Most companies are not used to receiving this high level of support.  Imagine having a group of support and application development specialists available to you in the next room whenever you have a problem or question. 

Below is just a very small sampling of recent feedback we have received.  (Of course, after to many years, a small sampling is quite large!)

Customer comments are in italics.  Our comments are in a normal font.

For a customer comment too large to put here, click here.

Thanks Dennis, I appreciate that. And thanks for all your great work over the past couple years. Your product and your support have been very key in our implementation here and we couldn't have done it without you!

This is from a long term RoAccess customer. 

Dennis, you are right on the money.

The person found path reports coming back from Rochade that were nonsense.  We documented the problem and created a "work around".

This is too cool!

When creating custom applications and screens, we showed them how to add features without needing to do programming.

Thank you.  It works perfectly.

A customer asked if we could extend our customizable "user buttons" to allow any style of URL to be attached.  So now you can put a button on a screen, and have it connect to a Web site via HTTP, of download a file via a shared drive (file://) or via a ftp site (ftp://).  This is in addition to connecting the button to a user written program.

Dennis, you did it! Way beyond our wildest dreams! Just to have 2 times faster performance would have been impressive/ This is awesome news.   Thanks for the great work in speeding this up so much. IT will really save us lots of time and effort. 

This company was using ASG's Content Loader (csv loader).  A 50,000 row spreadsheet updating deep into NameSpaces in an extremely large database took 24 hours.  We sent them the latest version of RoLoader, that for the same spreadsheet took less than 7 minutes!.  It surprised us all.  They tried several other spreadsheets, and where ASG's Content Loader took hours, RoAccess only took minutes.

This is awesome news.   Dennis, thanks for the great work in speeding this up so much. IT will really save us lots of time and effort.

What took 24 hours in the ASG Content Loaded took 7 minutes in RoLoader.

Another set of enhancements we asked Dennis to work into the RoLoader product, great turnaround as usual!

Self explanatory.

We are extremely responsive to customer's needs.
 

So it was a helpful message and I was able to easily correct the spreadsheet.

This company called about a warning from RoLoader which identified an improper format for the spreadsheet. RoLoader checks the validity of the spreadsheet format.  This helps ensure the data will be loaded properly. 

That did the trick....I really appreciate that because we had users going to acceptance testing this morning and it sure looked less confusing if we filtered the itemtypes. Thanks again.

This Dept of the Army installation has a lot of ItemTypes.  When you first list ItemTypes for the Subject Areas, most of the ItemTypes are not significant as they are "lower level".  We showed him how to modify a user subroutines to determine which ItemTypes are displayed to different users when a user initially logs in.  But the Items of those ItemTypes still can be viewed by following links or NameSpace relationships. So this is much more flexible then merely using user classes.

We appreciate being able to use FrontPage to design out roaccess screen layouts. They look extremely professional and user friendly.

RoAccess was designed to be user friendly.
 

We work with users to have their screens and reports look visually great.
 

got the file, Thank you so much!

Us working to assist a customer with examples.

We work closely with our customers.
 

This person used the RoQuery reporting API to write a custom report, but did not know how to do something.  She sent the program to me, and I finished it for her, and sent it back
 

Rochade 7.0 support works fine.

Just feedback that you can always trust RoAccess.

As a rule, we respond very quickly.
 

Keeping customers happy.

Since I had a copy of their database, I was able to alert them to some changes in Rochade 7.0 that would negative impact them, so they would at least be aware of it.

Thanks for the help! This will save us quite a bit of overhead for the alternative solution of creating and maintaining a copy subject area which would have had the linking instances stripped out.

A customer had an unusual need to satisfy a customer, and we added a feature to RoAccess to support them. 

A quick way to correct a bug.

This works great!  I will have a couple of really happy users tomorrow!

An error was reported in a new standard feature that we added especially this customer.  We worked too quickly because this new feature was very badly needed, and a bug in its implementation existed.  But we corrected the error the same day it was  reported.  We could have waited a month or so to go through more rigorous testing, but IT users many times would like to give their customers what they request fast.  That way your customers will see you as very responsive to their needs.

We've got RoLoader cranking already, looking good.

New RoLoader customer's first impressions of the RoLoader system.

Hi Dennis,

This is simply to thank you very much for all your troubleshooting efforts during the investigation of our RoAccess migration issues. Just as we were about to throw in the towel and go to Plan B, Laura suggested to simply rename the existing virtual directory and FIRST create a new one from scratch, customize all IIS settings for this new virtual dir and THEN copy the data over from the current server WITHOUT modifying anything. Guess what, it worked RIGHT OFF THE BAT !!!! The order of things was important. You and Laura were right on when bringing up the possibility of a bug within IIS !! I am very much surprised that a major bug present in IIS 4.0 was NOT fixed in IIS 5.0 ( perhaps it will be in future versions... )

In any case, we are proceeding with the migration this Friday. If all goes as planned, as of Monday morning, all our RoAccess users should be creating tickets on the new box !

Once again, thank you for your excellent support !

Yves Péris
Database and Web Infrastructure Services, Industry Canada
Services de bases de données et d'infrastructure web, peris.yves @ ic.gc.ca

We have found numbers of really hard to fix bugs in IIS and other WEB products, and work very hard to help our customers be able to be successful.

Hallo Dennis,

it works again !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This German bank RoAccess customer found that after upgrading his SCANCOB application, RoAccess stopped working.  After working many nights (our nights, their days) with them, we found and corrected the problem.  They were using a version of RoAccess that was over 3 years old, and they had hand edited their RoAccess (since we provide source code) to provide custom functionality.  Being a bank, they are conservative, and since the older version of RoAccess met their needs, they saw no reason to upgrade.  A while ago Rochade changed the way the $PRE instruction operates which is still contrary to the documentation and examples for the $PRE instruction.  We corrected this problem 2 years ago.  However, since this customer had a 3 year old version of RoAccess, it did not have the needed changes.  We hand edited their version of RoAccess to add the needed change.  This way, they did not need to upgrade to a newer version, and all their hand edits remained in tact.  Not many companies will do this for their clients.  August Computing has done this for many.

Thanks so much, this makes finding things much easier.

A client with many large enterprise models asked if a an extended sorting approach could be taken with displaying lists of Items.  Now when Items with the same base name (NameSpaces) you can quickly see them grouped and sorted by taking into account their full parentage.  This allows you to more quickly find and identify generic  names.

It works perfectly. Thank you very much.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen

This German customer was using forms created in Front Page, and asked if there was a way to format date/time for &STAMP (the last update date/time/user) in a European format.  We send him a way to make his custom forms dynamic to format the last update date to his liking.

Thank you! That is just what I needed.

This person was writing a custom WEB Reporting application using the RoQuery ad-hoc query engine, and needed something special.  We told them how to do it using built in features of RoAccess.

You're a gentleman and a scholar and there are darned few of us left.... ;-)

We worked with this US Dept of Defense person to help resolve a problem with firewalls and routers in their load balancing setup.  As you can see, many of our customers have a good sense of humor!

That conveys much more information to our end users  Thanks for the fast turnaround.

This company was viewing their NameSpace data, and had some feedback from their Repository end users.  The listing on the Item List screen showed Items using the fully qualified names, which was necessary and desirable.  But the entire names were very long, and sometimes had many parents.  Their end users said it was not obvious what the actual Item name was, and where the parentage information began.  The two were just separated by periods.  Also, since some of the Item names contained periods in themselves, sometimes it looked like an Item had more parents that it really had.  The periods in the Item name made it look  like additional concatenated parent names.  We had this same feed back from several clients.  So now, the actual Item name is in bold (which is easier to see).  Secondly the parentage is put in square brackets, which also helps show what part of the fully qualified name is the parents portion.  We implemented this few feature in 2 days.  On the one hand this is a small thing, but not for your end users.  When they see their requests being fulfilled quickly, they feel their Repository Department is more responsive to their needs, and they tend to support their Repository Department much more.
 

Yes, we were able to do the NS search as you described. We also tried it for several other queries and it worked well!

When we develop new features, we often allow multiple companies to first give us feedback to see if what we have is useful and meets their needs as we are developing the software.  This way customers can be assured of getting what they need when we release the new versions.  Some companies give their customers what the company thinks they need.  We at RoAccess give the customers what they ask for (customer driven).

 
Not to pester... but are you planning on making the NS Search button accessible from other screens as well

When a company sees a very useful new feature, they start thinking of new ways to use that feature.  That is, the more you give them, the more they want, because they see the possibility of increasing number of needs being filled. This person asked that the NameSearch feature be available from the Item Detail screen, in addition to the standard Item List screens.  It was available to them the very next day.

We also were excited to see the links are now only on the basename, which really makes it easier to distinguish names.

When displaying Item Names when using NameSpaces, there is always the question of how to display it.  In most cases the entire "fully qualified name" (contains all the parent name) is the answer.  But when displaying forward links, the vast majority of them are to Items in the same NameSpace.  Displaying the fully qualified names is really redundant, because the current Item is their parent, and you already have the fully qualified name for the parent.  Also, the extended names can be quite long, and displaying only the base name made the information on the screen easier to read and comprehend.

Yes, this works great!

A Wisconsin State agency had a need, and asked if we could implement it in RoAccess.  We did, and it became a standard part of RoAccess.

