Welcome to the February 2007 Edition of News From the Kore.  We hope you enjoy this first issue of the new year. Back issues are available on the News menu of our Web site.

• Inside Kore

• Kore Support Program for DataFlo

• Client Success Story - Kourier Integrator for U2

• Product News

• Kore in the Community

• Save the Date: International Spectrum 2007

• Tech Tip: DataFlo Fiscal Year End

• Extended Daylight Savings Time Change for HP Hardware

• Paul's Corner

• Kore is Hiring - Web Developer Wanted

• IBM U2 News: 2007 Letter from Ambuj Goya

• Bif Turbo: Space Hero

• Kore 2007 Holiday Schedule

By Keith Lambert  -- 2007 is here and so far the year is already flying by. It's hard to believe that we are already in mid-February because there has been so much activity to start off this year. This is a continuation from the last few months of 2006, as everyone at Kore was very busy with a flurry of year-end projects, services, and product implementations.

There's a lot going on here at Kore, just take a look at the size of this newsletter! The reason this issue is later than normal is because we have all be so busy. Our Kourier Integrator for U2 product has been doing very well in particular and we have been implementing many new clients. It seems that more MultiValue users are becoming comfortable with Microsoft SQL Server and are looking for ways to leverage their MultiValue data as part of a SQL Server data warehouse for improved scalability, flexibility, and ease of access and reporting. For a great success story on a company doing exactly this, don't miss the article in this issue about how FreedomRoads is using Kourier Integrator for U2  to support their complex data warehousing needs..

Take a look at the Product News section below, and you can see that we have been very busy in R&D adding tons of enhancements to all of our products. As we implement new clients we get many ideas and suggestions for making the products better and we always work hard to put those enhancements in new releases of our products.

If you are involved in the MultiValue community or simply using a MultiValue product, you really should try to attend this year's International Spectrum conference. This is the place where MultiValue industry experts gather to meet and share new ideas and products that keep the technology moving forward. I hope to see you there!

As always, if you have any questions or if Kore can be of service to you, please contact us.

The Kore Support Program (KSP) was recently announced.
A new choice is now available for better DataFlo support. KSP  is designed to protect a company's DataFlo investment and is ideal for companies that want to increase their level of DataFlo support while lowering their overall maintenance costs. "
 

"We feel that DataFlo is a stable, feature-rich ERP application that is easily adaptable to any business environment. Kore is dedicated to the long-term support of DataFlo and we offer products and strategies for our clients to improve their business operations. Until now the existing product support choices have been limited and expensive and we thought it was time to offer DataFlo users an option for improved DataFlo support at a lower cost," said Ken Dickinson, managing partner of Kore Technologies.

Regardless of whether your company plans to continue using DataFlo for many years or just wants to keep their options open for a potential migration to another ERP application in the future, the bottom line is: KSP provides better DataFlo support at a lower cost.

Read more about the Kore Support Program.

The 26th Annual International Spectrum MultiValue Conference and Exposition will be in Long Beach, California again this year at the Hilton Long Beach Hotel, March 6 - 9. This is the premier MultiValue user conference, and if you are using any type of MultiValue technology in your company, then this is the place to be. Come and find out what's new, network with people in your industry, talk with MultiValue experts and see the latest products, tools, and hear general corporate updates from the companies in the MultiValue industry.

We will host a breakout session on Tuesday at 4:00 PM  called “Complementing your MultiValue database with a SQL Server data warehouse” where we will be talking about how you can create and maintain a Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse from your U2 database. We will demonstrate how this is easily accomplished using our Kourier Integrator for U2, and SQL Accelerator products.

Kore will again have a booth in the exhibition hall this year as well, so please stop by and say hi. We will be showing product demonstrations of Kourier Integrator for U2, SQL Accelerator, and our suite of eCommerce Web solutions. We will also have a daily drawing for very cool prizes and other free gifts for everyone who stops by and talks with us.

If you would like a complementary pass to the exhibition hall, just bring a copy of this article with you.  We hope to see you there!

KommerceServer Products

KommerceServer 4.5 is now available. With this release the KommerceServer framework is fully compliant with Microsoft .NET Version 2.0.  Additional enhancements to the already robust webStorefront and webPortal are outlined below.

KommerceServer, webStoreFront, and webPortal

• All KommerceServer applications now support multiple menus per page.

• Hierarchical Master Pages are implemented for all KommerceServer applications.

  • The hierarchy is as follows:  KS Master Site Page -> Application Master Page -> Page-specific Master Page.

  • The primary benefit of this enhancement is to provide more standardization and allow faster and easier customization of the applications.

