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Why Evaluate Rochade?
Click here. We've put together a 30 page document that can help you be more knowledgeable about Rochade and improve your chances of a successful Rochade implementation. Click here. For the document in MS Word format, click here. |
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RoAccess supports Rochade 7.x in both standard and enhanced modes. NameSpace Attributes: You can give NameSpace relationships link qualifiers and specify the display order as well. |
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This form was created using Front Page by a German company to have a custom
look and feel. Yet RoAccess can use this form for display and editing just
as easily as if you use RoAccess "standard" forms. Custom forms can
be created with any HTML editor, like FrontPage. No programming was
required for these forms! RoAccess automatically can use custom designed
forms for Item display and editing. They also instructed RoAccess to use their own custom graphic buttons instead of those supplied by RoAccess. The custom form and the usage of custom buttons required no programming. They let RoAccess do the work! The following form was for Display Mode (no editing allowed by the user).
The following form is for Edit Mode:
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For Rochade 6.x some of ASG scanners and busses, while creating NameSpaces,
fail to populate the business link attributes to establish the relationship
between an Item and Items in its NameSpace. We feel this is a terrible error,
and makes a number of RPL instructions fail (Like $PRL and $SLI for instance)
and give incorrect results. Also path reports become much more complicated with
the populated link attributes, like for impact analyses. This introduces a
large number of incompatibilities with standard Rochade and any applications and
path reports you may already have. For Rochade 7.x, Rochade no longer allows link attributes and NameSpaces attributes to have the same name. This is just a bad or worse. It gives rise to classified and unclassified NameSpace relationships. Unclassified relationships can break path report and impact performance. This same utility will convert unclassified relationships to classified relationships! To address these problems, RoAccess has a utility to populate the normal link attributes that they failed to do, and then everything become "normal".
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RoAccess provides you a free, fully documented and fully supported way to
do mass renaming of Items. This allows you to better integrate all your
data sources into your Enterprise Rochade Repository. You can build the
name based on a hierarchy of naming attributes, parent names, text strings and
model Item names. Also, it is very fast. Below are some screen
captures.
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NameSpace searches have never been easier. RoAccess
guides you through the steps. For more screen captures and detailed info,
click here. What is a NameSpace search? If you create a Subject Area to be a "TREE" structure, you can have not only V6 long names, but also the Items can be optionally structured in a hierarchy of NameSpaces. For example, a DATABASE Item may contain TABLES in its private NameSpace, and TABLEs may have their COLUMNs in their own private NameSpaces, creating a hierarchy or tree type of naming structure. Suppose you have 160 DATABASES, and you want search for COLUMNs that are PIC C20 and TABLEs that have "CUST" in their description. But you want to limit the search to only 3 of the DATABASEs. No problem. This can be done in a single search, even though you are searching multiple ItemTypes simultaneously using different search parameters. Of course, you can search each ItemType by itself, but you might find they are related, so searching multiple ItemTypes simultaneously can help find your data much faster. A NameSpace search is similar to a Full Search (see below), but it in addition allows you to restrict the search to one or more NameSpaces. |
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Full Searches can make finding information in Rochade
effortless. RoAccess guides you through the steps. For more screen
captures and detailed info,
click here. What is a Full Search? It allows you to search up to every ItemType simultaneously qualifying on up to every attribute of those ItemTypes utilizing just one search. This results in Items of multiple ItemTypes being returned from the search. This is similar to a NameSpace search, but scans the entire Subject Area, and is not limited by NameSpaces. That is, it spans NameSpaces. Of course, you can search each ItemType by itself, but you might find they are related, so searching multiple ItemTypes simultaneously can help find your data much faster.
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The fully qualified name can now be exported and displayed
via RoAccess Spreadsheets:
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You have always been able to turn buttons always off, always
on, or conditionally off. This way you could hide buttons or functions
that your intended users would never use. Now you can even specify the order of the buttons at the top of the screen. (This was a recent request of a German customer.) Note below how the order of the buttons has been reversed:
Why is this important? RoAccess has a great many of functions that an end user can take advantage of. However, it is more efficient if you can group the most frequently used buttons to the extreme top-left, and let the least frequently used button, be further to the right and down the page. This way, your end users can have the most frequently used buttons all be located together, where the most important functions are the most easily located. This saves time and effort. Working in both German and English? You can specify different button orders for German users and English users, as they may have different areas of specialization. As usual, no programming is required. You merely make entries in the configuration file. |
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The screen snapshot below shows a typical Subject Area that
has been loaded in TREE format. If you compare the TREE and the standard
FLAT displays you will see that there is almost no difference at all.
