|
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
March Edition |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Welcome to the March issue of our newsletter, it's been a while since our last, so there is a lot to catch up on.
To start off we welcome David Harris and the rest of the EC Internet team, as distributors of Realisable products. EC Internet have been providing E-Commerce solutions and ERP data integration services to the Sage resellers for over 10 years. EC Internet offers web and mobile shopping suites built on their own Web Pro Pack solution and eBay’s Magento platform.
EC Internet is a Sage Development Partner, and they provide products and services through Sage resellers. Their integration expertise make them a perfect fit to provide sales, consulting and setup services for Realisable products. EC Internet will be at TPAC this week, so please stop by Booth #39 where they will be showcasing Realisable products.
Secondly we've added several new demonstration videos covering a several integration scenarios including integrating with Sage300 ERP.
And third, we've added a raft on new features to IMan including expanding the range of supported imports for Sage200 and Sage300 ERP.
And please follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The Realisable Team
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Sage SData // IMan
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
A topic that has been coming up a lot in our demonstrations is SData, and how it affects our software.
SData is a standard through which data can be exchanged with Sage Products. By offering a single web-enabled data transport for all products application and integration development should become easier.
We’ve now done significant work with SData we believe there are two standout benefits. SData’s query-ability makes it far easier to extract data than traditional methods such as direct database access or working programmatically via the application’s API. The other primary advantage is the hierarchical output and input of SData (which maps closely to the hierarchical data capabilities within IMan). With a single URL you can extract a sales order with details arranged in a nice header/detail structure, something which is not (easily) achievable with either of the methods above. SData should make development of widgets and other query based applications a breeze!
Pushing data into an SData application is more difficult. This is however almost always the case and irrespective of underlying interface (whether its’ a SOAP webservice, or COM or .Net API). This is due to the underlying implementation and business logic that still needs to negotiated with and transacted correctly.
And not all SData applications are created equally! Differing support and implementation of SData throughout the Sage stable, means that software that works with one product will not necessarily work with another.
Some key challenges in adopting SData as a mechanism for import of data are:
-
Performance - Due to the several layers of indirection, webservices such as SData are inherently slower than direct connectivity through an API.
-
Some of the functionality that is currently available via the applications thick-client API is sometimes not available.
However, given these challenges Realisable is committed to SData. Our recently released SageCRM connector uses SData for extracting data and for compiling a lot of the metadata that is presented in both the reader and connector UIs. (In case you’re wondering we use SOAP webservices for import; SageCRM at present has a readonly SData interface.)
In the coming year we’ll adding data extraction support to our SageAccpac and Sage50 connectors to you with the same functionality that is available with SageCRM.
We believe that SData will make life easier for some application development, and over time we hope this will improve. The dream of developing an application that works seamlessly across multiple applications is a little way off.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Data Lookup & Translation |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
This edition we’re covering the lookup functionality with IMan. One of the most valuable features for integrating applications is the ability to translate or lookup a value from either a source or destination application or from a translation table.
Lookups are called through a simple function from any of our transformations supporting expressions/formulas.
IMan supports several different lookups:
-
External Data Lookup – Allows you to run a parameterised SQL query against any external database, where the result of the query is the result of the lookup.
-
Internal Table Lookup – Similar to the external lookup but with the lookup tables hosted within IMan. Useful when there is no place to store lookup data or when the options to store lookup data are limited. IMan’s internal tables are completely customisable with the capability to store 21 fields per lookup record, with functionality to enable, format, and type each field.
-
Application Lookup – For Sage300 ERP and SageCRM connector users we’ve developed specialised functions which allow you to interrogate the views/entities without having to use a SQL query. Application lookups allow you to obtain calculated values that may not be obtainable via the database.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