As usual...many thanks..I just had an improper .Net Web.config file. When you get back into town next time I would darn sure like to take you out to dinner. I've got a favorite restaurant here called the Buckhorn Exchange... www.buckhorn.com (great menu)...Much appreciated...again.... and regards.... This firewall testing is important because we need to open the DR up to Kansas City and Cleveland....Getting the RoAccess deep linking working from my HTTP client gives me some flexibility for providing network trace files to our OMB technicals and Microsoft.

This US Government agency has end uses for their Metadata Repository all over the US.  They have embedded RoAccess calls into their .NET applications.  They call this "Deep Linking".  Any end user can go to any RoAccess page based on the context of the .NET application they are using.

You deserve it for all of your hard work.  You’re one of the most honest and kindest people I know. 

One of the August companies, August.Net was just acquired by a large company.  Even though August.Net was a "small" ISP oriented towards businesses, August.Net frequently was rated by DSL Reports as the best ISP in the nation, measured by customer satisfaction.  August Computing (the makers of Rochade products) provided software and data management techniques that help August.Net be successful.  Honesty and strong customer orientation help those customers be successful in their business, too.
 

I just realized something that is actually very important to us.  We occasionally find errors or typos in RoAccess documentation, and we have reported them.  Usually by the next day, you have the corrected documentations delivered to us.  It is quite unusual for a software company to get error reports from a customer, and immediately make the correction and get it back to the customer.  So much of the Rochade standard documentation is out of date and or incorrect.  It somehow makes us feel important for you to immediately stop development to make corrections.

We feel that incorrect or lacking documentation makes you look bad to your end users, or makes your job harder.  Attention to detail is important to us.
.

This seems to work. Thank you very much.

This customer found a "bug" in a program. She conveyed that to us, and she had the fix in her hands the next day.  What was unusual was she was a couple of revisions of RoAccess behind, and we hand edited her version of RoAccess to incorporate the fix that was in the current version.  This saved her from having to wait until she could get the latest version verified and approved for production, which is a lengthy process.  It saved her a lot of time.

Somehow, the RoAccess is a bit too flexible, and our user has many creative thoughts. I wish I could just say it can't (just a joke)

This international customer has his end users that are frequently asking for new features.  Since most new features are easy to implement in RoAccess, his end users ask for new things frequently.   The good news is their end users are happy that their requests get implemented.

Thank you very much for your help. You always fix any issues I have with Roaccess (which are minor) and even fix the problems in Rochade, which is not your problem.

Many thanks and very delighted to see the progress. You're quick as usual. Here're the initial feedback,

User feedback allows us to make sure what we provide meets your needs.

Many many thanks. I am very excited to see the progress of the update form. As usual, the implementation is very elegant, and goes beyond the expectation.

An Australian company had sent in a "wish list" of desired new features.  We deliver much more than expected.

Many thanks for the good testing tools...

A U.S. Government agency had an emergency and we responded to it immediately.

I am back up and running...a little embarrassed...and apologetic....The url I had to the XML_Service.pl had the resolved name of the front-end cluster (3 servers load-balanced)in it instead of the ip address for the back-end database server where the service is running...I really apologize for using your time up in troubleshooting this...I didn't notice it.....Thank you for the help.

This is from a US Department of Defense installation.  It is quite involved utilizing front end AND back end load sharing clusters.  Sometimes making changes things stop working, or the IP addresses are entered, or wrong machine names, or bad DNS.  We at August are happy to help you resolve the problems.  It's just of the "extras" you get with RoAccess.

Also, I made the changes you suggested and the itemname issue seems to be solved - thanks :-)

This was a really unusual request from a Canadian Government RoAccess customer.  They wanted to stay with the old style 32 character Rochade Item names.  They wanted a way to prevent RoAccess from using the Rochade V6 long extended names, because that would break all the many standard applications they have written.  Since RoAccess is supplied in source code, we sent them two simple hand edits that forced all Item names to be 32 characters or less which would be compatible with all their applications.

I'm glad to report that RoAccess is doing great! We are gaining more clients and acceptance every day - in fact the other day in a meeting using RoAccess was described as "FUN"!

Some feedback from an international customer.
 

Your solution works.
All other problems are solved. Thank you very much for your fast and uncomplicated support.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / kind regards

This German customer reported several "RoAccess" bugs in the latest massive new feature release, which we fixed quickly for him.  He also reported a strange occurrence, which we found to be a Rochade server error in both the German and English Rochade servers.  Since his company could not wait until the next release of Rochade, we altered RoAccess to "get around" the problem by performing the operation a different way.  During the dialog, he proposed a new feature that we implemented immediately.
 

Happy New Year and thanks for all of your great support.

A U.S. Dept. of Defense Installation.

This user found that when displaying RPL related error messages (like instructions that failed for some reason), what we also display some functional things to look at.  In one case, the RPL documentation error said "illegal attribute", but the cause was that a RIM was changed but the Subject Area had not been reorganized.  Now the error message suggests you see if your Subject Area needs reorganization.

This Australian customer asked us to consider adding the ability to use data update forms created with FrontPage. This is a high priority for them. They have a large number of Rochade end users, and they like very pretty, custom and professional looking screens.  RoAccess already lets you use FrontPage to create data display screens, which this customer uses a lot, but not data entry/update forms. Within a week, we showed him a working example of a  data entry/update screen created in FrontPage.

This Canadian Government customer had requested a feature that their end users had been asking for, and had send up a description of what these end users would like to see.  Within a week, we had that functionality available, and with more options than they had originally requested.

Your responsiveness is as always truly amazing and much appreciated.

This person asked if we could provide a utility to help rename their Subject Areas so they can use the Rochade V6 extended naming capability.

This Australian customer was mentioning how busy he and is team are.  He had three support requests one day (night time in Dallas), and we handled all three during his same work day.  He wondered how we can be so responsive to so many customers because every one else seems so busy.

MUCH BETTER!

Most times, we respond with a fix (in this case for RoAccess 6) in a matter of hours.  We don't want a customer to be having problems.  That makes them look bad to their end users.  We want our customers to look good, and their Depository Deportment to be successful.

Thanks for the warning --- this is something that we wouldn't have found for months and then we would never have understood why it was happening!

This customer was using a pre-release version of RoAccess 6 (which supports Rochade 6.x long extended names, name groups, etc.).  RoAccess caught the fact that although PWRDES/TABLE and PWRDES/COLUMN were defined as allowing only upper case names, the ASG "conversion utility", which converted an existing PWRDES Subject Area, created the longer name versions as lower case regardless.  This could have resulted later in a number of really difficult problems since the company had not realized this.

Thank you so much. This works and I'm going home. It was a very quiet and productive day and , I think I'm all set. You are wonderful. Have a good rest of Sunday.

This client had an extremely important presentation to management in a couple of days, and came in on the weekend to make sure it got all set up, new reports, business names, custom graphic buttons, etc.  Because ASG required them to delete and reload every one of the databases and Subject Areas because of a error in the extended link conversion process, the reloading process would be very long and error prone.  Because of how hectic it was there (crisis atmosphere), and the new reports and RoAccess features that needed to be implemented, the RoAccess support staff worked with them until all was set.  In addition, this involved #$INLINK, #$EXLINK, #$INDOC, $INCHAP and other report commands using seldom used options.  They were making an amazing "Impact Analysis" report using RoQuery.  This way, they did not have to spend time lookup up documentation during the crisis.  We tried to save them as much time and anxiety as possible to help make their presentation be a success.  We finished about 5 p.m. Sunday with them.  (Incidentally, at the same time, we were also working with the Dept of Defense where a key person would be gone next week, so we worked with him over the weekend to still get the job done.)

You have saved all the remaining little hairs on my head. (I've already pulled a bunch out) Thank you so much for another episode of "Bail the Bonehead" out of a jam. But I can guarantee you it won;t be the last. I'm DETERMINED to learn this...I'm like a pit bull on a fresh steak, I've got to throw it around and waller all over it before I dare take a real bite, but if anybody tries to take it away and not let me play with it, they will pull back a nub!! hee hee!  thanks so much,

Sometimes it may seem like there is a lot to learn with Rochade, WEB servers, and such.  But we are able and willing to help you over the learning curve so you can be productive.  This user was delving into the depths of Rochade and needed a bit of assistance.  You'll notice the humor.  Learning can be fun!

Thank you again for your support. You are a lifesaver.

Because we know both Windows and Unix so well, be can help individuals who are having a difficult time having to administer Rochade in multiple environments.

You almost alone are allowing our project to progress.  Because ASG is so slow to identify or fix our documented problems, our project would be at a standstill, otherwise.  Your providing ways to get around their problems is very greatly appreciated.

ASG's Rochade Server is complex, and because of that, it must be difficult to fix bugs and get corrections out to customers who are having serious problems.  For companies that can't wait for future patches to correct current bugs, we at RoAccess frequently are able to create utilities to get around the problem, and keep your department moving ahead.

It really pays to give you a call.  It surely makes our lives easier.  You should charge more.

This customer needed a certain functionality, and we gave them several different ways to accomplish the same thing, with no programming required on their part.  They chose the most cost effective one for them.
 

We appreciate it.  We really needed that option, and you implementing it and getting it to us in a couple of days helped make our presentation a real success.  Discussing it among ourselves, we have never done business with a company that is as responsive to our needs as your company is.

If you need a new feature or option, ask us.
 

Hey Dennis,
YOU DA MAN! I got it to work

This customer needed a way to add a hyperlink to their existing corporate metadata application that would automatically open RoAccess, split the screen, list a particular ItemType but only for Item starting with OM_.  This is an Enterprise  folders and containers application.  Piece of cake! 