RoAccess also helps overcome some of the ASG mistakes for certain
inconsistencies between scanners.
A TREE NameSpace configured Subject Area contains both TREE and FLAT elements. When you are looking at an Item List Screen, if the Items being displayed belong to a NameSpace, you will see the full name of the Item, showing the parent namespace Item names all concatenated in reverse order. This allows you to look for all CUST_ID's, Item List will display them all, and immediately you will know which tables they belong to. Notice in the above screen shot, that the table ACC_OPT_FIELD is contained twice in the database. But you can see that the ORA_USER is different, making them unique. Suppose you are looking at ORA_COLUMN CUST_ID. The Item List and Item Display screens will not display just "CUST_ID" but will concatenate it with the ORA_TABLE, ORA_USER and ORA_DATABASE. This way you will see full information at a single glance. When viewing an Item Display, you will see what Items belong to that Item's namespace, plus you will see what Items have namespaces that contain the current Item. In the "Referenced By" section, if the link qualifier says "NAMESPACE", that indicates this "reference" is not a normal link reference, but is a containing namespace. To make it easier to distinguish the actual Item Name, it is displayed in black, bold. Anything to the right is fully qualified parent information, that is not actually part of the Item Name, but is the Item's NameSpace environment. |
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Most companies have ItemTypes that are common to multiple
models. Why have the same ItemType with needless duplicated data in all those models and Subject Areas?
Since the contents are identical, it makes more sense to have only one copy of
the ItemType and have it shared between two or more models/Subject
Areas/Projects. That way if you update one Item, it is updated
automatically in all the other Subject Areas. RoAccess now allows you to do this easily. As you know, Rochade does not allow you to define an
ItemType as shared between Subject Areas. This is real inconvenience.
You can share all ItemTypes or none. That is your only option using
standard Rochade.
Question: How do I share an ItemType? Autopilot does allow you to be able to use configuration reports to share Items, but unfortunately Autopilot does not work very well with V6 long names. Every time you open a Subject Area with Long Names, Autopilot constantly warns you against its use. We had one client who tried using Autopilot to share long names Items, and it really messed up the ItemType because Autopilot is not compatible with V6 long names. RoAccess, however, makes sharing ItemTypes really easy, and it also handles V6 long names! |
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Do your end users want attractive and professional forms to
both display and edit data? Of course.
The better the forms look, the better you look. And you will look great. If you an use FrontPage, you can integrate them into RoAccess without programming! Below is a fully functional edit and update form created in FrontPage that will be used instead of the standard RoAccess update forms. You create your customs forms in FrontPage, place them in a special directory, and RoAccess will use them instead. You can have different users see different forms which have different attributes based on their user classes. You can have different forms for displaying and editing data. You decide the look and feel of these forms.
The above screen looks completely different from the standard RoAccess Item display. Question: how much embedded JavaScript, PerlScript,
JSP, ASP or other programming scripting is embedded in this form? RoAccess is committed to letting you do great things with little or no programming at all. You can even have different custom forms display for different users or user classes, too. You define who and when gets each form. Each form for the same ItemType can have a different set of Attributes appropriate to each user's function. All this, without having to use profiles and user classes! The layout is completely arbitrary. Above you see uniform rows and columns, but they don't have to be. You can put these fields absolutely anywhere on the form, mixing tables, colors, positioning and layouts to meet your creative needs. The form is extremely intelligent. If there are no links for the Authors and Person attribute, only the Add Link button will display. Likewise, if no file has been uploaded into the File attribute, then only the Upload button will display. List boxes, radio buttons, single line and scrolling text regions all appear when appropriate. You do not have to do any programming to make these thing happen! They just happen. What happens if one or more of the attributes on the update form happen to be "Info" (read only) to that user or user class? Below is what it looks like then: (An Info attribute cannot be written by a member of a user class based on permissions.) In this extreme case, ALL attributes are Info to this user. The attributes that are Info become display only. That way the user cannot modify an Info attribute. This happens automatically. Again, there is absolutely NO embedded programming in this form! It is simple, static HTML. The magic comes when the RoAccess Update Forms Engine processes the form. Incidentally, you can also create Display Forms using
FrontPage, too. So you users can beautiful forms for both Display and Editing,
and they can be different in layout. For more details,
click here. Below is another example of a form where you
randomly place fields on the screen:
Note how much information you can pack into a small space. You might order the information putting the most important info at the top. Again, no programming was necessary. RoAccess places the data where you tell it to! |
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RoAccess adds the use of Radio Buttons for data entry
screens. Suppose you only have 2 or 3 choices in the list of allowable values for a Value Attribute. You could use a List Box to show all 3. But Radio Buttons are more convenient because 1) you see all the choices at once, and 2) choice selection requires only one click. (A List Box requires 2 clicks, open and select, and you don't see the choices until you open the list box). Below is an example of value selection using Radio Buttons; All this is automatic. If you have >3 choices, then the standard List Box will be displayed. See below: What could be nicer or easier than Radio Buttons! |
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Ever notice that you have lots of ItemTypes being displayed
but many, if not most, have no data at all? Of course. This
needlessly takes up screen room and serves little purpose. Wouldn't you rather only see those ItemTypes that had data? Now you can! On the ItemType List screen, there are now tow additional buttons. Below is an illustration of how useful this is!