• A new Ad Rotator control is available for webStorefront.

  • Ad images can be displayed on any page with links and click-throughs to associated URLs.

  • Ad images rotate to vary the marketing message with each page refresh.

• Secure document downloads are now supported in KommerceServer.

  • All documents placed in the root of the designated secure document directory on the Web site will automatically be protected by KommerceServer via ISAPI filter loaded into IIS.

  • Secure PDF downloads are available in the webPortal for Sales Order, RMA, Shipment, and Invoice, and an API is provided to implement your own custom download links.

• A new Product Class Tree user interface control is available for webStorefront, providing customers another way to navigate and find the products they want to buy.

• The checkout process in the webStorefront now supports the ability to declare how freight will be charged for the order.

  • Access is controlled by security role and supports Prepay and Add, Freight Collect, and Third-party Billing.

  • Users can select previous freight billing accounts numbers by carrier.

Coming Soon... In the next release of KommerceServer, our webTeam application will sport an all new look leveraging our new graphical Web interface controls. webTeam is also being enhanced to support the needs of professional services organizations. Stay tuned for more information. To see a sneak preview of the new user interface, click here.

By Paul Trebbien --   Happy 2007!  Well this year is starting off with a ‘bang’ as I’ve had very good weather and have been working in my shop – busy with cars for my club and my wife. A while back, after I had made a few cars, my wife asked if I could make 6 for her friends at work. I said sure and then she said “Sets”, you know all 4 cars. I hemmed and hawed a little but again said sure and asked if she knows that will put me back a little on some of my projects for her (i.e., bedroom furniture, living room furniture, etc). If you take a look at the picture, my little helper and I are showing off 20 cars (front: 4 White Oak, 4 Douglas Fir, 4 Mahogany, back: 4 Birch Plywood, and 6 more Mahogany), 2 chairs freshly finished, and the old Monster Truck is still "kicking". If you remember from last month’s column, my club builds these chairs for charity at our annual “Design in Wood” contest (see http://www.sdfwa.org/) where we also demonstrate building chairs in a Cabinet Shop from the 1800’s, we then have club members put finish on them. Oh yes, I finally finished that Flip Top Tool Stand and it is nice, saves me a little floor space.

So, DataFlo ERP users, if it’s your Fiscal Year End have you run the General Ledger Year End process or are you planning on doing so soon? Note, we have a New Tech Tip in our Archives with a Year End list of things to do and a discussion of the DataFlo Year End processing. If you would like to discuss Year End or ways around it, please feel free to call me here at Kore.

IT File Resize Tip: One of my clients was running a process that uses the RESIZE command and it stopped while resizing their COST-VERSION file. They are running UniData on an HP-UX system. We started looking at the COST-VERSION file and there seemed to be a problem. Yikes, that file contains the Standard Costs and all of the Costs for all of the Versions and  it was also an enormous file. I told him that I had run into a similar problem on a UniVerse / Windows system and that apparently the RESIZE command renames the data file under the same folder, creates the new file (with new modulo), and then copies the data from the file-copy to the new file. To fix that issue, we went to Windows Explorer, over to the problem folder, and renamed the data file to something else and renamed the copy of the data file to the correct filename which fixed the file. Anyway, on our UniData system, we checked the unix directory for our file and it did not have a copy. I logged onto IBM's U2 support site and found a tip that discussed finding the "copy" of the file under the current working directory or the tmp directory: It will be a file that starts with "rsz". We found our rsz file under the tmp directory and then we made sure that was our file prior to moving it back under the COST-VERSION directory.

Until next time please remember, "Great Service to your Customer is always rewarded".

Images Copyright © 2007 Andy Blanchard. All rights reserved.

This article was published in the February 2007 issue of Database Trends and Applications. Read how FreedomRoads (a national recreational vehicle dealer) is using Kore's  Kourier Integrator for U2 and SQL Accelerator, products to maintain their Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse using data from an IDS (Integrated Dealer Systems) UniVerse database which consists of more than 90 gigabytes of data.

“We had to figure out how to get data out of 56 databases. During the day, it takes a minute to extract the difference every hour, and 30 seconds to write them to SQL Server. For the full refresh, the extraction takes 10 minutes total and another 10 minutes to write SQL Server."--Matt Baden, chief technology officer, FreedomRoads

Click to download whitepaper in PDF format.

