mentioned above, web hosts cite their ToS and Fair Use Policy to limit what it purports to be an Unlimited Hosting plan. Below are two most common means in which a web host may restrict or limit the Unlimited plan features:

CPU Trottling
In shared hosting, one server is used to hosts numerous webistes and in unlimited hosting, if a website is found to be using excessive server space or CPU memory on the server, the web host may limit the website’s disk space usage by trottling the site to, what it thinks is a fair share of the server. So believing that your website can post unlimited data on the server is banished.

Bandwidth Restrictions
Similar to CPU trottling, an abusive website may be restricted to use only a limited bandwidth per month and exceeding such limit would mean that the website would be unavailable to its visitors during the remainder of that month.

Above are just handful of methods to restrict the seemingly unrestricted hosting plan. In the real world, there is nothing called Unlimited web hosting. It’s part of the trick to make people sign up for hosting plan. So when choosing Unlimited Hosting you should be aware of the fact that a restriction on your use can be made by your web hosts. One should also note that web hosts, who follow the industry best practise, do not randomly restrict your use of disk space or bandwidth. So choose carefully and know what you want from an Unlimited Hosting before hand.

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Seo Article Writing Services – Are You Taking Full Advantage Of Your Market?

Many people have come to be familiar with SEO article writing services and the role they play in the internet today. For those who are not up to speed, the skinny is that SEO article writing services produce content for sites, blogs, and article directories with the intention of increasing their rank in the search engines thus driving more traffic and business to the site owners.

SEO Article Writing Services -A Continual Process

Many people think that once they have hired a company offering SEO article writing services and had their content produced, they are done. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tap the full potential of SEO article writing services, you need to have a continuous campaign to keep your page rank up. This is especially true for blogs, since they need fresh content on a continual basis. If you have taken advantage of some SEO article writing services in the past, but have discontinued it, check your statistics and chances are you will find a significant decrease since you stopped using SEO article writing services.

SEO Article Writing Services 101

The first thing you must know about SEO article writing services, is that the tone of the product must fit the page wherein it is going to be used. This will vary a great deal from site to site. For those using SEO article writing services to create back links via article directories, the tone is not so important as the content quality, relevance, and keyword density. But for those publishing content to a blog or web page from SEO article writing services, you must be sure that you contract a company that specializes in SEO article writing services. They can make or break your SEO campaign and if they break it, you lose money twice. The first money lost is in choosing poorly in your SEO article writing services you pay to produce the content. The second monetary loss is from reduced traffic and lost revenue from potential sales and repeat customers.

When you are choosing a company to provide you with SEO article writing services, you need to make sure that the company is custom writing your content. You don’t want SEO article writing services that consist of large packages of articles of a general nature. That is just filler for your site and will probably do more harm than good. You will notice the best results when you hire a firm that specializes in SEO article writing services and has a writer create content specifically for your website and then the company transfers full rights to you; you own the work.

Professional SEO article writing services will be able to consistently produce content that is half and half. This means that half of the content is mean to be interesting and informative and the other half will be formatted in a strategic fashion that only a company experienced in SEO article writing services will be able to combine. Choosing wisely from among the many SEO article writing services is paramount to your success.

The Advantage of Using a Colocation Service For Online Entrepreneurs

Many online entrepreneurs do not bother with purchasing expensive IT equipment. Sadly, these businessmen do not have the necessary capital for expenses like this. This puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to competing with big companies that have full blown in-house IT departments. For many online entrepreneurs, it’s not because they don’t place value on reliable and consistent hosting, because they do (even more so than other more traditional business owners). It’s mainly due to the high costs that they don’t purchase the needed server equipment. Colocation gives these internet business owners the ability to get the power of expensive server equipment at a fraction of the cost.

Colocation is currently the best option for online businesses that want the power and reliability of an IT department without the costs involved to have one onsite. To put things simply, colocation means that you install your own server at a colocation company’s facilities. This allows you to utilize their IT team and their expensive equipment for a small fee. You will also be able to share unlimited bandwidth with other people who use the colocation company’s services.

There are many benefits associated with colocation. Aside from having unlimited bandwidth for your website and protection from power outages and downtimes, you also get a lot more. Since you are using your own server that is physically located at the colocation company’s facility, you can upgrade it anytime if you think the machine is outdated or if you are not satisfied with its performance. You also have a say in what server software you use. You can change it at your leisure without the need to answer to a hosting provider.

Another benefit is not having to deal with the expertise involved in setting up and running your own servers. IT technicians are well paid for a reason. Not having to deal with the effort of maintaining your servers yourself allows you to focus on other parts of your business.

You can also travel around the world if you want and you won’t have to worry about your server. You can access it any time you want through a special IP address that the colocation company provides. Servers installed in colocation facilities also rarely ever experience downtimes. Your server has access to power redundancy measures and other safety features that can usually be seen at expensive IT offices.

Since your server is stored at a secure facility, you do not have to worry about theft or vandalism. A typical colocation company’s facility has 24-hour security and technicians check you server frequently.

If you do not know anything about managing a server, then a colocation company can also provide you with an IT team of your own for a small fee. These are advantages that, until recently, only major corporations enjoyed. Now, you can have your own IT team, server facility and security force maintaining and protecting your server at all times. If you depend on your website for a living, then it makes sense to host it in a server that is reliable, fast and safe. You owe it to yourself to safeguard your websites and online businesses.

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There are many places online where you can set up a free website to help you get started with making money. Many say that these websites are a fast way for you to lose your credibility online, and perhaps this is true to a point. But there is also a lot of good that can come from using these free websites, and they don’t have to ruin your business if you don’t let them.

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