By only showing the populated ItemTypes, the entire
list could fit on the screen. Before, the list was over twice as long.
This is a real convenience! |
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Like to enhance your data display? If you type in a URL
or email address, RoAccess will automatically convert it to hyperlinks without
you needing to know HTML. ASG's WebAccess requires you to know HTML.
RoAccess does not. But what if you WANTED to put HTML code in an attribute for some dazzling effects? You can!
Of course you could use Font Page to give the entire Item
Display page a beautiful look. But if you only want an occasional
attribute to display HTML, you can. See below:
Every text attribute can be HTML or standard text with automatic URL generation. There is nothing extra you have to do. If you want to have email addresses or WEB addresses and URLs in a text attribute, you don't need this, because RoAccess automatically converts these to clickable fields for you. However, if you need to do something that RoAccess does not currently do, you have yet another option: DISPLAY AS HTML fields. With ASG's WEB Access you have to use Autopilot to set the AP-STORAGE attribute (part of the RIM) to indicate the attribute contents are to be processed as HTML. That means that every Item that has data for this attribute, it is EXPECTED to be in HTML format. That is time consuming and very inflexible, and you need to know HTML. What if you only want SOME of the Items with this attribute to have HTML, but the others just plain text, which is faster and easier to input? Good question. RoAccess is much easier. You don't have to use Autopilot or modify your RIM at all. RoAccess is data driven. The contents of the attribute will determine how the data is to be handled. You can have the attribute contain HTML for one Item and plain text for another. Nothing can be simpler or more flexible! |
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Now your users can be in advance that their account
will expire.
This way your users can be assured their accounts are active. RoAccess makes it easy to find logon problems without you having to hunt through other programs, like Operator or Autopilot. This and helping to determine if your account is locked (see below) is a real time saver for you. |
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With Rochade, you can specify how many times failed logon
attempts will lock the account. Now you can be told easily that your
account was locked because of too many failed logon attempts. This can
alert you to possible hacking attempts. If for some reason you are unable to logon, you and the DBA needs as much information as possible to determine why. |
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You can justify the usefulness of your Repository Department
by tracking the number of times your various Repositories are logged onto.
Now RoAccess does this for you!
You can now, for instance, capture the number of logons to each Subject Area each month! |
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Question: If you have WebAccess, how to you
bulk load NameSpace data?
Answer: RoLoader RoLoader can load normal data with normal short identifiers (<= 32 characters) OR it can load the 500+ character identifiers that are available in Rochade V6. It can load:
RoLoader can help insure that you load valid data. Most loaders will load garbage, and your users later point it out, which makes you look bad RoLoader makes you look good because you are confident your data is clean and validated. But in addition, it has a wide range of validations, special loading options, plus load-time analysis features. It's more than a loader. It is a "Loading System". For the RoLoader brochure, click here. For very detailed information, click here. |
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You could have thousands of attributes. Using RoAccess,
creating
business names is a easy, because of all the automations and RoAccess
features available to you. Using the Discovery Method (of WebAccess)
can take you a very long time to define and associate your business names.
Then if you want to create Development, Test and Productions versions, how do
you keep them in sync? With RoAccess: easy!
One RoAccess user has created an automated spreadsheet that can make this really convenient for you. You can issue a RoQuery or a Spreadsheet display of say all the ORA/* ItemTypes, to get all their attributes. You can import these into Excel, and the spreadsheet takes over. The hundreds to thousands of attributes will automatically generate the correct syntax for defining all these business names into RoAccess. What could be nicer? This user has agreed to place this masterpiece in the public domain. It shows how a creative person can take on a massive enterprise metadata project, and make it look like child's play. Click here to download the Excel spreadsheet with macros plus a tutorial on how to fetch the data from Rochade and run the spreadsheet. |
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We are seeing Rochade Servers creating hidden Items, and
sometimes large numbers hidden Items, where it shouldn't. These hidden
Items can cause path reports and other queries to fail or malfunction, plus
create what appear to be new inactive Items where the Items are not inactive at
all, and make certain data appear to not exist. To the end user, things
like this make the repository look like it is broken, which in turn makes you
look bad.
