Welcome To December !

Out last newsletter concentrated on listing some key highlights of the finalized version 6.32 of the Realtime Software Baseline Package.  We are thrilled to let you know that Revision 6.33 is now under development, and some real exciting features are being planned - some of which are in the works already ! 

As part of this continuing development towards a more diverse and exciting software package, Realtime Software is pleased to announce a partner relationship with Nebula Research and Development.  What follows below is a memorandum written by Tony  Gravagno, President of Nebula R&D, describing his thoughts and ideas on how we can combine our talents and services to provide 'You' the customer - with a more exciting and diverse software package:

I was employed by Realtime many years ago and have continued to do business with them over the years.  For them and for you, their client base, I'm very excited about enhancements made to the software and planned for the near future.  In case you didn't know about some of the wonderful things you can do with your BCP/MCS software from Realtime, I thought I'd let you in on some projects where we have collaborated in the past.  You might decide you want some of these features for your own use!

The big thing these days is communications.  Your software is not only fully functional but it can communicate with any other systems out there.  This is useful if:

- you want to exchange data directly with the systems of your trading partners,
- you want to provide digital notifications to clients or vendors,
- you want to provide data on web pages for intranet, extranet, or internet access, or
- you want to import or export data to other applications like Excel, Quick Books, Great Plains, or SAP.

There are so many ways to exchange data.  Here are a couple of 'Realtime' examples.

One of Realtime's clients processes hundreds of orders a day for a major customer, and requires thousands of digital transactions to be sent and received regarding inventory movement and other processes.  This is a "mission critical" environment that cannot afford downtime or lost transactions.  To handle all of these transactions, Realtime and Nebula R&D collaborated to create an interface between their business software and a Web Methods XML Business Server.  We also created links to complex bar coding software and printers, and setup timed data dumps where the system would FTP structured ZIP files to a trading partner in Asia.

Another client of Realtime needed XML Web Services to send order data from regional offices to a parent facility.  This is the sort of thing you see articles about in magazines and on the net.  Web Services is here to stay and you can use the technology.  This includes Microsoft .NET or Open Source alternatives like Perl SOAP::Lite.

I haven't even mentioned that your business application can be interfaced to a web site, to provide live data for people who login to your site or general internet visitors.  Sophisticated data entry screens can be made available over the net, or your own web developers can work with us to create custom report query pages.

Long story short, there's so much that can be done to connect your software to the world, all you have to do is contact Realtime and tell them what you want.  I'll be happy to work with them to identify your business needs, and propose and develop solutions that will keep you, your customers, your end users, and your management happy.

Among other roles, Tony Gravagno was employed as QA Manager, and later DBMS Product Manager at Raining Data Corporation which provides your D3 database.  He has served as Technical Editor for a Microsoft .NET book from SAMS Publishing and has published a series of articles on Web Services and .NET for Spectrum Magazine.  Please feel free to contact Tony through Realtime Software Corporation.

THIS MONTHS ENHANCEMENT HIGHLIGHT FEATURE:

Realtime Background Services

One of the newest features within the Realtime Software Package, is the ability to use Realtime 'Services' for recurring program needs automatically in the background as an automated process.  Any program that can run within your normal Batch Processing environment, can now be run as a 'Service' - running in the background without using any system licenses, and without tying up any user sessions. 

Think about this:  Set your nightly Batch or File save up as a background service, then never need to worry about setting them up to kickoff at night manually any more.  Simply swap out your daily backup tapes, and let the system handle the execution of the programs for you !  The system can even Email you to let you know the processes were successful !

Any number of programs can be assigned to run on a recurring regular basis with no user intervention required.  These services (programs) will  automatically restart even in the occurrence of a system reboot - whether planned or not.

Inquire how Realtime Services can benefit your system today.