Deadwood

In some ways a software application is like a pine tree. New features get added that get all of the heat and light, old features fall by the wayside overshadowed by the new growth. Such is the way of the world.

My name is Eddie Cole and I'm the Software Architect here at Scribe. The new Multi-Target support we are adding in our upcoming 6.6 release is forcing us to reconsider many features, some of which we have not touched in a very long time. This makes this release an excellent opportunity to prune off any features that are not providing value to our users, letting us invest our time and efforts on the features users care about most.

Here is a list of features that we are considering dropping for the 6.6 release. We would love to get some feedback about any that you feel strongly that we should keep:

Workbench

• File->Open->DTS Preview
• File->Properties->Source or Target->Connection Override
• View->Options->Find & Replace
• Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Update Statistics
• Run->Edit Settings->Performance->% Complete
• Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Compact MS Access Target
• Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Turbo Text
• Run->Edit Settings->Rejected Source Rows->Output to Other
• Run->Edit Settings->Logging->Success Logging
• Target Configure->All Steps->Create Target Fields

Console

• "Web Server Components" Installation option (Support for SOAP based consoles)
• Integration Server->File Browser
• Integration Server->Services
• Administration->Alert Data Views->Insert, Update and Delete operations
• Administration->Alert Recipients->Net Send Notification
• Administration->Alert Recipients->Recipient Maps

Other

• Native Oracle Support (Support for Oracle versions prior to 8i)
• XML Adapter BizTalk support
• DTS Edit utility

Don't get alarmed if you see your favorite Scribe feature in the list, nothing is carved in stone , just please let us know how you feel by adding a comment to this blog.

Eddie

Comments

[Pete]

First, Thank you for using the feed to get feedback from your customers. It's an excellent way of connecting.

Workbench. No problems. I might on occasion look at the DTS preview, but other than that, no big red flags on removing those

Console. File browser and services were neat in concept, but I find that I rarely look at them. If something is up with the services, I look on the server. Recipient maps. I most certainly use them, but if you are just relocating it to make it more logical and usable, that is fine.

[Michael Cross]

Workbench - no problems losing the items on the list

Console - I can see keeping the following items:
•Integration Server->Services
•Administration->Alert Data Views->Insert, Update and Delete operations (makes it easier to update the VALUEMAP table if not using the Xref.ini file.
•Administration->Alert Recipients->Recipient Maps

Other - I use the DTS Edit utility, especially when I need to create custom documentation of the integration and want to copy and paste data.

[Jasper van Meurs]

Excelent list of features that can be removed from Scribe. I believe this will make the workbench and the console a more cleaner integration tool to use.

The only thing i am worried about is to remove the native connection to Oracle. I come across more and more integrations based on Oracle and if Scribe no longer supports Native connection than i would highly recommend adding a guide/best practice on how to connect to the different version of Oracle with ODBC drivers.

[Kevin]

Workbench:
- Rejected Source Rows - Output to Other - We have a lot of users that don't have SQL access, so the most efficient way they can troubleshoot the rejected rows is to spit them out into an access database. without this output to other support, we'd have to write another DTS to read from a SQL rejected row table and output to access, and then purge the sql table. That would require a lot of overhead!
-% Complete - Nice feature, would hate to see it go. Even though the % doesn't matter, it's nice to have a count, IE, 110 of 10000.

Other:
- DTS Edit Utility.

Looking forward to 6.6 and all the improvements it will bring!

[Marcus Hooper]

** Features we do use (and would miss):

Workbench
File->Open->DTS Preview
Run->Edit Settings->Rejected Source Rows->Output to Other
Run->Edit Settings->Logging->Success Logging

Console
Integration Server->Services
Administration->Alert Data Views->Insert, Update and Delete operations

** Features that we haven't used, but look interesting (might use in the future):
Workbench
View->Options->Find & Replace
Target Configure->All Steps->Create Target Fields

Other
DTS Edit utility

** What we wouldn't miss:
Workbench
File->Properties->Source or Target->Connection Override
Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Update Statistics
Run->Edit Settings->Performance->% Complete
Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Compact MS Access Target
Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Turbo Text

Console
"Web Server Components" Installation option (Support for SOAP based consoles)
Integration Server->File Browser
Administration->Alert Recipients->Net Send Notification
Administration->Alert Recipients->Recipient Maps

Other
Native Oracle Support (Support for Oracle versions prior to 8i)
XML Adapter BizTalk support

[Daniel Johnson]

The only thing on the list I would miss would be the DTS Edit functionality.

Can't say I've ever used any of the other features.

[Caroline Worf]

The DTS Preview is really popular with our customers so we wouldn't want to see it go.

[Paul Reitmeyer (Planet Technologies)]

I import millions of records using Scribe in one DTS file quite often for my customers. The % Complete option is greatly helpful when you have to wait between 1 and 3 days for 10 million records to be imported. I would love to see this one option stay, or even be a built-in feature, since its a pain to remember to turn it on all the time. Everything else I could care less about.
Great list, keep up the good work, I can't wait for 6.6

[Jen Miller]

Of all of the features listed, the one we use the most is DTS Preview. It would nice if this was kept in the 6.6 release.

[Kathy Piotrowski]

I would miss DTSEdit, as I use this on a fairly frequent basis.

[Nahi Simon]

Agreed DTSEdit unless you have a decent replacement for this. The others I personally wouldn't miss.

[Remon]

These we use:

Workbench
•Run->Edit Settings->Performance->Turbo Text
(should be disabled ALWAYS if dropped)

Console
•"Web Server Components" Installation option (Support for SOAP based consoles)
(used for Hosting situation, our collegas can open the Console on our Hosted Scribe server)

Other
•DTS Edit utility
(used alot for copying functions without 'opening' the DTS itself.

Thank you,

Remon

[Matt]

Please keep the Run->Edit Settings->Rejected Source Rows->Output to Other in Workbench, this can be very useful when doing lots of multicompany integrations into Dynamics GP and using the DYNAMICS database

Also the DTS Edit utility is good though I guess this wouldn't be needed if the .dts files were plain text or xml :-)

Thanks

Matt