For example: following a link from a ORA/COLUMN Item to its parent ORA/TABLE Item displayed the message that the ORA/TABLE parent Item was inactive/referenced, and had no data because it did not exist. The user well knew that the data DID exist. This misleading message said the ORA/COLUMN Items was an orphan and not part of any ORA/TABLE! The problem was a bogus hidden Item that the Rochade Server generated was hiding the real Item, hence making it appear to not exist. Example: if you run a path report an all active Items of ORA/TABLE (to completely document all the tables, columns, complete with various attributes of each) it will not see the incorrectly hidden ones and those hidden Items will not be reported on, and appear to not exist. Hence the newly generated documentation report will be wrong. Because of the severity of the problem, one customer was having their Repository project basically put on hold until this problem could be solved because the resultant problems were so severe. After a long time trying to get ASG tech support to fix the problem, we instead created a work around to allow the Repository project to continue. Now you can use this same facility if these bogus hidden Items start appearing and wreaking havoc in your Repository. The DBA Utility "Display Hidden Items/Instances" has been significantly enhanced. If you are in a Subject Area, it will display hidden Items in the work configuration. (Note: a hidden Item in a work configuration for a simple Subject Area is not supposed to be able to happen.) If you are running in a hierarchy environment, the utility will display all the hidden Items and group them by their configuration number. So at a glance you can see if and how many hidden Items you have. Another new features is with just one button click, you can delete all these hidden Items. For more info, click here. Until the problem is fixed in the Rochade Server, you will have to use this utility periodically to fix it. Note: We know that Hidden Items can be a normal very valuable feature. But the ones we are talking about here were generated silently, because of no known reason, and no one was able to offer a solution. Also the #$LISTCFG and the #$SCFG instructions also disagreed between themselves as to in what configurations the hidden Items existed. |
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If you are looking for reporting comprehensive end-to-end impact analyses,
this is the tool for you! When creating a RoQuery report, you can now give a wildcard specification for the SEED Item. This means you can run beautiful, extremely useful reports on one, several or all Items in your ItemTypes. This makes reporting on your database extremely convenient, not to mention pretty to look at. Below is an example where the query specified displaying all the IEF/ENTITY-TYPES and their related IEF/ATTRIBUTE-TYPES (parent-child relationship), plus several important attributes for each Item found. Defining the RQL query interactively took about 90 seconds, adding more features step by step. The final report took 8 seconds to run all 260 path reports AND fetch the attribute data, AND display it! And remember, this can be fed into an Excel spreadsheet!
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Have you ever wished there was a way to not display the
DEFINITION attribute? You got it! The official meta-model definition of the DEFINITION attributes says it is supposed to be a 1 line description, usually a longer name for the Item. In practice, ASG scanners have used the DEFINITION attribute as a catch all and history attribute. Sometimes, the contents of the DEFINITION attribute can be very long, and contains really nothing worth seeing. Your WEB screens should only display what is meaningful, and in most cases the DEFINITION contains nothing your users want to see or care about. Now you can tell RoAccess to not display the DEFINITION attribute and for which ItemTypes! The real beauty of this is that you don't have to remove the DEFINITION from the RIMs and you don't have to deactivate the DEFINITION in the ItemType profiles. It is so easy and convenient. No programming required, of course! |
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Example: You forget how to give update privileges
to a specific user class for a particular ItemType. Example: You find that you have a number of inactive Items that
should not be there. You need to find in what configurations they exist,
why they exist, and need to remove them. Example: You create a new Subject Area, but find that Autopilot cannot
put it IN-WORK because of some kind of error. Why would you need help?
