February 2004

Technical Support Analyst of the Year for 2003 – Jason Klinger

Meet the Staff - Matt Poultney

Hi, my name is Matt Poultney. I started with the company at the beginning of the month. I graduated from Westwood College in 2000, and finally look forward to putting my degree into action.

I have been married for three years and have a two-year-old son named Liam. Also we have a cat named Sid

I look forward to working with you on the phones, and offering all the assistance that I may in the future.

Advisor’s Corner
Susie Chapman

Where did January go? I can’t believe February is here already. Anyway, how does your Alchemy grow? Let’s look at how Alchemy keeps track of your information on the hard drive.

When you create a new Alchemy database, Alchemy creates an .ald file and folder of the same name. For instance, if I created a database and gave the filename “2003inv”:

I would see the following structure when navigating through Windows Explorer:



The folder labeled “2003inv” will contain my database files and also contains the data itself if building to data containers. This folder also contains a .lok file, which means someone has the database open. The database is locked for other build users.




The data000 folder contains the .dat and .pro files that contain the database items and profile field information. This database has one .dat and one .pro. The maximum size for the .dat file is set by the buffer size information you provide when building the database.




When a database is added to Alchemy Server control, the .lok file will not be present and an .aus file will be created instead.




See you next month!

 

February How to Guide

This month we will show some common XP tweaks you can make to your system. These are simple configuration changes you can make to your system to make it more efficient and effective for you.

Disable error reporting to Microsoft –

Whenever a program crashes, an error-reporting window pops up, prompting you to send an error report to Microsoft. This can be quite annoying. Here’s how to disable this feature.
1. Choose Performance and Maintenance from Control Panel.
2. Choose System and click on the Advanced tab
3. Click on the error Reporting button




Switch the Task Manager to Stripped-Down mode -

If you want to run the Task Manager without its title bar, menu bar, tabs and status bar, you can switch it to the stripped-down view. To do it, first run the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Once it’s running, double-click anywhere except inside the list box that shows running processes and programs. To toggle back, just double–click in the same place again.



Drag to Task Bar-

You can drag and drop files onto an application that is minimized in the task bar. This will launch interact with the application. For example, if you want to add files to Alchemy, you can drag the file to the task bar where Alchemy is minimized. This will bring Alchemy up and you can navigate to the location where you want to add the file. Once there you can then drop the file and it will be added.

Disable XP’s Highlighting of Newly Installed programs-

When you install a new program in XP, its entry on the start menu is Highlighted. To disable this feature:
1. Right click the start menu and choose Properties.
2. Choose the Start Menu tab and click on Customize.
3. Click on the advanced tab.
4. Uncheck Highlight newly installed programs.



 

ODBC: Did you know you could use it with Alchemy? (Part 2)


This month we talk about the true how to truly use the ODBC driver. First we will go in to how to set up the driver for use. Then using Access as the front end we will go over some examples of what you can and cannot do with the Alchemy OCBC driver. If you missed it in January’s news letter was a description on what the advantages and disadvantages are of the ODBC. This month is the how-to of the ODBC.

To setup the ODBC driver you first need to set up an ODBC data source in the ODBC Data Source Administrator. First go to your control panel, look in the Administrative tools section. Find Data Sources. If you are a Windows 98 or Windows NT OS then you will not need to go in to the Administrative tools area, it will be in your main Control panel area. Make sure you are in the user DNS area. You will be using this ODBC locally only. Build and Search needed to be installed for ODBC to work which means that Machine level DNS is not supported.

Click on Add. Select Alchemy should be near the top. Then click finish. This will open the Alchemy ODBC configuration screen.




You only have to fill out one box. The Data Source Name. This is the name that will appear in the ODBC Data Source Administrator and when you make the ODBC connection. The Description box is just for any notes that you want to add this will only be visible inside the ODBC Data Source Administrator. The Alchemy Directory is the path statement for where Alchemy is installed. If it is installed in the default location, (C:\Program Files\IMR\Alchemy) then this will be filed in automatically when you close. The options file is for directing the driver to use a special INI file. If left blank then it uses the Alchemy.ini file to find and locate databases.

Under Document Content each of the check marks is dealing with the documents themselves. Show Document Content is the Code of the document. For this to be any good you need to have a viewer or translator for the code. I.e. If it is a word document you need to have a MS Word viewer for you to send that to. If it is a TIFF image the Annotations do not need to be attached. Show Full Text will send the Full text document if available. For image files with OCR documents attached you can choose to have that be available or not. The Limit Display is how many characters will be available for each of the field created for the Document content. This will not affect other profile fields.

Above is a screen shot from Access 2000. The fields that mater in this shot are ID, Next ID, Parent ID, and folder. ID is the ID document ID for each document in the database. NextID is what Document ID follows in the tree view. ParentID is where it is in the tree view. If it is in the root of the tree view then it will have an ID of 1 if it is in a folder or in a compound document, then it will have the Document Id of what it is in. As you may have noticed the next field Folder has only 0 and 1. If it is a 1 then it is a folder. That is also why when you go to the File_Name it is blank.

As a reminder from last month you cannot change every field with ODBC. Of the default fields you can change Document title, ParentID, and NextID on a build document. If you are adding a record/file, then you must fill in the File name and the file directory (the path to the file) then you can fill in Document title, ParentID, and NextID if you wish. If you do not then the Document title will be the file name and the file will be added to the root of the database. ParentID is the ID of the file or folder that the file will be under in the tree view. Any file that has the same ParentID as a folder will be in that folder. If it is attached to another file then a compound document is created. Multiple files can have the same ParentID. You can change the NextID but until you understand how this field is used it is a field that we would not recommend you use. This is the Id of the file that follows this document. If “0” is in the NextID then nothing follows this file. By default “0” is what Alchemy will put in this field on a new file. If you change this field and another document has the same NextID then it will corrupt the database. All custom fields for the profile are also fully editable.

From here it is just a mater of writing SQL queries. For more information on ODBC please read Chapter 18 of your 7.4 Alchemy Build users guide.

 

Alchemy Training:

Learn more about Alchemy Software products from IMR Certified Instructors. IMR's Educational Services team is pleased to offer 2 of our advanced technical Training Courses geographically near you. The courses being offered are designed to inspire innovative solutions utilizing all of the exciting new features and product extensions just released by IMR.


Alchemy Training Schedule