RATEX Business Solutions, Inc . (RBS), an independent provider of comprehensive inventory management and point of sale business solutions to university bookstores has announced the addition of MITS reporting technology to its retail management system (VisualRATEX). VisualRATEX is an end to end solution that handles all major aspects of retail bookstore operations including product ordering, product sales, general ledger, and accounts receivable.

As part of its initiative to provide superior business consulting, software, hardware, training, and support across all aspects of collegiate retailers' information systems, RBS is offering MITS Report as an additional technology to meet their customers' reporting needs. Through MITS Report , RBS clients have additional tools necessary to access the data in their VisualRATEX system and report on that data quickly and easily.

With the VisualRATEX system running on IBM UniVerse , RBS had been relying on the use of basic reporting facilities to complete query statements. Jere Warner, CEO of RBS explains, "We wanted to provide our clients with a more powerful, state of the art, way to generate ad hoc reports. In cooperation with MITS , we were able to integrate a successful method of utilizing the data contained in our system. MITS Report makes it possible to create a variety of customized reports where users, on the fly, can manipulate the format of the report while maintaining the data integrity".

MITS President Fred Owen adds "We are very pleased to be associated with RBS and welcome them as a MITS partner. Their desire to extend the value of their software offering with the addition of MITS Report fits perfectly with the design of the product and our vision for its use."

IBM® wIntegrate® 6.1 delivers connection resilience, enhanced reporting capabilities, performance and presentation improvements as well as increased interoperability. Further customer enhancements provide additional value for solutions providers.

Connection Resilience
wIntegrate 6.1 offers resilient connectivity between its thin clients and the wIntegrate Server. Increasing mobility of clients connecting over the Internet can increase the number of dropped connections. Connection resilience gives thin clients the ability to reconnect to the wIntegrate Server and recover customer access to applications and data without administrator intervention.

Enhancements to the wIntegrate Administrator and Monitor components allow flexible configuration and management of resilient connections. The Administrator's log file includes details of lost and recovered connections.

Enhanced Reporting
QueryBuilder is a powerful forms-based report generation component of wIntegrate. wIntegrate 6.1 provides significant usability enhancements to this key feature. When entering dates in QueryBuilder selection criteria, customers can use the new pre-defined date definitions to easily specify dates such as "today", "lastmonth" and "nextyear". The actual values are resolved at run-time allowing saved queries to be re-used for different dates without having to change the parameters manually.

Customers can modify or create their own field definitions using wIntegrate's powerful scripting language. QueryBuilder dialog boxes have also been enhanced to include arrows to allow you to easily rearrange items, selection criteria or output fields. Finally, improvements to error handling enhance the user experience with this feature-rich utility.

Performance
The Java Thin Client deployment option was added at version 6 to provide the ability to run wIntegrate as a signed Java applet in a Web browser on Windows, Linux and Mac clients. By caching wIntegrate dialogs and adding a parameter to disable the Nagle algorithm, wIntegrate 6.1 improves performance up to forty percent for the Java Thin Client. This speed increase will improve usability and accelerate user adoption of this user interface enhancement functionality.

Presentation
The ability to improve the presentation layer of your application with minimal code modifications is a key benefit of wIntegrate. Version 6.1 continues to modernize the look and feel in a number of areas. The Java Thin Client has improved tab controls and roll over buttons to allow developers to provide the most modern look and feel.

Interoperability
In the Web 2.0 world of application mash-ups, the wIntegrate Java applet provided by the thin client must interoperate and play nicely with HTML pages and even other applets in a modern Web application. The ability for wIntegrate to send and receive messages via JavaScript provides two-way links between HTML in the browser and the U2 host, so an enterprise application can both affect and react to events in the browser and other applets. This functionality allows sophisticated application design and functionality.

In addition to interoperating with HTML and other applets, the Java thin client can interoperate with Windows Tools such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word by leveraging the OLE interface. This new capability extends compatibility with Windows and lets you leverage QueryBuilder to create custom reports and perform mail merges or populate spreadsheets in this environment.

Customer Enhancements
wIntegrate 6.1 delivers numerous customer enhancements designed to empower business solutions based on the IBM U2 data servers.

In order to extend the language support of the wIntegrate local client, version 6.1 has improved support for Far-Eastern languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Traditional Chinese.

wIntegrate thin clients now have extended support for authentication using Windows Active Directory allowing them to login to trusted domains in the same forest. This leverages Active Directory central management of authorization easing system administration workload.

Execu-Sys

Experienced EPICOR programmers (Dataflo/Manfact preferred) needed for multiple position in Los Angeles and Orange County area's of CA; these are onsite full-time salaried positions 75-95K. Telecomutting is NOT an option and local candidates are highly preferred.

For additional information contact mh@eslny.com

Colorado MultiValue Users Group (CMUG)
Date: Tuesday, May 13th
Time: 5:30pm - 8:30pm
RSVP: mailto:dlschmitt@gmail.com  or 720-203-4864
Location: Wellpoint (Bolo), 12596 West Bayaud Avenue Suite 400, Lakewood

Texas Multi-Value User Group Meeting
http://www.texmug.org/
Date: Jun 19th
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
RSVP: Baker Hughes
Location: TBD

Seattle Area Pick User Group (SAPUG)
http://www.sapug.org
Date: Apr 17th
Time: 5:30pm - 8:30pm
RSVP: William Timbrook at mailto:williamt@gmnameplate.com
Location: The Coast Hotel

IBM has released a promotional Video to describe the business reasons for purchasing U2  databases.  This high quality video is a must see for anyone in the MultiValue marketplace.  In this video, which over a year to put together by IBM , explains the technology and value a MultiValue database has in the business.  It further solidifies IBM 's commitment to the UniVerse/UniData Databases.

Click here to watch the video:
https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=swg-u2bv

"U2.NET-Develop a native MultiValue style master " on IBM U2 Developerworks .

This tutorial introduces IBM UniData and UniVerse (U2) MultiValue add-ins for Visual Studio (U2.NET), IBM's new development tool for Uv MultiValue .NET applications. Develop a U2 MultiValue style master-detail application in C# in Visual Studio 2005. U2.NET's Visual Studio integration is demonstrated. Then quickly put together a .NET purchase order application from a Visual Studio 2005 environment.