Now we can sit next to you virtually, sharing our desktops, so you can show us exactly what you are seeing. We may not be able to physically sit next to you, but this is the next best thing! We can always help you over the phone, and will continue to do so if that is what you want. But seeing what you see can cut the time down to 1/10. Systems have so many interdependent subsystems, it's not always easy to find the problem. Security? Absolutely. Security is taken almost to an extreme. Once you experience it, you'll feel very comfortable. You've heard of Timbuktu, the worlds best selling remote desktop sharing software. Timbuktu is for Intranet desktop sharing. eCare, developed by same company, is for Internet desktop sharing. Every action has to be approved by you. And you have to initiate the connection and actions. You see everything we do. You have total control over what is done. Only you can initiate a session. We cannot because is prohibited by the Security Server. Since it only requires a browser to work, you don't have to install any complicated software and you don't have to adjust your company's firewall. It just works! This is far more advanced that simple peer-to-peer sharing. There is an intermediate "Security Server" that protects both sides and enforces security measures. All communications are encrypted with a 128 bit key. When you exit the session, all the eCare software stops working. There are no servers and no listening addresses that so many other cheaper services utilize. How Can I Try This Remote Technical Support? Easily. Merely call us. You can take control of one of our systems so you can participate in an interactive demo. You can see what operating system and WEB server settings we employ, see our configuration files, and more. Then you can reverse it where we can see your desktop and optionally (at your option) share control of your desktop. We can run RoAccess, Autopilot, WEB server admin screens, and more, to show how a problem can be analyzed and solved. |
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If you only needed a few reports that handled all your user's needs, that would
be easy. But users needs and wants are ever increasing and always
changing. The more they see, the more they want. But if users are constantly asking for more and more custom reports that they may only use once or a few times, there is little or no reuse. You don't want to spend much time on each report, obviously, because they are "throw-away". Teaching them how to use a report writer is an option, but probably not a very pleasant one. Your users usually feel it is your job to manage the repository and produce information and reports for them. They are busy enough doing their own specialties to have to learn report writers. So yes, YOU have to create the reports and give the results to your users. The next question is "how do you get the report to your users"? You can send paper or screen captures, but data can be outdated, is awkward to use, and is definitely not interactive. You would like to create the report so the user can run it themselves so the data will always be up to date. So how to you meet your users constantly increasing demand for more reports? Easy! RoQuery! RoQuery with it's SQL-like syntax combined with its Default Report Writer can produce custom reports interactively in matters of minutes. You start simply. Then add more complex data relationships, which attributes to display for each ItemType and specify the width of columns. Next, HIDE all the connecting and intermediate ItemTypes that only clutter up the report. This leaves only the desired ItemTypes. Once you are happy with the report, you merely drag an Icon on the report output page to Outlook or other mail program and send it to your user. The user then clicks your email, and presto: the report actually runs immediately, showing the real, current data. They don't need to log into RoAccess and have to follow screens and remember where to find the reports. The report just happens. Easy and convenient. If they want to share the report with others, they merely forward that email to their friends. With a single mouse click, the report is up and displaying. If you make say 25 custom reports for a user, they can merely run them from their saved emails, or they can put the URLs in browser Favorites or Bookmarks so they can be run easily any time they desire. Nothing can be easier! Best of all, your department looks great for giving them what they need so quickly. Note: a typical report takes 1-3 minutes total to create. |
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Suppose you have portions of a SQL Server or Oracle database
that you would like to keep in sync with your Rochade Repository. Or
suppose you would like to keep two Rochade repositories in sync, but you would
prefer to do it incrementally. How would you do this? RoAccess for a long time has had a history log that records all Item creation, deletion, renaming and writing done by RoAccess. This made incremental replication easy, But now it is even easier using XML! Now you can specify that you want the RoAccess transaction log to be written in XML, and you can utilize this transaction audit XML file directly. What could be easier? Of course this keeps track of all modifications to attributes. But it also keeps track of all Items that have been created and deleted. This allows the downstream database or repository to create or delete corresponding rows. This is essential because you can't update a row that does not exist. You have to first insert the row based on its primary key. THEN you update the row. This is now possible and easy utilizing RoAccess. A number of interesting applications now become possible. Need additional functionality? You have the source code! For more information click here. |
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Traditionally, if you wanted an Enterprise Wide view of your
repository, you needed to put ALL your metadata into one Subject Area. This was
most times tedious, error prone and had other drawbacks. Continuing
maintenance was very time consuming. Also, Items that were from different
sources but had the same name were a problem because the last one overwrote the
prior ones. These are now a thing of the past. The RoAccess Enterprise Portal, which utilizes RoAccess Virtual Hierarchies, now gives you unmatched flexibility and configurability. It can even handle multiple Items with the same name. The first client to utilize this new capability created a document that describes the Enterprise Portal very well. Click here. |
