I've often wanted to do systems integration work on Point of Sale (POS) systems and I've finally been given a chance on a short term project. A common POS system used by a bistro chain needs to be wired for a third-party program and, since the system is Progress-based, I was chosen to do the work.
So far there have been a number of challenges appear, but nothing entirely prohibitive. The POS uses Progress's cheapest product available, Personal Database, which is the bare-bones Progress run-time engine. This product alone doesn't allow compilation of normal Progress 4GL code, a development license is required to do that. I don't have a version 9 license, but fortunately there is a "trick" which I'll explain.
You can use a Run-time version of the prowin32.exe executable to compile code encrypted using Progress's source encryption program. This program is not probably not going to be included in a Progress Personal Database install, so you are going to have to find it somewhere else. I have it as a holder of a Progress OpenEdge OE Studio 10.0A license, so that's how I get stuff to compile. The logic hasn't changed between versions 9 and 10 and has never been altered since its inception as far as I know.
This is 100% legal in terms of Progress licensing and has been used as a backdoor for developers since I learned it back in 1994 using Progress RDBMS Version 6. It even works across platforms, and a file encrypted on a Windows PC will compile on an AIX, Linux or other Unix system with a run-time version of the Progress executable (_progres). Just remember that wherever you encrypt your code, the ensuing file is binary so you don't want to use ASCII mode when transferring it using FTP. That's usually trouble-shooting tip #1 in my experience when the code won't compile.
If you would like to know more about how to accomplish POS system integration with Progress when source is not available, please contact us for a quote. We can handle all your Progress DBA and Progress Programming needs.
Email: paul.fry@flexresourcing.com
Phone: 216-496-9915
Monday, February 07, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Some thoughts on Local Splash
If you are dying to know what Local Splash is all about, start a company and create a website for it. They will have one of their telemarketers call you within hours. They have called me about 5 times in the last month peddling a subscription SEO service which is pricier than most, and most likely no better than the garden variety one-time optimizers with much humbler operations.
Most of the calls I received from their Orange County HQ number, 949-436-7240, went dead when I answered, obviously owing to an efficient predictive dialer. This is somewhat annoying to most people, and was even more annoying to me after I heard their pitch--I'll explain why further on. I did pick up two of the calls before the robot shunned me for the next company in line, and that was good since it gave me a chance to get a feel for the face of the company and their strategy.
Both agents began their spiel with flattery which, though judging by their success must work on the newbies, the web-initiated will recognize immediately as nonsensical. The first agent, an older-sounding gentleman, informed me that when he "googled" my company that it came up on the second page. He congratulated me for this amazing feat. I asked him what search terms he used and he told me "I said I googled your company, sir." Uhhh... no, actually if you search for Flexible Resourcing it comes up as the first entry just like if you "google" a much bigger company like United Airlines. But that is not the point of SEO, is it? The man should be trying to sell me the trick of having my company at the top of the list for cleveland ohio computer services just like United comes up on the first page for "airlines". But as I started to ask him about what search terms he would suggest he was already trying to get me to commit with a credit card number. The call ended soon afterward.
This morning I received another call from a younger denizen of the call-center. He had a much groovier style and after announcing that he was from Local Splash, a Google Partner, he immediately confessed that the reason for his call was that my company was one of the "more relevant companies out there." Relevant to what? Please. I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night.
This second call ended even more abruptly, and one of the reasons is that I was eager to put up this post. Both callers claimed to have checked out my website, but how could they have had the time? A predictive dialer connects an agent to a cold prospect within a matter of seconds, and although it's possible that they know I have a website, the detailed knowledge of its contents insinuated by the telemarketer seems to me to be feigned. So now if I do receive another call from one of them who claims to have visited, I'll ask them what they think of my post about their company's marketing strategy.
If you want to know more about Local Splash, just google them. Their website comes up on the first page!
Or, if you are less than amused by Local Splash's marketing tactics, you can report them to Google here to attempt to get their partnership revoked.
UPDATE: After receiving 3 or 4 more robocalls, I finally called the corporate office and talked to someone who doesn't have a call quota. He explained that I should never have been contacted in this manner and promised to have my name removed from the cold-call predictive dialing machine. I told him that it might be a good idea to have the marketers use a different name than Local Splash to avoid stains on the company's reputation. He agreed and even said that he had suggested that to upper management in the past. It was an interesting conversation, and I have stopped getting the calls.
Most of the calls I received from their Orange County HQ number, 949-436-7240, went dead when I answered, obviously owing to an efficient predictive dialer. This is somewhat annoying to most people, and was even more annoying to me after I heard their pitch--I'll explain why further on. I did pick up two of the calls before the robot shunned me for the next company in line, and that was good since it gave me a chance to get a feel for the face of the company and their strategy.
