InfoCaptor with Multiple Vendor Database support
InfoCaptor is being worked on to include Multi Vendor Database support. With this support you would be able to see data from MySQL, Oracle, DB2 and any other database in the same window.
It would be very transparent to the Qlets defined how internally it works.

InfoCaptor will be pre-seeded with the database driver information for most of the available drivers in the market. If you need to work with a particular database then simply download and put the corresponding Driver from the vendors website and copy the file into the InfoCaptor home/jre/lib/ext directory.

This directory will already contain the Oracle and MySql drivers.

http://www.infocaptor.com
- 1:11 PM 10 comments  

 
Free Starter Database from Oracle
Just received my copy of Oracle Magazine and happened to browse the article which mentions Oracle Database 10g Express Edition is free to download, distribute, develop and deploy.

Although this is an old news, let me re-type the message in the article since I think it is very import for ISV and micro-ISVs that need to ship a small database along with their product.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe/index.html
- 5:32 PM 3 comments  

 
Freeware in 7 days
Finally, DiscoDump is out the doors. This is a freeware utility I conceptualized from start to finish in just 7 days.
This is a wrapper utility on top of Discoverer Dump utility. The utility that comes with Discoverer is a command line utility and it gets tedious typing the command everytime for each workbook details that need to be extracted.
With DiscoDump you can extract multiple workbook details and all at the same time parallely.

DiscoDump is a simple utility so it was easy to finish of in a short period but not without the foundation of InfoCaptor . Most of the codebase of InfoCaptor is used and just a few modifications. These 7 days include the basic seed idea, coding, website pages, basic demo, and final upload of the related files.

With this utility, I am hoping to increase the website traffic so that others can benefit from all the free stuff available on this website and also pay for some ;-) (to keep the engine going!)
- 1:14 PM 0 comments  

 
What is your Idea Score?
How to pick the best idea?

If you are thinking of starting a micro-ISV (a software shop run by 1-2 people) then you already have some idea on what solution/product to develop. This could be game related or business related solution/product.

In my opinion, you should not start working on your ISV with having just one idea. Of course you can work only on one idea at a time but before starting out, create a list of ideas that interests you and then pick the best one. Also, once you have decided on an idea let it sit in the background for a while (e.g 2 weeks) and then revisit the idea later and see if it has the same appeal as you had it 2 weeks before.

To simplify the process of picking up the best idea, I have created this simple excel spreadsheet. For each of your idea, assign score to the various factors defined in this sheet. Also, this is not my invention or a new concept. All these factors are already mentioned in so many books, mentioned-re-iterated-emphasized by ISV veterans like Eric Sink, Joelonsoftware, Steve Pavlina, ASP members, and so many others (the list is practically endless as the same thing gets re-iterated and emphasized in one form or another...well, I just did it again, it got re-iterated in this post too ;-)


The numbers here do not carry any significance. So why this exercise? Let me explain the problem in detail.

I have this problem, even after I have focused on a particular idea, my brain still keeps working on new ideas which is either related to the same idea or a totally different one. So even if I have tons of ideas, it doesn't mean every idea is worth pursuing and also each idea needs its own time and resources from generating the basic seed in your brain, nurturing and creating enough passion(to see the product delivered), and finally the long term commitment after delivery to support and market the product. This process is very analogous to the birth of a human baby but on a different level :))


I will call this exercise as basic Due Diligence. By the time you have tried to answer each of the questions above( i mean an individual really needs to spend time in finding the answers above) it can safely be said that the person has done the basic research for a potential idea.

This is just basic idea analysis. Sometimes you know all the answers to the above but haven't formally put any effort in sequencing them in order to come up with a confirmed "yes" or "no".

If you generate idea score for each of your potential ideas, most of the time the final score will reveal which idea is the best in your basket and sometimes you will discoverer something totally new during the whole idea analysis. Even if the final score doesn't tell you anything, you will "KNOW" more about your idea. So I think the exercise is worth the effort.

You can download the Idea Evaluator for free at this location http://www.infocaptor.com/files/idea_evaluator.xls

So what is your Idea Score? Please send feedback with suggestions on how to improve the scoring and if something is missing or redundant.
- 3:02 PM 1 comments  

 
launch html links through Dashboard
We have been working on a very simple enhancement. Now you can easily launch html links from the query window. This opens a whole new world for InfoCaptor. With this simple but nice feature you can link to external reports, or any information available in your intranet or servers.
Store all the url references in a table and InfoCaptor automatically recognizes if its a web url and provides a menu option to launch the URL.

One of the special use it might have is in launching Oracle Discoverer reports through dashboards.

http://www.infocaptor.com
- 6:26 PM 0 comments  

 
Jtable to Excel output performance improvement
There were two issues with exporting the output of SQL query to excel. First the limit on the number of columns and second was the performance. Excel used to error out saying too many format styles when the columns were more than 150 which resulted in too many cell formats.
This has been improved by reusing the existing formats and Excel doesn't complain now. This also has increased the performance for generating the output from sql qlet (query).

Download the latest version here
- 11:34 AM 0 comments  

 
InfoCaptor Dashboard Google Rank
Just noticed that this website's google rank has returned back to 2 from a previous. Earlier last month, the rank had dropped to 1 after we changed the .html pages to all .php. This is a positive indication.

Hope to gain more popularity by our new free articles section where we would be sharing knowledge, our experiences, tips, how-tos w.r.t Oracle Applications, Oracle Database, Oracle Discoverer, EUL (End User Layer), SQL techniques, Data Warehouse tips and techniques, efficient dashboards, DBI (Daily Business Intelligence) part of Oracle Applications embedded reporting solution. You can track this section at http://www.infocaptor.com/articles/sql.html
- 12:50 PM 0 comments