The Accpac Guy
Odds and ends regarding the Sage ERP Accpac (Sage 300) system and other IT stuff I find useful or interesting.
Accpac and MS-SQL Server
Stephen Smith has written an excellent article sharing some tips and tricks for configuring Microsoft SQL for use with Sage Accpac on his blog.
Limiting Exchange 2010 Database Cache
I recently installed a Small Business Server 2011 at a client with some kickass hardware. Imagine our surprise when we tried to actually run anything on the server and it CRAWLED, I mean seriously slow. Even to the point of opening files via the shared folders from a workstation was slow. It was a bit disturbing to say the least. I found the problem to be that Exchange 2010 was using up all available memory, as in a 12Gb store.exe process. I did some googling and found that this behaviour is actually by design. Now that’s great if it’s a dedicated Exchange server. However, when Microsoft have specifically designed SBS to run everything on one box and will only allow you to run it on one box according to the license, it just doesn’t make sense! (Thankfully with the Premium Edition they do allow you a seperate free licence to run SQL on a seperate box). I came across a workaround to the problem on Continue reading
ACCPAC Database API
Snipped from the R&D Team Blog
Accpac Database API Accpac is a three tier application with the business logic separated from the database. The business logic objects (the real core of the Accounting Applications) communicate with the database via a common database API. Then there are database drivers that translate this API into calls to the database server currently being used. How the database driver accomplishes this is entirely up to the driver. The SQL Server driver uses ODBC to communicate with the SQL Sever Native driver. Oracle uses the Oracle ODBC driver. Pervasive communicates with both the relational layer using SQL calls, and with the transactional layer making direct Pervasive API calls. The key point is that all this detail is invisible to the Business Logic. The application programmer creating the business logic objects, just needs to know the Accpac database API to do his job. Then all the differences in the databases are isolated to the Accpac database driver. If a new version of a database server is released and Accpac needs to be updated to support it, then its just a matter of providing a new database driver, without requiring any other application changes. The Accpac database API includes a number of record oriented API calls, a number of meta-data calls and a number of set based operations. The record based APIs operate on one record at a time, such as read a record based on a supplied key, update that record. The meta-data calls return information about the structure of the database, things like get a list of all the tables in the database, get information on all the fields in a table. The set oriented API calls operate on a set of records at a time. Such as read all records where the description starts with A, or update all records changing any with customer number 1200 to 1400, or delete all records with status “deleted”.
Sage CRM v7.1 SP2 Feature Overview
Some really nice improvements in Sage CRM SP2:
With Sage CRM v7.1 Service Pack 2 (SP2) fully tested and ready to go, we’re proud to announce that the theme of this release is Cross Browser Compatibility. We have been aware for some time that Cross Browser compatibility is a major customer requirement. This is even reflected on our ideas hub – you’ll see it’s one of the top requested features. In an effort to deliver Cross Browser Compatibility to you as soon as possible, we have included it in the upcoming service pack rather than asking you to wait until our end of year release.
Cross Browser Compatibility – what are the end user browser options in SP2?
As most of you are aware, previous versions of Sage CRM were optimised for Internet Explorer. The options listed below will be available to end users in SP2. Cross browser compatibility is focused on the end user experience, i.e. the Main Menu area. The user experience and functionality throughout the Main Menu is consistent across Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer (IE).
End User Supported Browsers in Sage CRM v7.1 SP2
IE – versions 7, 8 and 9 (as per Sage CRM v7.1 SP1)
Safari – latest version Safari browser on OSX (Apple MAC). Note that the Tablet theme is recommended for use with iPad – IOS is not in scope)
Chrome – latest version
Firefox – latest version Continue reading
Sage CRM 7.1 SP2 released
Just received in from the Sage CRM team over at The Sage CRM Blog:
We’re delighted to announce the release of Sage CRM v7.1 Service Pack 2 (SP2). The theme of this release is cross browser compatibility which means you can now access Sage CRM in IE, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. This has been a major customer requirement for some time and we’re excited to be able to bring it to you in this release.
Excited to finally see cross-browser support! Seriously, who still uses Internet Explorer? Word on the street though is that if your CRM is installed with Accpac integration, you need to give this Service Pack a miss until the go-ahead has been received from the development team.