Breast Cancer Walk Update By Michelle Durbin -  In our continued effort to make a difference in our local communities several of us here at Kore and our family members joined more than 16,000 San Diegans in the ninth annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walkathon. On Sunday, October 22, 2006 (a Charger Sunday!!) we headed out on a four mile trek through San Diego's beautiful Balboa Park. According to event organizers it was the fourth largest of an estimated 100 walks nationwide, raising $1.1 million for medical research. Among the thousand of marchers were approximately 400 breast cancer survivors.

The mood was a festive one as survivor after survivor told their own story before the walk began. They truly brought an amazing personal touch to the event and were such an inspiration to the many that were there to walk. There were volunteers all along the route to cheer us on and make sure we stayed hydrated too. Crossing the finish line we were greeted with cheers, beaded necklaces of pink and more beverages. It was a perfect day to walk and it felt great knowing that on a small level we helped to make a difference.

Special thanks to Kore for the generous donation and to the Dickinsons, Trebbiens, Lamberts, & Ame Durbin, my sister-in-law, for giving up their Sunday morning for such a great cause. 

Relay for Life By Paul Trebbien  -  I will be helping out the Relay for Life fundraiser for the American Cancer Society again this year on May 19, 2007. My team is called "Sweet Feet" and will be on the track all 24 hours and we will also have a Street Tacos booth to raise money for Cancer Research. Paul's Mother, a cancer survivor of 10 years, will be there for the first lap of the track as will several Kore employees and their families. If you would like to join his team or place a donation you can do so on their Web site by clicking here.

The passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 alters the Daylight Saving Time (DST) start and stop dates by four weeks. Extended Daylight Saving Time will begin in March of 2007. Information about the Energy Policy Act can be found on the US Department of Energy Web site.

The Energy Policy Act changes the effective dates of DST. Beginning in 2007, DST start and end dates will be:

• Start date: Second Sunday of March

•  End date: First Sunday of November

Here are the required patches for the appropriate O/S versions:

• For HP-UX 11.23: Apply PHCO_34669

• For HP-UX 11.11: Apply PHCO_34668

• For HP-UX 11.0:  Apply PHCO-34673

If you have a HP-UX 10.20 system, you need to upgrade! But in the meantime, simply copy the '/usr/lib/tztab' file from any 11.x system.

We have tested the 11.11 patch by changing the date to 3/10/07 and it "sprung forward" just as advertised.

Even though this patch doesn’t require a reboot when installing;  we recommend that sometime before the 3/10/07 rebooting to make sure all processes start with the new rules.

If you have any questions or if you’d like assistance installing the patch, please contact us.

DataFlo Fiscal Year End By Paul Trebbien -  Year end processing for DataFlo is always a little confusing for some people, mostly because you only do it once a year. Although it may seem a little complicated, if you follow these directions you will be an expert in no time. Read this Tech Tip for a detailed explanation of how to get ready for the DataFlo Fiscal Year End process. Included are checklists, procedures, and in-depth review of what actually happens during  the MGL Year End Processing. 

To find out more, read the full Tech Tip >>

DataFlo Tech Tips you might have missed:

Importing data into DataFlo with Excel

Determining your software versions

Setting wIntegrate Title Bar to display account

Kore is currently looking for an experienced  Web Developer who has developed database-driven Web applications with dynamic or active web content using: C#, Java, JavaScript, and XML or XSLT. Please check our Careers page for more information and contact us if you know someone who might be interested. We always prefer to hire from a personal referral.

"IBM remains committed to the U2 platform, and we’re backing up that commitment through increased investment to support and enhance the U2 software portfolio as technology evolves." said Goyal.

The letter goes on to outline enhancement plans for the U2 platform through thy year 2012. This is great new for all users of the UniData and UniVerse databases.

The Kore Offices are scheduled to be closed on the upcoming holidays so that we can spend time with our family and friends.

2007 Schedule

• Monday, February 19 President's Day
• Monday, May 28 Memorial Day
• Wednesday, July 4 Independence Day
• Monday, September 3 Labor Day
• Thursday, November 22 Thanksgiving
• Friday, November 23 Day After Thanksgiving
• Monday, December 24 Day Before Christmas
• Tuesday, December 25 Christmas

Kore is able to provide holiday, weekend, or after hours services and support if needed. Please call us in advance at 866-700-KORE (5673).

To learn more about Kore Technologies or any of the products and services mentioned in this newsletter, please visit our Web site, call us at 866-763-KORE (5673), or send an e-mail to sales@koretech.com.

If you have any questions or comments about our newsletter, please send an email to kore_newsletter@koretech.com. 
We want your feedback.

 © Copyright 2007 Kore Technologies.
All rights reserved ■ Various trademarks held by their respective owners
Kore Technologies | 9323 Chesapeake Drive, Suite D | San Diego, CA 92123