A big BIG thanks for all your help you provided to me (and Telstra) in the last 7 years.  Time flies, and I am so lucky to have the chance to work with you in meeting the challenge of the repository.  Seeing how you have the best support and build customer relationships.

RoAccess customers go back a long time, in this case 7 years for this Australian firm.  Every once and a while it amazes us all how many years we've all been helping each other.  This person is going to another group and was sending us his regards.
 

This is a minor thing, but I wanted to let you know we appreciate all the new things that you are doing without increasing your product or support agreement costs.  I know your new active remote support service costs, plus the library of java applets, plus the included data entry spell checker, etc.   Anyway, I feel like we really do continue to get our money's worth from you guys.

Again, these "services" are designed to help you be successful.  The eCare remote assistance system will save you a lot of time, and make "remote training" and problem resolution very easy.  The free licenses for the Java applet library plus the ieSpell browser spell checker improve the look and feel of your system plus the quality of your data.  All these make you look better to your management and end users.  And of course, that is why the majority of our sales come from recommendations and referrals of our customers.

Thank you for working with us until very late Friday night.  We have had a difficult time finding a sponsor for Rochade, and that one group I mentioned said they would be interested in seeing some of their data in Rochade, but they were in a hurry.  The data was a mess in spreadsheets, and not normalized or organized at all.  We were extremely concerned.  We planned to work all this weekend to have it ready by Monday, although we didn't look forward to working all weekend to organize and load the data.  But you working with us and your RoLoader made the job SO much easier that we expected.  When we loaded the last batch, and all the validations passed, we knew the data quality was good.  By 10:00 p.m. were were FINISHED!  No weekend.  I can't thank you enough.  Now we are planning some of your cool user friendly menus that can direct different classes of users directly to their data and areas of interest, like TXU and Verizon did.

Metadata management is a rough life, as you probably well know.  We at RoAccess do whatever we can to assure your success so you and your group will look good.
 

p.s.  Thank your for the work you all do to show us how other companies are using Roaccess and Rochade. Manuals are OK, but real world examples are much better, at least to me.  All those screen captures on your WEB site continually give us new ideas of what we can do here.  Also, thanks for taking the time to create and manage the Yahoo "open_rochade" discussion group.  It allows us to do the same thing, but world-wide. It's good that the "good, the bad and the ugly" are discussed discussed.  To us, REAL information is much better than marketing material.

We appreciate that you don't advertise a features unless it they are really available.  Your advertising is much more honest.

Some companies pre-announce "upcoming" new features, which may or may not ever come. Not RoAccess.
 

Thanks to Dennis for all his hard work and time determining it was not a RoAccess issue, but a Rochade issue.

This customer was seeing Items in a Subject Area that were not there but in other Subject Areas.  You open an Item, and then it disappears.  A day later many Items would just disappear.  RoAccess caught it, but Autopilot did not.  We helped this customer to document their problem so they could send it to ASG support.

Actually, I wish it WAS a RoAccess bug.  At least you could have fixed it right away. 

We fix bugs extremely quickly, so you can keep working..

I don't know how companies that don't have Roaccess can survive.  Without it, we would still be fighting Rochade fires instead of serving our end users.

RoAccess is designed to help analyze and correct internal Rochade errors within a short time.  First, there is the Environment Capture that allows us to analyze problems in detail at your site that cannot be duplicated elsewhere.  It can be turned on at run-time at any time.  There is also eCare for Remote Active Desktop for viewing and sharing your and our desktops.  This is a winning combination.  Support with a plus.

Your "Remote Technical Support" has us stunned.  The problem was of course IIS and Windows, but your accessing my desktop, as my supervisor watch, had it analyzed and corrected so fast.  I was considering flying you up because you know so may WEB servers, but I didn't have to.  At first I was joking that you would be losing money because we wouldn't need to have you up for those enhancements.  But actually, because of all the travel savings, we can get more new functionality with the same amount of money.  You guys are really innovative.

Our being able to join your PC desktop session is as good as up flying to your site and sitting next to you.  Saves us time and you money.
 

I'm impressed with the eCare service you have provided to us.  It could not have come at a better time.  I don't know what caused the AP-USER Item to get trashed, bit it had us in a small crisis.  Your logging onto our desktop (with me approving each step, of course) let you fix it in less that two minutes.   That's what I call support!

We implemented eCare expressly so we could minimize your downtime.  About 2/3 of the problem reports we receive are caused by damaged internal Rochade data Items.   Helping you find them and then fixing them over the phone takes a bit of time.  Although fixing Rochade problems is not in our support contract, we do it more as a service.  eCare lets us now do it in record time.
 

Thanks for the on-line demo via the remote tech support service.  I prefer to look at running applications rather then reading dry documentation.  Reading is OK.  But discussing what I am seeing interactively I thinks is the best way.

If you want to see what an option does, rather than implementing it on your database, just visit our remote access service, and you can make the changes on our system to get the practice of enable all those options and really seeing what they do.  That way, when you enable them on your system, they can be implemented quickly.  Reading the documentation is good, but actually playing with it while we talk you through what you are seeing and how it can be used to meet you needs is much better.

I have come to appreciate how RoAccess is able to diagnose and fix damaged Rochade internal data items.  All software has bugs, that's the way it is.  Rochade is no exception. But I feel much more confident knowing my database is in good shape.  Autopilot would not complain of the damaged Rochade structures, but RoAccess lets me know of the problems.  You really had a good idea allowing a LT browse through all the internal Rochade data structures and system ItemTypes.  That allows us to pinpoint the damaged internal data.  Your hyperlinked versions report and the versions differences screen has saved us a great deal of time.  Then after finding the problem, correcting it is pretty easy with that new "Command Interpreter".  Autopilot's command interpreter is good, but you can only enter one RPL command at a time, and there are limitations. Your command interpreter allows us to enter complex sequence of RPL if needed.  That makes all the difference.  Good job.

Because of RoAccess internal Rochade data consistency checking, RoAccess helps maintain your Rochade database in a state of consistency.  And when there is a problem with a system ItemType's data, RoAccess can usually easily help you to correct it. 
 

what i have found out is that w/2000 nlb does this 'on the fly' for the interface involved in load balancing,there appears to be a number of warnings doing load balancing with 'Big IP' and switches. Now i know why i was most afraid of this part. i know you could make RoAccess do anything.

This customer was setting up multiple RoAccess servers all hitting one Rochade server.  This allows for a highly scalable system with many concurrent users.  They were experiencing BIG IP and the Windows 2000 load balancing configuration problems.  But they commented RoAccess was easy to fit into that configuration.  They just wished Windows Servers and BIG IP were as easy to configure as RoAccess. (Note: BIG IP allows for a round robin way of having each user transaction go to a different server. For instance if you have 10 RoAccess WEB servers, BIG IP could alternate users spreading it over all 10 without the users ever knowing it.  Each successive screen could be run on a different server.  Many WEB applications will not easily integrate into this environment, especially if they use session keys, like ASG's WEB Access.)  RoAccess, however,  excels in this environment.
 

I want to express my appreciation for helping me with this problem (and others).  Helping us fix Rochade when it breaks or has a problem is not part of the ro-access support contract with us, but is a Rochade problem.  But your response time and willingness to assist us anyway has made us very dependent upon you because we know you will be there when we need you.   Thank you, again.

Things do go wrong, which is a fact of life.  But we look at your Repository in a "systems manner".  We don't finger point. We find the problem, which about 90% of the time is Rochade, and we show you how to fix it, making sure you are up and running quickly.

Thanks so much for bailing me out! They say you learn my your
mistakes....the real question is....will I still be alive when I learn! he
he! I knew I had to have done something wrong. Thanks so much again!

A person making a cool customization ran requested assistance.
 

 Our technical lead has emphasized how much your support has helped this project. He has also told us that you have been very generous with your time. Thank you.

A project manager. The success of our customers is very important to us.

This works like a charm, Dennis. Thank you.
Here's another suggestion that others may like....

A user asked for a certain new feature.  We implemented it the next day, and they verified it did what they needed.  It will be a standard part of RoAccess in the next release.

We have Roaccess installed and up and running.  As you know the first thing our test users wanted was to only see the item types they each would typically use.  After 30 minutes we showed them the final product, and they were favorably impressed.  We implemented 25 user classes and 129 item types.  Each user class viewed different sets of item types.  The majority of time was taken primarily by only cutting and pasting item type names for each user class.  The approach you took to use option files rather than having us edit .html, .jsp or standard program files is a good one.  Although you said even subsequent new versions of Roaccess would not undo the option setting, we re-loaded the software from scratch to verify it for ourselves, and as you said, our customizations remained.  Very impressive.

The RoAccess goal is to let you highly customize your system without resorting to programming or modifying the base files. 

I am not sure usage figures from other customers, but we generally have about 10,000 ro-access logons a week. Of course, the happening depends on the power of the machine, and the number of users, and their usage pattern. It's very much like telephone or exchange usage. I extremely appreciate your support.

An overseas customer. They were unable to renew their customer support agreement until their reorganization was complete.  However we sent them a path to solve a problem then encountered, anyway.  If you know RoAccess customers, then you know we are more interested in your success than profits.
 

Works great Dennis. You are GOOD.

