Free trials.  Both Xtuple and OpenBravo are open source software, and allow free downloads for Windows computers to evaluate the software.  Consultants with Linux and Sql knowledge can even implement multi-user solutions in the free and open source format.  Licensing for commercial use should be considered to help defray development costs for the publishers.

Seats vs Users; Most software for networks should be controlled by user, i.e. my use of the software allows me to do anything, including adding and deleting other users.  The new person answering the phones and entering vendor invoices, already coded and approved with g/l distribution, does not have permission to add more users, or cut checks.

With QuickBooks when you have three users, you have three seats.  You are not to install their software on twenty different computers but use only three at once as that is a violation of their licensing terms.

With the packages we review, you may have these twenty different computers with the software installed all linked to the database server.  But only the allowed and licensed number of users may run concurrently, i.e. be logged in and entering data or inquiring, at precisely the same time.

Compared to QuickBooks, OpenBravo is quite expensive.  Quickbooks, for three seats, costs around $ 687 per year and includes 60 days of support during each annual upgrade. With discounts it can be even less.  Support can be purchased separately. However for five concurrent users they jump to $ 2,000 according to their web-site, and I have found their technical people reluctant to tout this configuration.  They also offer an Enterprise version which costs around one and a half times more, but offers a more robust and SQL styled database engine and supports much higher numbers of seats.

Five Seats – Good for Eight to 12 Users

Key Software Features

From Xtuple; Software maintenance – access to all upgrades, major and minor – is included in the annual license, as is direct helpdesk support from xTuple if you have 15 or more licensed users.  The annual license is like a subscription.  You are licensed to use the software as long as you are current on your payments (either annual or monthly).  If you’re more than 30 days late, you could be in default of your license and support agreements. The perpetual license is a one-time purchase of the then-current version of the software.  Software maintenance is priced separately – currently at 18% of the current per-user license cost, and required for at least the first year.  Direct support from xTuple is another 7% on top of the maintenance (which is a prerequisite for support).

Enterprise Resource Planning systems and Customer Relationship Management systems also known as CRM and ERP are valuable tools for companies wishing to use computing efficiencies to streamline operations. ERP systems focus on accounting, inventory and production systems and CRM is a tool to help customer service, sales and prospecting.

While proprietary software systems such as QuickBooks® exist that cover part of the ERP spectrum, and additional modules have been made available, more and more companies are looking at open-source software systems based on Linux servers. While companies quite regularly surrender to the Windows environment for the desktop needs of employees, the backroom server operations still allow IT departments to choose avoid single vendor dependence by using powerful Linux based servers and databases to form the backbone of their information processing operations.

While many larger companies have a need for active directory (AD) functionality, the core Windows flavor of the AD server environment forces savvy IT managers look for back room solutions that would not be susceptible to a windows kernel worm or virus attack. Additionally in the Unix community, the carrier-grade projects have produced up-time records that will never be met by proprietary server operating systems. The memory leaks of certain proprietary systems lead to gradual degradation per unit of up-time and still persist in that environment.

Open Source software solutions for ERP and CRM are available that base the back room operations on the reliability, scalability and versatility of Linux servers while offering client computing on web browsers, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 as well as Apple products. Packages such as Xtuple, Compiere and OpenBravo use a variety of powerful technologies that are growing in the quality and dependability of applications as quickly as Linux variants such as Ubuntu have grown for the desktop and laptop.

Smart and careful participants should keep watch for Open Source ERP and CRM for Atlanta companies.

Yes and no, but mostly yes. WordPress does require jQuery, which is a JavaScript library that simplifies common JavaScript tasks. WordPress includes jQuery by default in the core code, and many plugins and themes also use it. If you’re developing a plugin or theme for WordPress, you can be pretty sure that jQuery is already available and you can use it in your code.