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We have clients who have multiple versions of RoAccess,
ranging from current to several years old, all
running simultaneously, and all talking to Rochade 6.1. One client's
version is 3 years old! Yet they all still talk to Rochade 6.1. No compiling,
no linking, no upgrading. It just continues to work! This
compatibility is a trademark of RoAccess, and it's always been this way. Why have multiple installations and multiple versions running simultaneously? Firstly, you can have development, test and production. If you get a new version of Rochade you will probably want to test it a good while before putting it into production just to make sure it is stable. That is the prudent thing to do. So production may be the oldest version, test a bit newer and development the newest. Secondly, some clients have different versions running simultaneously because they serve greatly different purposes. Some are highly customized to meet different end user requirements. If you had three different end user applications that you have developed over the years, wouldn't you like to know that they can remain the same when going to the latest version of Rochade? One application may have been developed 2 years ago, another 1 year ago, and another a few weeks ago. Perhaps you never got around to upgrading, because you did not see the need, as you application still met your needs perfectly. Thirdly, could be a combination where you have multiple end user applications each with production, test and development. Isn't it nice you don't have to upgrade RoAccess when you get new versions of Rochade? Of course, you will probably need to upgrade ASG components. Not RoAccess. And that's the way its been for years. One less thing to test and validate. This is long term savings on your continuing in-house product support and maintenance costs. RoAccess definitely makes your life easier. Instead of worrying about what all you may have to do when the next version of Rochade comes out, instead you can just get a cup of coffee and read a newspaper. |
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Is XML Import into Rochade getting you down? Now it is
easy! RoAccess now comes standard with an integrated XML Import facility that:
You don't need to know Java, C++, perl, SAX, DOM or any of those programmer tools. RoAccess XML Import comes completely ready to be used. Basic Features:
Example of Its Importance: You want Rochade to be your HUB repository. You have multiple sources of metadata you want to be loaded and refreshed every night and weekends from other systems. You want the data to come in automatically with no operator involvement. The data must go into different Subject Areas. Solution: Have each metadata source system create the XML import files and send them automatically to the RoAccess XML Import system. This can happen at any time of day. Since it is unattended, no users or operators need to be involved. This is XML import at its best. For the WEB monitoring and control screens documentation, click here. For detailed internal details documentation, click here. The Best Part: Since you get complete source code you can add extensions like optionally sending email when a XML import has completed. Example: you are loading 1500 XML files over the night. If there is a problem, you could add a feature to have it send your cell phone a text message alerting you that it needs attention, so you can log in from home, correct the problem (usually XML syntax) and resume the loading. This is flexibility! |
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RoAccess allows you to create your custom, personalized
buttons and substitute them for those supplied by RoAccess.
Here are only a few sample of buttons users have created: Here are actual button as seen on two screens: ItemList and ItemDisplay:
Notice: they did not use ANY of the standard buttons above. Everything is custom. When you add your custom buttons, RoAccess keeps them, and will not overwrite them when you upgrade. |
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Any RoAccess screen you can view can be viewed by a remote
colleague with the click of a button using the new RoAccess Email icon. If you propose a change to an Item, such as a TABLE COLUMN, you might like to send that Item to a collaboration group for acceptance, rejection or comments. Or, you might like to email URL to a live RoAccess graphics path report to a colleague. You might like to save a URL to a screen to your MSIE Favorites or Netscape Bookmarks. You might like to include a RoAccess screen URL in a MSWord document, PowerPoint Presentation or MSVisio Graphic. All this is now easily done using RoAccess! You can use the icon to set MSIE Favorites, set hyperlinks in HTML pages, and much more. Best of all, user IDs, passwords and security are still in force when you colleague clicks the URL. When the user clicks the hyperlink he gets a live RoAccess page, with live data.. This gives new meaning to distributed Repository access. Now you can do this with RoAccess Drag-and-Drop URLs. With RoAccess these and a whole lot more are now incredibly easy. Notice the Email Icon that now appears on each RoAccess page:
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Questions:
Rochade Administrators needs to know this information and have this capability. You cannot get that information from ASG's software, but you can from RoAccess! For detailed information, click here. When you realize all you can do with this capability, you will be amazed. Note: the popup screen capture above informs the Rochade user DEMO_UPD that his password must be changed soon or his account will be locked out. As the Administrator, you have a number of options you can choose to tailor this capability to what you need. |
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When you switch to "Edit", you now have two different approaches available to you for Link Management. Master-Detail Link ManagementBelow is what you get if you enable the Master Detail Display option for this attribute: The attractive 3-D shaded buttons are just the beginning.
Automatic Item Name GenerationThe Master-Detail system incorporated automatic name generation. In the screen capture above, the names X-10065 were automatically generated. "X-" was prepended to a database-wide auto sequence number.