This user found a bug in RoAccess (a rare occurrence).  The correction was sent out in less than two hours.   Some companies take a long time to fix a bug and makes you have to find a workaround until maybe the next release fixes it.  On the other hand, we feel a bug is only a mere inconvenience if it can be fixed and in the customer's hands in a really short time.   Don't you agree?

I'll check it out on Mon. Wow you are wonderful.

This user user asked if there was a way to do spelling checking inside RoAccess.  In 10 minutes we responded with a really nice way to do it

Mr. Simpson,
Thank you very much for your prompt reply. I appreciate your reply and am very much impressed the way you answered my questions. I will go through the links and docs you gave me and will let you know if I find anything more needed. Thank you once again for your tremondous support.

A person asking for assistance finding what he needed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This major Stock Market user had made a custom change to the RoAccess code.  They later upgraded to a new version of RoAccess, which overwrote their custom changes.  We helped them merge their customer changes into the latest version (for free of course).

Many thanks. The design is clean and elegant. I am going overseas tonight
for a week. I am not sure if I can finish the testing. If not, I will
further inform you when I am back.

This international customer asked for a special feature be added to RoAccess.  We did, and he had a patch version of RoAccess in his hands in a couple of days.  He wasn't expecting to have his requests met is such a short time.

The users like the implementation of the new stored report type, and the
seamless integration with Excel. This allows them to download the selected
items in very special formatting requirement (joining item types,
denomalised, transformed, etc).

The user came back, and gave us the results of the user testing.

When I have a Rochade question, I tend to call you all rather than emailing Rochade technical support.  I know you will answer the question, be really thorough, and not make me feel badly in the process.  I know giving Rochade support is not really part of roaccess support, but I surely appreciate it.

Since we have been using Rochade continuously for over 10 years, we are able to help with a great many aspects of Rochade theory, fundamentals and actual implementation.  And we are happy to help.

Sorry for the joke.  I read on your WEB site that you available even on weekend.  I sent email saying problem exist at your 3 a.m. on Saturday.  Surprise, you responded.  Actually, we not ro-access customer at all, yet.  It is important to verify you do what you say.  You did.

This was different.  We have RoAccess evaluations take place all the time.  This overseas person, before they the did the evaluation, sent a "emergency response required" support email to see if we would really be available on the wee hours of a weekend.  You have to admire a company like this.  They were being extremely thorough, letting nothing to chance.

Thank you for your support.  We were working hard all weekend, and you were available the entire time!  When the hard drive crashed, we were feeling really badly.  As a result of your sincere desire to help us succeed, the demonstration Monday went really well.   Now you can get some sleep. The next time you're up here, the steaks are on me! 

We know how to re-install Rochade, WEB servers, and other components they needed.  Yes, they could have done it on their own, but because of the large volume of work, they might not have met the Monday deadline.  Since the presentation was related to the continued funding of their group,  we felt giving up a weekend to help them was the best thing to do under the circumstances.  We tend to view our customers more as friends, so it's not really an inconvenience at all.

I wanted to express our extreme satisfaction with the software you have just delivered.  The two extra utilities you provided will definitely make our job easier in the long run.  If ever we have a data problem, your software will allow us to pinpoint the problem in a small fraction of the time it would have taken us by hand.  Sometimes the scanners are a real pain, as you know.  But now we can better manage the data they bring in.

This customer gave us a contract to make a few specialized applications.  We analyzed the data they would be using, and provided some extra WEB utilities to help analyzed bad, inconsistent or incomplete scanner data.  Without these utilities, the reports would have given misleading information with no easy way to determine what was wrong with the data.  We don't like to provide "partial solutions".  We prefer to deliver "complete solutions".  It's much better for repeat business.  We will actually refuse some work if we don't feel it will really help you.  Long term  customer satisfaction is more important than short term profits.  Everybody knows this.

I wanted to let you know that you have confused our accounting department.  Our custom development contract with you was fixed price.  However you billed us for only 1/3 of the agreed upon price, telling us that the contract was completed.  We haven't had a fixed price contract be billed for less before, not that we are complaining.  Only stunned.    Now we have extra unspent money in our budget because of the money you did not bill us for, and we will get back with you to contract to get some of the features that that we did not think we could afford until next year.  

After signing the contract, we found a much simpler way to meet their needs.  We were able to deliver the solution in only about 1/3 of the expected time, so we only billed them about 1/3 of the original fixed price amount.  Yes this is a bit unusual, I guess.  But it did not seem right to bill them full price when we only really ended up spending 1/3 of the time we had originally expected to expend.  There is an old saying, "An honest day's pay for an honest day's work."

Thanks so much. Oh! You are quick! I believe you have picked an indirect
way to advise us NOT TO.

We respond quickly to questions.  This client asked if they should use a particular feature in Rochade.  We felt Rochade's security model was not sufficient to protect the highly sensitive data they consider storing in Rochade, so we advised against it, with several examples why.  We are not "yes men."  Sometimes "no" is the best answer.
 

We are extremely pleased with the thoroughness of your product. We were pleasantly surprised when we received the final version of the software we contracted with you to develop.  Although our specs were very clear as to what was required, you provided a great deal more without charging us for it.  Normally, we would have expected a change order process and higher cost, as with our other suppliers.  We found the "extras" you provided were absolutely essential.  It appeared our "specs" viewed the problem as an iceberg, only seeing 1/3 of the problem, while 2/3 were hidden from view.  The extras you provided addressed the other 2/3 of the situations we were unaware of. 

When we contract out to develop custom software, we provide not only what it required to satisfy the contract, but also what is really necessary for your applications to be a success in your organization.
 

Thanks for the speedy, detailed and informative response as usual

When customers ask questions, we usually give them a great deal of information to help the know their options as to how to best approach meeting their requirements.

With lots of interesting data having been loaded for them, I am seeing folks
get around to using the Repository and the feedback is that things are easy,
simple. The have had about a 30 minute lesson on signing on, selecting a subject
area and general RoAccess behavior.

It is harder to explain TYPES, ITEMS than it is to let them 'explore' their
own data and it seems the navigation just works in an intuitive way once they
recognize the data.

The average person learns RoAccess extremely quickly, and is able to use their data right away.

This looks great. You are wonderful for adding pieces to tell you the status and reporting on items not named. You added functionality that's needed, but that I never thought of.

This client needed a utility to process their Subject Areas so they could get a better Enterprise View of their metadata. They described their needs, and we felt that others could benefit from the same utility.  So we made it part of standard RoAccess, plus added some of additional screens and features that we thought everyone would ultimately need. 

Not having a very organised structure, we find our sites utilising 3 versions of Roaccess.

Not a problem.   Over the years, this client developed applications.  As newer versions of RoAccess came out, they did not upgrade their applications, but just left them alone. Why upgrade if everything works and it is doing just what you need?  Then Rochade 6.1 came out and they wanted to know what they had to do to upgrade the applications to talk to 6.1.  None of the versions of RoAccess were current.  One was based on RoAccess that was released 2 years ago.  We showed then how to get their 3 RoAccess versions all simultaneously talking to their new Rochade 6.1 server without having to upgrade their installations or change their code.  This saved them a lot of time and money.    Convenience, long term compatibility and low life cycle cost are trademarks of RoAccess.  Install RoAccess and forget it.

Thanks! If you get a chance to send me the 'kill' script we talked about I would appreciate it. 

This client was seeing a number of Rochade clients that refused to exit and were just taking up process slots. When a Rochade client finishes its RPL instructions, it is supposed to exit, but they weren't.  We send him a utility and scripts to easily terminate them.  This made his life much easier.

That's working now.

This client did custom programming, but was having a problem with the $PRE instruction not working when he upgraded to Rochade 6.1. His custom RPL had been working before.   We explained that now the Rochade $PRE instruction works differently than the way it used to.  We then hand edited his applications that used the $PRE instruction so the would be compatible with Rochade 6.1.  Now he is up and running.  This is not a RoAccess problem, but is a Rochade issue.  We fixed his problem anyway, and he is up and running.

That's why you are who you are...thanks

This client was doing some special work to increase the number of concurrent users they could support.  We initially gave them step by step instructions on how to build even faster applications.  Subsequently, we felt that had too many steps, so we created some batch files that automated the work for them. Now there is only ONE step.

We are running with that little patch in place. Thanks

This client was doing something a bit unusual, but had a problem.  So we send a small patch to allow remote debugging for the application

What you have produced is quite clever.  I wonder why no one else has implemented something like this before.  It definitely meets our needs.

Our XML export was utilized to assist this client.

Your XML import is just what we need.  You are to be commended on making what was very difficult indeed something that is quire easy.

I would like to think you for incorporating our two requests as a standard part of RoAccess.  That will greatly facility what we have to do.

The vast majority of enhancements added to RoAccess are due to customer requests.  That is how we know what our customers are really needing to get their job done.

It is amazing how compatible RoAccess is with Rochade.  We just upgraded to Rochade 6.1 without a hitch.  I wish the Rochade portions were as easy as your was.  Keep up the good work.

RoAccess compatibility is amazing.  You can upgrade Rochade and not even touch RoAccess and RoAccess still works.

Your last email gave pointed me in the right direction. Thanks.
Much appreciated.

But see how many people rely on you to help them out, even if it is a Rochade problem?

Thank you for your quick assistance.  Although we are 8 hours different, it is as if you are right here.  Again, the problem was with Rochade, not RoAccess.  We especially appreciate that you will help us determine if the problem is with Rochade because we know that is really not part of your maintenance agreement.  We feel ASG should pay you to help keep their customers up and running ;-)

It never ceases to please us how you are able to make simple what Rochade makes complicated.    What was extremely time consuming and difficult to manage is now almost effortless.

