I’ve been a bit busy the past few weeks, so blogging got dropped. Here’s a catch up:
- We popped over to one of our favourite wineries two weeks ago to talk about me doing their website (http://www.scottsbrook.com.au –
what you’ll see there now is the old ‘placeholder’ website, so this is NOT my work; Update 14 December 2007: All done now!).They were very happy with my initial design prototype, so I’ve now added the content and am awaiting their final review before it goes live. I’ll let you know when it’s up. - I’ve been doing a lot of work with Author-it v5 for my main client—combining three separate libraries (not fun!), training a person in Brisbane to use Author-it (thank God for WebEx and Skype), and learning more about SQL than I wanted to know!
- My main client has had other work demands too, notably changing a recent acquisition’s existing company-focused website to a product-focused site. That’s in progress. Another acquisition happened a week ago and I’ve just been asked to be involved in that website too.
- I spent quite a bit of my spare time editing the Author-it v5 training exercises for a friend and colleague.
- I judged three entries—all in different categories—in the annual STC Australia Chapter competitions.
- We went to Perth for four days last weekend for ‘points and plugs’ checkups with doctors and dentists, catching up with friends, and attending the Crosby, Stills, & Nash concert… which was the impetus for going to Perth and the other activities. More on the concert in another post.
The weather in our corner of the world has been up and down—we had a run of really hot days late in November (35-36C), but the past week it’s been pretty cool (18-23C with one 4C night). Some days I’ve changed clothes three times to deal with the variable weather! Then the other day it just BUCKETED down for about 20 mins, but we only got 3mm of rain out of it.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
As someone who just purchased (but has not yet installed) AuthorIT 5, your comment of “learning more about SQL than I wanted to know” in the same paragraph in which you talked about your AuthorIT 5 work in recent weeks makes me a bit leery.
Could you explain what’s up with the SQL work, and when and why it’s needed with AIT?
Knowing SQL is very significant for Content Management in AuthorIT 5.
Hi Whitney
SQL is NOT essential for Author-it v5, but it improves performance–according to Author-it ‘Author-it v5 has been optimized for SQL’. Also, if you convert your v4.5 JET library to SQL before upgrading it to v5, you get Author-it’s SQL Connector at no cost.
I needed to provide an SQL library to a client, so I bit the bullet and decided to install SQL Express locally (Microsoft’s free replacement for MSDE which I *think* was a replacement for JET which is used for the *.ADL libraries in Author-it). That put me on a learning curve with SQL, and surprisingly the stuff from 10 years ago came back fairly quickly regarding backups and restores. Some of my learning curve was self-inflicted–I initially installed SQL Express on my server without realising that SQL Server was already installed, which caused a few conflicts that my PC guys had to sort out.
When I installed SQL Express locally, I had some issues with TCP/IP connections that Author-it Support solved for me.
Once SQL (Server or Express) is set up and you’ve got your libraries converted and linked to Author-it, it’s as though SQL doesn’t exist. You work in Author-it as you always did, it’s just that you’re connected to the SQL library NOT the JET library. The conversion from JET to SQL within Author-it is painless.
I guess what SQL gives you that you don’t have in JET is the facility to run SQL queries to give you reports on your database, and also the facility to schedule backups.