In this case, the Master Item (parent) Name is X-10065. Each link that is added to Detail Items creates an Item whose name starts with its Parent's Item Name, has a period added and is followed by a counting sequence number for the number of Items that have this parent. These are just samples of the many possibilities of the automatic Item Name generation capability of the Master Detail Link Management System.
Classic Link ManagementFor comparison purposes, below is "Classic" Link Processing Style: It allows you to add a link, delete a link or change the link qualifier. This is very powerful, and is modeled similar the Autopilot approach to links. But if you want to create a non-existing Item and link to it and edit the Item all at the same time, you will have do several separate operations. If you plan to do this often, the "Master Detail Link Management" approach is the option to chose. It's nice to have options. Not all needs are the same. With RoAccess you simply have more options. For more details, click here. |
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RoAccess Sequence Generators |
| RoAccess now supplies sequence generators. They can be used for automatic generation of Item Names to insure uniqueness on a Subject Area or entire database basis. For more information, click here. |
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More Meaningful Data Display Options |
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to make Item Detail displays more user friendly and meaningful: This illustrates two separate options. The ItemType and ItemName is placed below the horizontal rule at the top is one option. The Referenced By Section being displayed above the horizontal gray rule at the bottom is a second and independent option. The following Item Detail display is the default: Note above that the ItemType and ItemName are above the gray rule. Also the Referenced By Section is below a rule. This seems to separate this information from the Item contents. Some people like it better this way. Others like it better where the ItemType/ItemName and Referenced By sections are inside the grey rules and all the data is grouped together. You get to decide which your users would prefer to make their job easier by merely enabling options. No programming is necessary. |
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Another Example: The following is an ad-hoc query relating an organization to its people:
Yet Another Example: Below is the results of an ad-hoc query showing organizations, child-organizations (subsidiaries) and their people:
Hiding Connectional Items Some Items are merely to link or associate other Items, but do not add any information of themselves. So why display these connectional Items? You don't. Just tell RoQuery which ItemTypes to "HIDE". HTML Formatting Options Is your browser not wide enough for the data? Are some columns not wide enough or look cramped? No problem. You have a number of width specifying options available to make the report look just like you want. For internal details click here:
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Ever look at the RPL instructions class definitions and find the documentation raises a number of
questions? Or have an idea of how to do something, and you want to quickly
develop the RPL necessary to do it in a really interactive manner? The
usual approach is to write a small program, or go into Autopilot Procedure
Developer to do the trial and error. But if you've ever done this, it is
rather slow and cumbersome. Now there is a much better way. Below is the interactive screen where you enter your RPL and $SEND instructions:
When you click the "Run Query" button, you immediately see the results:
Now this is fast AND easy! Here is a screen used to do mass renaming for Rochade V6 extended names:
For more info, click here.
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Are your business users turned off by the cryptic, hard to read Rochade
ItemNames? You want your Repository to be as "User Friendly" as
possible. And RoAccess does.... RoAccess has business names for
ItemTypes and Attributes. Which would you rather see:
Again: FIELD_WIDTH/FIXED-DECIMAL or "Field Width Fixed Decimal"? Below are two screens. The first uses the RoAccess User Friendly Item Names option. The second (below this one) displays standard Rochade names. Which do you like better?
Above has "User Friendly ItemNames" turned on. Nice isn't it? Below shows displays standard Rochade names:
After working a while with user friendly ItemNames, you will get spoiled because it's easier to read and comprehend the data. After all, that is what a Repository is for: 1) hold the data and 2) present it to the user in an understandable fashion. RoAccess takes this seriously. |
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If you like working with Java applets, you will love working with RoAccess.
RoAccess now ships with 40+ high performance, power user Java applets.
RoAccess supplies free of cost every applet that the Image Intelligence
corporation makes. For more information, complete documentation and
documentation on these amazing Java applets,
click here. The more tools you have at your disposal, the better your
chances of success. This is an example of how companies can work together for the good of all. Telstra, the largest Telecom in Australia, investigated the use of a Java applet to display the results of the RoAccess Path Reports. They sent their findings and the code for their custom Path Report prototype screen to us. We were so impressed, we immediately added their functionality, plus a bit of our own. Now Telstra gets to have their enhanced functionality as a standard part of RoAccess. Their sharing with us, also allows us to share their creativity with you, to help insure your Repository group's success. To allow our users the greatest flexibility, RoAccess licensed an entire family of over 40 applets, which can do a variety of tasks. You get complete documentation and examples. You have a neat idea? Share it with us, and we'll pass it along, too. How often do you find a group of companies banding together for their mutual benefit? Not too often. And it doesn't cost any extra for all the cooperation! |
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RoAccess has integrated a Java Applet, just one of 42, to display
the results of complex Path Reports in an intuitive interface everyone is
familiar with: the Windows Tree Display. You can open folders, close
folders, open all folders, or close all folders. Every entry on the
display is a hyperlink to display or edit the Item described on that line.