This client is utilizing our Enterprise View for their extremely large repository.  Easy access to Rochade is our continuing goal.
 

Thank you very very much Dennis. Your support is helping to make our project a success. It would definitely not be without your help and the wonderful idea of virtual hierarchies. Once we get the renaming routine, I think we'll be able to create our Enterprise Subject Area. You will be able to do what the Rochade consultants have not been able to do for two years since they promised the
custom code for doing this. You can give my name as a reference any time. You
are wonderful. Thank you again.

This organization is doing some quite advanced metadata management, and found that the Rochade supplied tools were insufficient for their needs.  For a long time ASG had promised a solution to the shortcoming, but even after 2 years, has not provided it.  This company turned to RoAccess, and found that their needs could be quite easily met.   After the astonishment phase was over, they sent the above email.  (They had to implement a Virtual Hierarchy at their own Rochade server to believe it.  It did just what they needed.  They were also surprised that no custom code or modifications were necessary, as it is all a standard part of RoAccess.)

 

Dennis,
This is absolutely great!!!

This customer is adding a lot of custom User Created Screens to RoAccess by attaching them to graphic buttons she created.  These buttons will display automatically on standard RoAccess screens.  However she wanted the buttons to be able to display conditionally based on the value of attributes of the Item being displayed.  For example, if the attribute STATUS was PROCESSED, then one graphic user application button would display.  If it was, IN-PROGRESS, another button would be displayed.  With other statuses, perhaps no buttons would be displayed.  Of course, RoAccess does allow that, and it is done by merely making configuration file entries.  Her screens appear to be a seamless,  integral part of RoAccess.

 

OMG, that was so simple!

This international customer wanted to be able do design live data display screens created with Netscape Composer to be used instead of RoAccess standard displays.

 

This item-type report has to have recursive links and this item-type can have 3 link different attributes pointing to that same item-type: we only want to follow one. We don't want to follow the link forward but rather backward.  How do I do this using RoQuery?...
As usual - I got to thinking maybe you had expanded the documentation and I went to your site and found everything I needed (and then some).

We keep adding to the on-line documentation continuously.  Every time we get a questions about something, we add the response to the documentation just in case someone else might need to ask the same question.

 

RoAccess is working exactly as your WEB site said it would.  As far as I'm concerned, RoAccess is the only reason to have a Rochade repository.  Without RoAccess, it took us forever to do even simple tasks.  Because of our crisis circumstances, we are astonished that even though your son was getting married this past weekend, you were still willing to help us with a few questions.  That was all we needed.  Oh that ASG had only told us about RoAccess before.  We would have been a lot happier, and our IT department would have a better reputation in the Repository area.

This European company called Friday, saying they had a crisis, and had installed ASG's WEB Access.  We were told if they could have RoAccess installed and working against their Rochade 6.0 server, ready for user training on Monday, they would buy it.   Dennis Simpson's son was being married out of town this weekend, but Dennis found time, despite the time difference, to ensure this company was up and running.  Today is Monday, and user training took place.   The training was presented by people who had never even used RoAccess until the day before, because it was found to be intuitive. 

 

We got our application running this weekend ;-)  It is so cool.  Even though it has so many rather "unusual aspects", so to speak, it was relatively easy to extend RoAccess to do all we needed.  The sample program you wrote for us to show us how to approach the solution saved us a great deal of time.  You all really know your stuff. Our thanks again.

 

Our graphics artist has just finished our custom set of RoAccess buttons.  Integrating them was a snap.  You guys are making this too easy for us.

 

You know what I like?  Every time you tell us how to do something, it works!  Wish our other software did as well.

 

We would like to express our deep appreciation for the assistance you have provided to us.  It has improved the quality of the service we provide to our customers immensely.  Despite the fact that your company is not nearly as large as ASG, your products and services greatly overshadow theirs.  It is disappointing that a partnering arrangement is not of interest to ASG.  Everyone would benefit.

 

We are impressed.  We loaded the latest version of Rochade v6.0 and RoAccess continued to work without being updated.  It seems every time we update Rochade, we have to update all our installations of Autopilot as well, but not RoAccess.  We like that.  Currently we have 3 different versions of Rochade. Two different 5.x and one 6.0.  We have to have 3 separate Autopilot installations because the three Autopilots do not talk to the other versions of its own server.  Something about communication protocol differences.  What a pain.  What is of interest to us is that the SAME version of RoAccess can access all of these 3 different Rochade servers simultaneously.  How is it you have much better compatibility with Rochade products that Rochade has with itself?  We are very impressed with your product.  It works.  It requires less continuing maintenance and is far more functional.

This is no accident.  RoAccess uses what we feel is the most basic and stable form of Rochade communication which has not needed changing in over 6 years.  ASG has provided a variety of other access methods and APIs, but they have come and gone, become obsolete or require constant updating.  That is why we don't use ASG's "high tech, high maintenance" options.  Critical products must have high reliability and low maintenance.  That is one of RoAccess' strong points.

 

RoAccess was very reasonably priced, but subsequently getting a whole suite of first class Java Applets for no additional cost is even better!

 

For our "rush" presentation to management, we made a last minute change putting RoAccess on another machine to illustrate our flexibility as a general services organization (20 processor Sun Server).  We were in a state of deep shock when our Java Applets did not work.  We had forgotten they needed a special enabling license.  We had 22 minutes before the presentation.  Our lives were flashing before our eyes, as the saying goes.  I believe it took only 8 minutes total to call you and have you generate the license from the Imint site and have us up and running.  I think we had 10 minutes to spare.  The presentation went really well.  Thanks for the help.

 

There really is a difference.  WEB Access seemed fine, but was sort of archaic and critically short of functionality.  Our user base has come up to speed on RoAccess in an incredibly short time, to our amazement.  We have advanced so much in such a short time.  We wish we had taken the time to evaluate RoAccess earlier.   Live and learn.

We are seeing a large number of companies who are experiencing the same thing.  Thanks for the feedback.

 

After using WEB Access (ASG's poor WEB browser), we became convinced we would be better served if we just created our entire WEB system from scratch, and stop wasting our time.   We estimated it would take approximately $90,000 US and 9 months.  Quite by accident we stumbled upon RoAccess on the WEB.  After trying it, we found that our estimate was woefully low.  And we did not think of a data loader.  Our estimate raised to $145,000 US for the overall internal development effort to duplicate about 1/2 of the functionality of RoAccess.  After adding 3 years of continuing support for new features and maintenance, that number rose to $262,000.  We chose to purchase RoAccess and RoLoader instead because we could have it now, not in 1.5 years, plus it cost a tiny fraction and your continuing support contracts are extremely reasonable.  In our estimation, any company that uses ASG Web Access or creates their own WEB system will have a hard time justifying their existence as a department.

We estimate we have spent about  $.8 Million on RoAccess over the last 6 years.  That is why it's functionality so greatly overshadows that of ASG browser.  It is also why RoAccess continues to be the  best of breed for WEB portals to Rochade.  Best of all, we keep adding user requested functionality to it at a very fast pace.  If you compare the list of new features that have been added to RoAccess in just the last year alone, it makes ASG's WEB Access sound like a legacy product that will probably be removed from the market, like their other prior WEB products. 

 

I just wanted to thank you for your assistance.  The time we have spend on the phone "brainstorming" with you has been immensely rewarding.  We had what we considered quite severe requirements but your creativity  allowed us multiple options at every turn.  We welcome software where the developers actually understand the needs of real application developers.  That is exceedingly rare these days.

If you have a need, give us a phone call, and we will help you, too.

 

As you know, I did not initially vote to purchase RoAccess because of "facts" I had been told by certain unnamed competitor "sales personnel".   However, after 4 months of using your products and being assisted by your support staff, I am very favourably impressed.   It appears in the heat of competition, accuracy and honesty are often the first casualties.  It is a pleasure to do business with a truly reputable company such as yours.  I cannot say that for all vendors.  Again, thank you for all your kind considerations.

We feel our job is to provide the best software and support available on the market. 

 

I recently read a quote, "How can you tell if a Microsoft salesman is lying?  His lips are moving."   Why does this make me think of ASG?  Sometimes I get angry when I think about it.  I find it reassuring, though, when I ask a question from you at August I at least get an honest answer.   I would rather be told "no, but here is how to do it" as opposed to "yes" and wait for years and it still never happens.  It appears a lot of your US companies are crumbling from internal decay.  They could learn a lesson from August.  Please accept my humble expression of appreciation.

Our work ethic requires us to be honest.  We feel this is the basic building block of any lasting relationship.

 

This is quite satisfying.  We have so many options from which to chose to satisfy our commercial end users that are non-technical.  They are a hard bunch to please, but RoAccess is really making our job easy.  After having used Autopilot and WEB Access before, we incorrectly thought all Rochade access software was minimal, inflexible, and would cost an arm and a leg to extend.  RoAccess continues to be a quite pleasing experience for us.  We met a chap on the Internet who suggested we look into RoAccess, and we are pleased that we did. 

Every company that has ever evaluated RoAccess has always purchased it.  Every one.

 

We just successfully installed RoAccess from CD that arrived few hours ago. We have got running your sample programs as you suggest and we see them on the web browser.

Thank you very much for great software. I found that system is intuitively well designed and straightforward.

Thank you again for support.