However, there are some cases where you may need to load a specific version of jQuery, or choose not to use it at all. In these cases, you can enqueue a custom version of jQuery or dequeue the default version provided by WordPress. This can be done by adding some code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a plugin. It’s important to understand the implications of modifying the default jQuery implementation in WordPress and to test your code thoroughly before deploying it to a live site.

this

Let’s do the same thing with MySql

pip install MySQL-python

import MySQLdb

class mydbconn():
    def __init__(self):
        self.con = MySQLdb.connect('x', 'x', 'x', 'x')

    def get_columns(self,table):
        cuc = self.con.cursor()
        cursData = cuc.execute("SHOW columns FROM " + table)
        HEADERS = cuc.fetchall()
        keyName = HEADERS[0][0]
        keyLen = self.lenFunction(HEADERS[0][1])
        return keyName, keyLen, HEADERS

    def lenFunction(self,varCharString):
        x = varCharString.find("(")
        varCharString = varCharString[x+1:]
        x = varCharString.find(")")
        varCharString = varCharString[:x]
        return int(varCharString)

if __name__=="__main__":
    con = mydbconn()
    keyName, keyLen, h = con.get_columns("customer")
    for i in h:
        print i

On the fifth line of the program, use your MySql credentials. Sometimes the first parameter is localhost, the second x is the username for the database, the password is third and the name of the database is fourth.

You also have to change the parameter in line 2 of the main section to the name of the table you are using. This routine also has been used with databases that had a key other than named id for the first field, and it was important to have the name of the key and its length to proceed with scaffolding

In the Sqlite3 sqlalchemy example, we got a list of field names. In this example, we get a tuple of tuples. At this point, tuples might be a preferred format, they are immutable and hashable, and a utility crud function would not need to add and remove things from the tuple. However, in a more sophisticated scaffolding environment, you would add things like a field for password verification or especially remove things, like the ability to change certain fields.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management is a class of collaborative applications for enterprises that keep track of prospects, leads, customers, customer complaints, orders and shipments.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management is a class of collaborative applications for enterprises that keep track of prospects, leads, customers, customer complaints, orders and shipments. Companies wishing to better serve customers in support situations as well as equip their sales force with tools to manage leads and prospects have turned to CRM tools for some time. Many varied computer applications, from ACT for the PC to the ultra sophisticated Siebel Systems corporate customer service applications for mainframes can be categorized under this banner.

Small companies looking for CRM solutions under a linux or Mac platform environment first need to consider how long they can operate in a lone-wolf mode. Applications like ACT, although as portable as their PC, and with ACT’s creation of links to Blackberry, Palm and Windows CE, lacked the integration when a second sales person or customer service person joined the force. For the umteenth time, when it comes to using computers, there are two modes, solo and everything else. With contact management and CRM the Cloud is the ideal environment for contact management.

While there are probably sophisticated contact managers for groups using iPhones, we evaluation programs more along the lines of SugarCRM, an intense cloud based prospect and contact manager that has capabilities to manage every phase of prospecting, closing and selling. While SugarCRM can be downloaded and installed on your Mac or Ubuntu PC, it is an ideal candidate for the cloud. It can be scaled to the growth of your organization for less that $ 1000 per year per user and that is a small price compared to the cost of a years salary. For more information on Atlanta ERP visit MSincs Linux and open source ERP and CRM surveys.

Seo’s talk in ways that are hard enough to understand, but sometimes we use nomenclature straight out of a John Wayne movie.  The good guys wear white hats, and the bad guys wear black hats.  In SEO terms, we warn that ‘black hat’ techniques can lead to a possible temporary boost in ranking, but we stress that solid long term success requires the use of white hat techniques.

Bing has published a series of advisories for webmasters as follows;

1. Use valid XHTML or HTML, use the W3C validator.
2. The <title> tag should contain between 5 and 65 characters.
3. the Meta Description tag should contain between 25 to 150 characters.
4. the Meta Keywords tag should contain less than 874 characters.

I don’t know what the penalties on Bing are for violating these guidelines, but I can say that any

good promotion should not be overwhelming to either man or machine.  For example, a dry cleaner that uses every popular keyword including ‘bikini pics’ is not really being honest.  Black hat techniques don’t depend on honesty, they only seek traffic.

The problem for a legitimate dry cleaner is that the traffic that comes from ‘bikini pics’ does not lead to revenue.  The search engines can tell this in advance by heuristically comparing the keywords to the real content and message of your site and they assign a value to the keywords as they pertain to your website, and where your website does not match the hype, that hurts the value they give to your website.