Below are some sample displays of this Path Report Tree Display. (Note:
Path Reports have 5 other ways to display the Path Reports results in
addition to this one!) This bath report starts with only the top folder displaying, because the output is so voluminous:
When you click on a folder, it opens to show the next level down:
Likewise, you can open subsequent lower folders for ever increasing details:
Below is an example where the "Open All" button is clicked to open every folder, and give you a complete view of the results of your path report:
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First you log onto your workstation with a username and password. |
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RoAccess has always had superb document management. Upload document, display in your browser or application, that easy. |
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A Virtual Application Hierarchy uses Rochade Versioning in a manner similar to a Hierarchical Subject Area (HSA). Standard Hierarchical Subject Areas are very structured, and because of this, they limit your freedom to easily redefine or modify the hierarchy at will. |
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Have too many Subject Areas, Projects and Hierarchical Subject Areas to keep track of? RoAccess can help. Click here for an example. |
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First of all, you can now switch between viewing all Items in
your configuration path to just Items in your work configuration.
Note the new Work Configuration Check Box:
A RoAccess special feature is that the Work Configuration Check Box only appears if you are in a HSA or a Project. In Autopilot it appears whether it makes sense or not. |
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When in a Project or Hierarchical Subject Area, if you can DROP
instead the Rochade default:
The RoAccess handling of the DROP options is very intelligent. In Autopilot, you can specify DROP but if the Item is not in the current configuration, you get an error when you try to delete it. We feel it is bad to show a list of Items and offer the DROP option, if it may or may not work. That is, you should not have to try something to see if it will work. You should be told in advance. Therefore, in RoAccess the Drop option displays only when you really can DROP the Item. This is just another well thought out, user friendly RoAccess option. |
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| RoAccess has had a detailed Version Information screen for a long time. Now it's even better. It has hyperlinks to view any version and check boxes to show detailed differences. Click here for detailed information. |
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| Knowing that an Item in multiple configurations are not the same, is not enough. You need to be able to easily, visually compare these Items. This screen has 3 sections, each one with increasing levels of information, from brief to extremely detailed. Click here for detailed information. |
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| Now you can merely do a Copy-and-Paste from ANY RoAccess Screen and send that URL to someone so they can see exactly what you're viewing. Click here for reasons why this is an incredibly powerful and useful feature. |
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| Many times attribute names are cryptic because they are 32 characters, are upper case only and can't contain spaces or punctuation, and a non-technical user might not understand what it's name means. Now you can have RoAccess display User Friendly Attribute Names that are intuitive. You can also specify who sees the user friendly names, and who sees the real, internal attribute names. It's all configurable. Click here for more. |
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| Want to custom design your Display Forms? Now you can using the HTML editor of your choice. RoAccess give you the ultimate in user friendliness for non-technical, business users. Click here for more. |
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There seems to be a rather universal agreement that the way Hierarchical Subject Areas and Packages are implemented are too complicated and too confusing to be incorporated and used in an economical fashion. There is just too much to learn, no one has the time, and the security model is far too cumbersome, the training is prohibitive and needs to be repeated. So RoAccess provides a simpler way to use Hierarchical Subject Areas. One company asked us to see if we could let them use Hierarchical Subject Areas (HSAs) in a way that anyone could understand and be easy and intuitive to use. We implemented it for them as a set of "user applications", which is now a standard part of RoAccess.
Here are the related configuration numbers: Here are screen snapshots:
The next screen captures show in which configuration(s) the Item
exists at the various steps above:
This shows that the buttons are intelligent and intuitive to use. What could be could be easier for working with Hierarchical Subject Areas? Programmers note: This set of applications was created as an "Add On User Application" to RoAccess for a company, using a simplified security model, and it required NO changes to RoAccess. This is because RoAccess was designed to be extended easily to what you need. Total time to create these 3 applications: 85 minutes! |
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NameSpace Searches
Subject Area Wide Full Searches
Import
With a single click, this button on the Master Item:
With a single click, this will delete the Detail Item and the link to it, if and
only if there are no other links referencing that Detail Item. This is an
referential integrity precaution. You would not want to delete an Item if
other Items are referencing it.
With a single click, this Update button will open a new window and place the
Detail Item in it in Edit Mode ready for editing. This full session window
allows you to also run reports, version differences and everything you can in a
normal RoAccess window.