This international company was pleased with how easily RoAccess is to install and become operational - out of the box.  They had used ASG's WEB Access for over a year and decided to switch to RoAccess and RoLoader after a short presentation.

 

We were surprised that you allow user written stored procedures to also be tracked by your configuration management software.  That surely help us make sure when we from from dev to test to productions, we always have the correct versions.

 

What surprises us just about every time we would like to change something in RoAccess, there is usually an option that does what we need.  We've rarely seen software with so many useful options.   Another thing we really appreciate is that you share the work and discoveries of others we can all benefit from it.  ASG does not really seem that interested in helping everyone or sharing. 

These "options" were requested and many times actually developed by actual users.  That is why they are so useful.  These options are what actual users really need.  We listen very carefully to our clients and add what they need.  You needs change rapidly, and you need a tool set that will change just as rapidly.

 

You all must really impact ASG's bottom line.  It seems to us that ASG heavily relies on new customers having to pay for high priced consultants to do what you all do many times for free and always in short order.  Also new application development takes a reduced amount of effort when compared to ASG's web tool.  ASG's Rochade Repository is great, but ASG has no idea how to create end user applications and application generation tools.  Thank goodness for RoAccess. 

A very frequent comment we here is that "ASG creates software that is so hard to use and poorly documented, and then we have to pay them to teach us how to use it, or we pay them to do what we need."  We do not like this business model.   If a software product is good, it should be easy and intuitive to use.  That saves you money, makes you on-time, and makes you and your department more successful.  You management is not interested in activity.  They want results.  That is where RoAccess comes in.

 

How you work weak ends?   It is good you do.  We have bad Rochade problem, but you help us fast.  RoAccess great.  Wish Rochade as good as RoAccess. On Monday all is OK.  Thank you so much.  We recomend RoAccess and very reliable support.

Autopilot created a "bogus" system Item which stopped their conversion from Test to Production for this German company over a weekend.  The transition was so their user base would not be impacted and hence they were all working over the weekend.  They added a USER and Autopilot stopped working.  RoAccess however was still able to enter the Repository, analyze the problem and remove the "bogus" Item.  We spent about 3 hours on a Saturday starting 6:00 a.m. Dallas time, which was more like noon or 1 p.m. in Germany. 

 

That was amazingly simple.  I wish all vendors supplied source code.   We look like geniuses to management, which we like.   If you need a reference, feel free to use us.

This international company needed to change a few characteristics of RoAccess to match certain business policy mandates.  Out of the box, RoAccess was close.  But they found how simple it is to modify RoAccess to meet specific needs.

 

We thought were were extremely knowledgeable of RoAccess.  But after you gave us the training class we were shocked, I guess the term is, to find RoAccess could do much more that we had imagined.  You need to change the name of you product from "RoAccess" to "Secret Weapon" or "Silver Bullet".   Buying RoAccess was the smartest thing we did for our Rochade project.  Only wish we had purchased it earlier. 

We taught not only RoAccess, but Rochade and WEB topics as well.  Plus we showed how other companies were approaching their same problems.  Nothing succeeds like success.  We spent several hours brainstorming with them on their specific needs and constraints, with great success.  It was rewarding for all.  Also, it was fun.

 

Every time I re-read the documentation, I find new features I can use. 

This international company has changed the buttons to their own design (easy), changed the wording on almost all screens (trivial to), customized cascading style sheets and provided dozens of FrontPage created  display screens designed for "business users, user friendly ItemType and Attribute names, plus other options.  It looks like their group designed and built RoAccess from the ground up, which makes them look good to their management.   

 

Many thanks for your detailed information and support.

This involved assisting a German company set up a second RoAccess server on a PC using Apache.  This allows them to have two servers and a more flexible development environment.

 

You know, if ASG partnered with August and RoAccess, they could really really have an lead on their competition.  Instead, they don't seem to care how little their customers succeed.  ASG makes a database, but RoAccess makes it a repository.
 

It seems you work all day and night. Many thanks for the detailed description of applet changing, I will try it.

This German IT specialist noticed he got responses from us during his business day.  He wanted to make custom changes to one of our Java Applets on his system.
 

Once again thanks for your quick response and help.
 

Works like a charm.  Thanks again.
 

This will replace some of the buttons and gives a nicer look. I've also created our own entry page
with a report of outstanding work requests. I did add a few lines to the common.pl so that it would evaluate my hyperlinks and replace the username.

This user did a lot of customization, some merely using many of the the RoAccess standard configuration options.  Others custom screens, some static and some dynamic.  We like seeing how you are using RoAccess to meet you user's needs so we can share that along to others to help them, too.
 

This is surely a simple question - how do I make sure that the TARGET="_PARENT" is used on the ItemList, ItemGet , etc windows? I'm running the following two html & pl programs to set up the environment and open our main page (bypassing the first two RoAccess windows).

Many companies bypass the initial RoAccess screens to let users go directly to the pages that they use most often.  Ease, convenience and fewer mouse clicks for non-technical business users.  The "target" windows is a parameter you can set in RoAccess.
 

Thanks for looking into this for me.

This person wanted to try something new, but the results were not as expected.  Different browsers displayed it differently.  We were asked to help understand why.  It turned out to be a cascading stylesheet problem.  You don't have to be an expert in everything WEB related if you have us as a resource.
 

EXCELLENT! It works just great. Thanks. I'm hoping to roll out these new features to the  users tomorrow morning and that was the last little "opportunity" to clear up. I'm pretty sure the users are going to be pleased with the new front page :-) and menu bar.

This company has added about 10 new application screens to RoAccess, user friendly portal entry, plus headers for every page, plus activating other new features.  Their users like it when developers give them what makes their life easier
 

You're RO-Loader is quite a piece of art.  We get the feeling you all have done a lot of application development in the past, and know what real world metadata managers need.  I don't know what we would have done with out it.

We don't often mention RoLoader, but it is one of the larger time saving aspects of RoAccess.

It's so nice to buy something that actually works. And have support people available any time we have a need or a question.

Thanks.

We thought you might appreciate this.  We grumble all the time over all the problems our software systems give us.  If it's not SAP, it's Oracle.  If not Oracle, its SQL Server, or it's Rochade, or its the network, or it's Windows 2000, or it's Windows.NET.  But we realized we never complain about RoAccess.  That sort of surprised us.  Perhaps the best software is the one that you take for granted as always working.  Our compliments to the chef.

We certainly do appreciate it.

We tested with two Rochade servers, one English, and one German.  We liked the fact that there is only one version of RO-Access (not one for German and one for English).   We thought it especially useful that even when connecting to the German Rochade server, RO-Access would be switched to English and back.  Surprisingly flexible, indeed.  Are you sure you aren't part German?

Probably.

We found RoAccess unusual.  It seems most software products these days make a lot of great claims, but when you test them, they come up short.  But ROAccess did indeed meet its claims.  We have a new saying you should use in your marketing: "If it's too good to be true, it must be ROAccess".

Very catchy slogan,.

Well we beat it (RoAccess) to death using our best developers, and only found a couple of misspelled words.  The time spent on the evaluation we feel should have been spent on actual development, as it seemed to us a needless delay.  Yet management required an  eval, because a large, conservative company such as ours must be prudent and cautions.  But after about 20 minutes it was obvious RoAccess was just what we needed.  As they say, the "check is in the mail."  Thanks again for all the assistance during the evaluation.  Now we can get to work.

This company called us very frequently during the evaluation asking a lot of "can we do this" questions.  This is where RoAccess shines, because the answer is usually, "yes."

This is too easy!  I feel guilty.

This user activated just about every configuration option RoAccess has.  His customers were impressed by how responsive he was to their needs.  It appeared to them that he was doing a great deal of work just to satisfy them, but in actuality, it only was taking minutes.  The bottom line was his department looked good. This translates into continued funding and increasing responsibilities.

Free is good.  I've played around with the family of Java applets you have provided.  They are impressive.  Somehow I would have expected you all to have added some kind of extra option charge for them (like you know who).  These 40 or so applets are definitely worth it.  But you provide them free.   I don't know if I agree with your business model, but I definitely recommend RoAccess to everyone I know.

Actually, word of mouth is our most effective means of additional sales.  Nothing beats a truly satisfied customer.   Yes, we do give away a lot for free, but it seems to come back tenfold.

This truly amazes me.  In the last three years, we have probably installed 4 different new versions of Rochade, always requiring new installations of Autopilot, which is an extreme inconvenience.   But never once did we have to upgrade Ro-Access at the same time.  How is it that Ro-Access seems to be independent of the changing versions of Rochade?  It seems Ro-Access requires much less maintenance than Rochade.  How can you do what they cannot?  Whatever you are doing, keep on doing it.  p.s. Another thing that is good is that we pay you only a fraction of what we pay ASG for support, any yours is more maintenance free, so our total live cycle costs are considerably less.  We pay less, but get more.

RoAccess is indeed low maintenance.  After all, you are supposed to spend you time doing metadata management, not fighting re-installations of your software.

The eval's over.  Let's do it!  Do we have to install a different, permanent version of RoAccess whenever purchasing gets around to paying you guys?

No.  An evaluation is the complete, unrestricted system.  You already have everything at your fingertips.

I'm surprised you provide the source code to your system.   But it surely does aid in learning how to customize your system.   Nothing beats having the source code.

We agree.