Both agents began their spiel with flattery which, though judging by their success must work on the newbies, the web-initiated will recognize immediately as nonsensical. The first agent, an older-sounding gentleman, informed me that when he "googled" my company that it came up on the second page. He congratulated me for this amazing feat. I asked him what search terms he used and he told me "I said I googled your company, sir." Uhhh... no, actually if you search for Flexible Resourcing it comes up as the first entry just like if you "google" a much bigger company like United Airlines. But that is not the point of SEO, is it? The man should be trying to sell me the trick of having my company at the top of the list for cleveland ohio computer services just like United comes up on the first page for "airlines". But as I started to ask him about what search terms he would suggest he was already trying to get me to commit with a credit card number. The call ended soon afterward.
This morning I received another call from a younger denizen of the call-center. He had a much groovier style and after announcing that he was from Local Splash, a Google Partner, he immediately confessed that the reason for his call was that my company was one of the "more relevant companies out there." Relevant to what? Please. I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night.
This second call ended even more abruptly, and one of the reasons is that I was eager to put up this post. Both callers claimed to have checked out my website, but how could they have had the time? A predictive dialer connects an agent to a cold prospect within a matter of seconds, and although it's possible that they know I have a website, the detailed knowledge of its contents insinuated by the telemarketer seems to me to be feigned. So now if I do receive another call from one of them who claims to have visited, I'll ask them what they think of my post about their company's marketing strategy.
If you want to know more about Local Splash, just google them. Their website comes up on the first page!
Or, if you are less than amused by Local Splash's marketing tactics, you can report them to Google here to attempt to get their partnership revoked.
UPDATE: After receiving 3 or 4 more robocalls, I finally called the corporate office and talked to someone who doesn't have a call quota. He explained that I should never have been contacted in this manner and promised to have my name removed from the cold-call predictive dialing machine. I told him that it might be a good idea to have the marketers use a different name than Local Splash to avoid stains on the company's reputation. He agreed and even said that he had suggested that to upper management in the past. It was an interesting conversation, and I have stopped getting the calls.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Take a stroll down memory lane
Found this slideshow to be sort of amusing, and it sports a hilarious title: "How Microsoft Windows 3.0 Dragged the IBM PC into the Graphics Age." Maybe "dragged and dropped" would be a more apropos characterization to borrow from the GUI nomenclature. Here's the intro:
I remember that my assignment at the time was still working as a Progress 4GL/SYMIX developer mostly with client UNIX character systems. A number of my colleagues were still using dumb terminals instead of telnet clients and protesting "Why do you need a PC?" Then I showed them how to cut and paste text commands and entire files between telnet sessions with Windows 3.0 and a mouse, saving a significant amount of time and keystrokes. It had never occurred to them that a Graphical User Interface like Windows 3.0 could be a transparent interface protocol between two entirely different remote hosts. They were used to thinking in terms of UUCP logins as the only mode of transferring files, or sometimes you got lucky and the client had enabled an FTP port.
Of course now it doesn't occur to the kiddies not to use cut and paste at will, so we have to remind them that plagiarism is still unethical.
Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 on May 22, 1990. This is the desktop operating systems that finally succeeding in bringing the IBM standard PC world into age of the graphical user interface. Before this time, most people using IBM standard PCs ran Microsoft's MS-DOS or the nearly identical IBM-branded PC-DOS operating system that limited users to running what today could only be considered a primitive command-line interface to enter program instructions. There was no reason to use a mouse with an IBM PC, because PC applications were simply masses of text displayed on green or amber screens. There were two earlier versions of Windows, but they were not widely adopted. Most people who wanted to work with a true graphical interface bought the Apple Macintosh. And it was mainly the Macintosh and the manifest advantages of a GUI that drove Microsoft to develop Windows. The release of Windows 3.0 was essentially the culmination of more than six years of Microsoft research and development to bring a Mac-like graphical interface to PCs. It's been a graphical world ever since and most people born less than 20 years ago probably haven't a clue what it would be like to control a computer without a GUI. This eWEEK slide show illustrates what the advent of windows 3.0 meant to the personal computing world.
I remember that my assignment at the time was still working as a Progress 4GL/SYMIX developer mostly with client UNIX character systems. A number of my colleagues were still using dumb terminals instead of telnet clients and protesting "Why do you need a PC?" Then I showed them how to cut and paste text commands and entire files between telnet sessions with Windows 3.0 and a mouse, saving a significant amount of time and keystrokes. It had never occurred to them that a Graphical User Interface like Windows 3.0 could be a transparent interface protocol between two entirely different remote hosts. They were used to thinking in terms of UUCP logins as the only mode of transferring files, or sometimes you got lucky and the client had enabled an FTP port.
Of course now it doesn't occur to the kiddies not to use cut and paste at will, so we have to remind them that plagiarism is still unethical.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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