There are two google categories that websites with shady optimization techniques can fall into, the google penalty box, and banned.  The banned category is generally reserved for websites that either went so far overboard in the black hat techniques that it is ridiculous, and websites that generally got hacked.  Web sites big and small get hacked, even I had a web-site hacked, where I had failed to apply all the controls on user input that I should have.  A Malaysian hacker using javascript injection managed to replace my clients home page with a spoof page.  There were two funny things about this situation, I didn’t care, because my insolent customer had failed to pay his bill with me, and when I caught it, in only a few hours, no penalty got applied to the website I managed.  So I took it down entirely.  Hah!  But besides being banned, there is the penalty box, where url’s promoted with lousy SEO techniques end up.  We have worked with these situations, and with google to get these URL’s out of the penalty situation.

Building long term success

There are two major categories of getting noticed on the search engines, organic and pay per click.  Most cold calls you receive to promote your website will be from pay per click companies.  We can provide everything these boiler room operations provide, for the same price, while gradually training you and your staff on how to manage your pay per click campaigns.  You should build this expertise within your office, or you will be paying too much forever.  Within a year of using our pay per click service at web-Atlanta you will be able to control your phone from your pay per click budget panel.  Really.  Call me for references.  They will tell you.

Some high pressure sales calls are actually from organic companies.  This is more difficult, because it entails subtle refinement of the website content to optimize your website’s presence on the first page of search engines.  This is the area where a reputable SEO firm is required.  Many ‘get to the top quick’ schemes use tricks to change your ranking.  These tricks may show a short term gain, but in the long run they will hurt the credibility that search engines assign your site.

Some examples of dirty tricks are; buying links, mass reciprocal e-mailings, (we reject more than 5 out of 6 reciprocal requests), mass link dumping to blog comments, email spam, incredible keyword deviation and link farm injection.

The ethical, and responsible way to promote websites involves understanding the search engines and how they ‘think’  (OK, they don’t think, they use heuristic techniques to algorithmic traversal, index and catalog the context and content of domains).  Our object is to improve, refine, and enhance the content of our customers websites to honestly reflect their business.  We create credible taglines and promote them within the website and about the internet at large.  We optimize title tags and meta keyword and description elements to maximize the quality rankings of your website.  Search engines respond to our techniques in time periods of from weeks to up to a year for newer domains.  Take shortcuts, and you will regret not using web-Atlanta, or a reputable firm of your knowledge.

MAPICS was a Manufacturing Requirements Planning system, MRP, developed for IBM mainframes which evolved to run as MAPICS ERP on the Linux operating system with IBM eServer iSeries computers. MAPICS ERP for iSeries and Linux for iSeries provides greater stability, reliability, scalability, performance and economy. MAPICS ERP for iSeries’ uses Java-based interfaces for rich fat-client Desktops in the local area network as well as thin-client Internet and wireless access. Mapics claims to help manufacturers to collaborate better over the Internet, “improve customer service, deliver products faster and make better business decisions”.

“MAPICS recognizes the manufacturers’ need for flexible, open, real-time collaboration to streamline operations, and the Linux operating solution gives them a competitive edge,” said John P. Carter, Jr., senior vice president and general manager, North American Operations, MAPICS. “The Linux operating system, which will leverage manufacturers’ existing technology investment, is an extremely stable, open operating system that provides a heterogeneous, integrated, reliable server operating system across a manufacturer’s eServer technology platforms.”

Linux provides not only the sturdiest foundation in server software but boasts the highest transactions per second in many benchmarks. IBM has a long history of solid hardware products and a dedicated service force to maintain IT centers.

“Linux, represents an exciting new technology that is rapidly gaining market acceptance. It is a simple and economic way to implement next generation e-business applications,” said Per Larsen, vice president of eServer solutions at IBM. “By being one of the first ERP application vendors to support Linux deployment for its solutions, MAPICS is ahead of the curve in helping manufacturers move toward e-business.”

Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, world wide provider of ERP applications MAPICS was the oldest ERP provider, with roots in the MRP days of the ’60s and ’70s, before being acquired by Infor. Scientifically strong, MAPICS has helped manufacturers compete with improved and more timely procurement, often called JIT, better information for strategic decisions, enhanced production planning tools and interfaces between departments and through-out the supply chain. MAPICS’ comes in two enterprise resource planning (ERP) foundations. (need more info)

Customers include Honda Motor Co. Ltd and the Bayer Corporation.

MAPICS is a trademark of MAPICS, Inc. The IBM e-business logo, eServer, and iSeries, are registered trademarks or trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the following descriptive term “server” following it. Other brand and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

From 2002, a press announcement for pre Infor Mapic is linked below.

Full  Mapics® Press Release