You all puzzle us.  We have quite a few Rochade malfunctions, like missing USER items, missing or garbaged attributes in system tables, etc.  We come to you first because we know you will help us find and document, or repair our system, even though the Rochade Repository is not your responsibility.   Funny how ASG never seems to cooperate in RoAccess matters.  We really appreciate your cooperation and understanding when we are tearing our hair out when it's not even your problem. We just wanted to let you know we very much appreciate you at August.

Ever considered writing a competing Repository?  If it would be a solid as your RoAccess is, I bet it would be very marketable.

Note: we get asked this question about every 2 months.

The evaluation is proceeding much more rapidly than expected.  I keep waiting for things to break or not work correctly, considering the immensity of your system and the sophistication of our users (who can break anything). I felt quite clever when I did find, let's call it an omission, but you had a correction in our hands in two hours.  And that was about 3 a.m. your time, I estimate, morning tea time here. OK, I'm impressed.

About half of our "evaluations" last only about a week.  They decide to skip the evaluation, purchase RoAccess and immediately get to work, since they are usually behind schedule to start with.  About 1/4 of our new customers skip the evaluation completely.

Slow down! (Just kidding).  You provided a feature update on April 8th, which was packed with features.  And you just did a new release about 3 weeks later, all packed with more features (like the Java applets).   You seem to know our needs before we even know them ourselves.

No, we're not clairvoyant.  We have lots of users and they are always suggesting features or asking for new functionality.  What is unusual, is we implement so much of that.  The result is that others who have the same problems can immediately use the same solutions.

When I saw that you were now providing Java applets, I sort of cringed when I began the upgrade. Expecting the worse, I guess.  I have had so many bad experiences, missing .class files, mis-named files, not in the right directories, incorrect licensing keys, etc.   But I'll be .....ed.  It came right up the first time!  I'm still in a state of shock.  Very impressive.

Fortunately we have a lot of Java experience.  When the Dallas Java User's Group had its very first meeting years ago, we gave the first program on Java, and were the only ones in Dallas (at that time) doing commercial Java work.  We love Java.

This "evaluation" installation was the smoothest I have seen in a good while.  Reminds me of SAP, which is super clever on its installs.  I wish ASG's installation was that straightforward.  They should take notes from you.

We work hard to make life easy for you.  Of course, we get a lot of feedback on how to improve, and we implement it.
 

RTFM!  I have been working on a few changes that we really needed, and spent quite a bit of time designing it so it would fit into RoAccess.  However, I found that what I needed was already implemented.  I had not taken the time to read the manuals.  After reading the configuration defaults file, I then found that a lot of what I had only dreamed about doing was also already implemented.  That's great.  Actually, I'm impressed.  There are so many options I can just turn on or off.   I just hadn't expected so much functionality in a Rochade related product.  Keep up the good work!

If you wonder if something is possible, just give us a call.  It may already be there.

 

This worked great. Your install directions were good and your email helped. You are making me dangerous. I think this is a good exercise because I get to learn things like this. I'm just glad when they work because I don't know enough to trouble shoot. Thanks for your help. I'm looking forward to Monday.

This company is evaluating RoAccess.  This person has extreme experience in metadata management, but currently has limited experience with WEB related technologies.   But that's OK.  We can help you become an expert quickly.  That's our job!  And for you, it looks great on your Work History Resume.

 

Things are looking good. The VSA is working. The links on that custom report are in so that is working and looks good. Thanks again!

Customer using the RoAccess Virtual Subject Areas and how a custom report benefits from this new capability.
 

Can you include an example where we would change item-type 'AC/TRANSACTION' to be displayed as 'AC/Transaction'?

This is what we call a "user friendly ItemType name".  We emailed this customer how to make these entries into the "configuration file".

Thanks again for your input.  You are always such a trooper when it comes to listening to my ideas.  And you are so smart in figuring out ways to implement them.  Talk to you soon.

We like to "brainstorm" with our customers.  Many times something that might initially seem difficult really isn't if approached a certain way.   We both learn a lot from each other.  And our "brainstorming" is free.  Wondering if something is possible?  Give us a call or email.
 

I am also going to be ordering the attributes on the screens in this release but I am not sure how to.  Can you send me a clue about how to actually do this too?

Ordering attributes on a screen is part of the RoAccess extended metadata.  In 5 minutes this user had what he needed.  No programming was involved.  The screen looked just the way he wanted it to.
 

How about just where we include certain item types for all users?  This is a case of hiding the details and making them display only the "master/header"
item types.  I also need an example were we list  only certain TYPES, omitting some others.

This user needed the ability to have different users, when they initially log in, to see different ItemTypes based on their business background.  But he wanted them to also be able to follow hyperlinks to every ItemType in the Repository.  Rochade "user classes" can't do this.  We emailed him the beginning of a "user filter" that would allow him to set the rules for which user got to see which ItemTypes when they log in, and under what conditions.  A "user filter" does not require a change in RoAccess.  You merely alert RoAccess that it exists in the "RoAccess configuration file".  It did just what he wanted.

Many thanks. Your great effort to ensure the applet works with both browsers and to make an elegant implementation is highly appreciated.

This overseas company places high importance on attractive presentation for their business, non-technical Repository users.

Having a wonderful time ... wish you were here!

Dry humor.  This US military Rochade developer was working late one night preparing for an important Repository presentation the next day.  I think the phrase is, "misery likes company".   We were available if he needed any assistance or suggestions, and he was just saying "hi".

 

Thanks bunches that worked - I will play with the url_right option later but this is a great example.

This user was using RoAccess' static URL's to allow others to be able to display any page in their Repository by merely clicking a hyperlink However, he found a 255 character limit in Excel and MSWord.  We showed how to handle this restriction.  (Note: a URL can be up to 4k bytes long, per the W3C specifications.  However, Microsoft thinks URLs  can't be bigger than 255 bytes.)
 

IRM is very pleased to see what has been achieved in the adoption of applets in RoAccess. Many thanks for your help and effort.

This company is pleased that place a high importance on a continuing development and enhancement program.
 

Thanks for the best support.
 

Many many thanks for your help and generous offer.  I am looking forward to seeing the applets in action, and achieving our purpose in making our web front-end to Rochade even more powerful.  It's very interesting and rewarding to see the enhancements in RoAccess since our first installation.

Overseas customer who likes to see how quickly RoAccess add new features that they feel are important.

Works like a champ, thanks! (US Military Customer)

Many thanks.  What a great work as usual. (Australian)
 

Man, is RoLoader a life saver.  It allows us to load, reload and correct and validate all in rapid succession with us having a feeling of complete control and approval of the data before it is loaded.  Kudos! 

They were loading all kinds of unusual data.  They even had secretaries loading data.  It was that easy.

Your ability do display data in a HTML page created by Front Page is a stroke of genius.  You all have a knack for making the complicated seem extremely easy.  Beautiful!

We had so many  companies that needed user friendly, non-technical screens for business users, that we found a way to allow a graphics designer to make beautiful WEB pages that would display real-time Rochade data using Front Page or Netscape Composer.  RoAccess gets the data, but you decide completely how it is to be displayed: graphics, color, layout, etc.  Here is an example of one such screen created by a graphic designer: click here.  RoAccess puts the data into the screen without requiring any modifications to the screen you design.

RoLoader is absolutely incredible.  I have never seen such a well though out data loader and data validator.  The amount of data we are able to load, including blobs for document storage, greatly exceeds our expectations.  I don't know what we would have done without it.
 

Time flies.  Here's X'mas.  That's the fifth X'mas since we first used RoAccess! It is a really enjoying experience to working with you and August Computing, and see the change of RoAccess over the years. 

We tend to have long time users.

I's cool!

This user found that RoAccess could do exactly what he needed with no changes at all.  Actually, we hear this comment a lot.
 

THANKS DENNIS  That did the trick!!!
I appreciate the help.

This customer wanted to use a special Perl package. Perl packages can really make your life easier as a developer.  We made RoAccess compatible with that package for him and every other RoAccess user as well.
 

Here is a recent testimonial from a client.  It talks about both RoAccess and Training. Click here.
 

Your training really made Rochade amazingly easy to understand.  We wish we had had you do the initial training when we first got Rochade.  What especially surprised us was your breadth of understanding of Rochade, operating systems, WEB servers, application development, network protocols and anything else we could throw at you.  That allowed us to learn a great deal in a very short time frame.  And time is something we are very short of right now.  Thanks, again.
 

Here is a recent testimonial from a client.  It talks about both RoAccess and Training. Click here.

It amazes me how simple RoAccess makes accessing Rochade via the WEB, and how complicated ASG makes it.  You run on any platform, any WEB server.  ASG gives you lists of complicated compatibility's of various third party components to be concerned with now, and may change with newer versions.  Very nice job!
 

Thanks Dennis - Its fixed thanks to your hint! Piece of Cake (of course).

This Canadian company had a problem storing the special French characters in Autopilot. 
 

The users like the implementation of the new stored report type, and the seamless integration with Excel.  This allows them to download the selected items in very special formatting requirement (joining item types, denormalised, transformed, etc).

An over seas client using a new feature for the first time.
 

I think the RoAccess messages are very informative -- a change to benefit many people.

When RoAccess presents an error or advisory message to the user,  it typically provides not only the message, but also typically a paragraph on what probably caused it and what steps to take to correct it.   This greatly simplifies problem resolution.   Intelligent software should be user friendly.
 

Many thanks. The design is clean and elegant.

This over seas client requested a new feature which we felt had general usefulness.   We sent them a RoAccess interim release that implemented their request and we asked them if it was what they were requesting.  They apparently looked at the source code to see how we implemented their request. 
 

I think this will help immensely. It appears we may be doing more with the static URLs in the future just to provide custom views of things.

Static URLs allow RoAccess references to be embedded as objects in other documents.  For instance, suppose you have created a Help Desk application in Rochade, and you would like to click a shortcut on your desktop to start RoAccess, log in, and display a list on the lift of all the "open" problems.  Easy!  Use RoAccess static URLs.
 

Many thanks indeed.  You are so quick and helpful as usual.

This over seas company requested we add Comma Separated Variables (CSV) as an additional supported Stored Reports output format.  This way they could send large, complex reports directly into MS Excel.  We felt it was a great idea.  Within two days, they had the new features delivered to them.  Now other companies can benefit from their request, too.  How many companies, in your experience, can be so responsive to user's needs?
 

I really appreciate the help you give us.  You must never have any time to yourself with all of us trying to gather info from you. You're such a valuable resource.  Stay cool down there in Texas.

We often give our help when customers have Rochade related problems and questions, even though it is non-RoAccess related, like a damaged Repository or Rochade mis-behaving.  And yes, it gets HOT in Texas.  But our customers are cool.
 

YAHOO!!!  That took care of it.  Thanks a million.

This customer phoned in an observation after hours.  We sent the patch to them that same evening.   They had over 400 ItemTypes in a Subject Area, and wanted the TypeList screen to run faster.  Now it does.  Problem: when you add, delete, and use profiles to modify what ItemTypes are in a Subject Area or profile, Rochade never compresses some of its internal metadata to remove deleted ItemTypes,  so it can get extremely large.  We changed an algorithm to be more efficient.
 

Before deciding to purchase RoAccess we really put it through some extremely hard testing.  It's been quite a while since we have purchased a major system and have it do so well right out of the box.   We have multiple installations on NT and Unix with no problems.  Also we especially appreciated the volumes of documentation and all the examples of how other companies are approaching their Repository.  Being basically lazy, we also liked the video presentations we downloaded from your WEB site.  Now the real fun begins.

Check out how others are using RoAccess: click here.
 

Thanks a lot.  We probably would have never figured it out.

This person was creating their company's first major stored procedure using Rochade RPL.  As usual, one of the RPL instructions did not do what was expected.  We helped this company to find the cause and the needed change, even though this was a "Rochade Problem", and not related to RoAccess.  Our customers know they can rely upon us to help them be successful.
 

Thanks for the info.   Thanks for the way to find Blobs.  What I'm doing is creating a subject area to store everything related to administering Rochade, including storing emails.  If I get hit by a bus we'll have a knowledge base for the next person.    I figure this is a good way to organize

This person needed a way to save emails directly into RoAccess so clicking on it would download the email including any attachments.  With RoAccess, it was a "piece of cake".
 

Thanks for your help, Dennis.  I was talking to Steve and telling him how quick you respond to things and he is in awe of you especially after how long it is taking to get anything from our Viasoft Consultant. 

As the saying goes, "time is money."  We try to save your time by responding very quickly.
 

ASG is nuts for not buying RoAccess, but we probably benefit from them not because we have YOU!!!

This company was becoming rapidly aware of how RoAccess was doing so many things for their Repository effort,  and they felt badly for those not aware of RoAccess and how it can help them.
 

We are not using autopilot kernel classes anymore for application development because they are not performant and we want to go away from autopilot anyway being still able to use our RPL procedures.

This German developer found, as we have, that one should not rely on the Rochade provided RPL classes.  He was sending us a way to use even fewer of them.  We receive a lot of suggestions from our users how to make RoAccess even better.  This constant sharing of information and experiences between us and our users benefits everyone.
 

This is way cool.  We're running RoAccess using command line functions.

RoAccess is for development of both WEB and standalone Repository applications.
 

I really think your site is neat  with all the information you provide.
Plus, you hyperlink to related info and you don't just tell us to go look
somewhere else.  Those Viasoft books are awful.  I have to pull 2 or 3
of them down to read all the info on a particular thing I'm trying to
research.

We work very hard to give as much information and examples as possible in a way that saves you time.
 

Thanks for the instructions. As you see I have to learn a lot.  I am on the best way to develop our first application.

We have some assistance for a company developing its first WEB application.
 

It is an amazement to me that I can make so many customizations without ever having to change RoAccess.  All I have to do is make entries into the master configuration file.  That is most clever and unexpected!

There are so many ways to customize RoAccess using just  configuration file entries. 
 

Thanks Dennis for the explanation. Man, there is so much inconsistency in Rochade.  However did you find the patience to work around it? 

We spend the time to document and "get around" the inconsistencies in Rochade so you can spend your time being productive.  When you have a Rochade problem, we will help you, so you can keep moving forward.
 

Your all saved our rear ends!  After all that time on our NT server, and then management tells us to switch to Unix within a week.  All our  ROAccess applications ported with no problems.  I couldn't believe all we had to do for our custom applications was to copy then up to Unix.  No compiling, no linking.  They just immediately ran.  Also we liked not having to pay more for additional supported platforms.  That was not true for some of our applications we had to port.

RoAccess comes with the versions for all Unix and Windows systems, for no additional cost. 
 

That is nice!

This user needed a custom look and feel, but did not want to have to do any programming.  She found she could do a lot with just configuration parameters and the Cascading Style Sheets.
 

Our company has standardized on Microsoft Visio for all our graphics charting and diagramming.    Being able to embed direct RoAccess links is simply amazing.   Touch anywhere on the graphic and presto, RoAccess pops up!  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believe it possible 

You can embed RoAccess links into MSWord documents, Excel spreadsheets, Visual Basic applications and even emails. 
 

We have tried the ASG Web Access program,  and are giving up.  I think what hurts is that we spent so much time on it and have very little to show for the efforts.   The simple application you wrote for  us in 3 hours would probably have taken  days using Web Access. 

After you become familiar with RoAccess, most applications only take about 2-4 hours to create.
 

You are half way around the world from us, but provide service like you are in our own city,  regardless of what time of day or night it is.

We feel our fast service is what causes so many sales by word of mouth from satisfied customers.
 

That was fast!  Don't you guys ever sleep?

A very typical comment.  We answer most support requests usually in a matter of hours any time of day or night.
 

Thanks for the really good support.  It's disappointing that the majority of problems we have reported ended up being Rochade problems.  I feel badly because I know it takes your time to prove the problem is with the Rochade system.  But without your help, we would still be stuck trying to figure out what was going wrong.   It's people like you all that keep our Rochade repository effort going forward.  I wonder how companies get along that  don't have your support. 

RoAccess has a great deal of diagnosis tools that are built in.  They help diagnose Rochade problems even when the Rochade server fails to detect them.
 

Thank you so much.  That feature you implemented for us solved a business requirement  that would have been a "show stopper".   We had no idea that the security staff would  have such "unreasonable" requirements.

Each repository group has a different set of business rules and policies they must follow.  RoAccess is quite flexible, and can keep your group moving forward.
 

Maybe we should outsource all our IT development to you at August!

We typically can develop new applications faster and more cost effectively than the majority of companies.  They had estimated 4 of their people for 5 weeks.  We did it with only one person in 5 days.
 

We were joking amongst ourselves.  We were saying that ASG should purchase August to help them with their Repository products.  But then we thought  maybe your level of support would drop, being a part of ASG.  So we decided we're happy the way it is.

Dedication, reliability and dependability don't just happen.  It takes really good people with a good work ethic.  That is what has made August so successful.
 

I just started using RoLoader.  Its just great and is so easy to use. I'm loading some blobs with it

This is a really common note we get.  May companies feel they will just cobble up a few quick scripts or programs to load data into Rochade.  But they begin to see that they are loading more and more data and in different formats.  After a while it becomes obvious that with all the time to code, modify, mistakes and re-loading that is necessary with their scripts, it is much cheaper to buy a full featured and supported Rochade loader.
 

Good sleuthing!

This Canadian user was having a difficulty with one of her applications.  We were able to show her it was not the application, but the browser that had the error.  While in a perfect world, all browsers would work perfectly, such is not the case.  At least we can help you when you find a problem and give you ways to get around the browser limitations.
 

Thanks for telling us what the problem was .   As you pointed out, the system ItemTypes became partially corrupted  when we went to the latest version of the Designer RIM.     We've gotten with ASG and they have shown us how to correct the problem.    It's strange that Autopilot   did not recognize the corruption.  I guess RoAccess must have a lot better error checking code.  It occurred to us, that if we didn't have RoAccess, we might not have found the corruptions until too late, because these things tend to spread.  Thanks again.

This customer imported the latest ASG Designer RIM, but some RoAccess screens reported the loss of many attributes in some ItemTypes.  We showed him that the ItemType Profile and related system ItemTypes had become corrupted for some reason.   Anyway,  an email from ASG showing how to correct the problem was all he needed.
 

I'm impressed when you said you would be available over the weekend if we had any problems upgrading our Rochade Repository to the latest version.    If I had to pay ASG for Saturday service, I bet they would charge me a fortune.  It's scary upgrading your Repository.  It's comforting to know that you are around if we need help.

It is fairly common that our customers upgrade their Repository on nights, weekends, and holidays (whether USA or Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.) so production work will not be impacted.   RoAccess has always worked with every version of Rochade from version 4.x all the way to the current one.  That's because of the thoroughness of our testing.   But we think sometimes it's really our