Oracle Integration with Microsoft CRM – overview f

Oracle Integration with Microsoft CRM – overview for developer

by: Boris Makushkin

Oracle has huge number of installation worldwide and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is gaining its market share on the CRM market – mostly for midsize and small companies. Sometimes we see the situation when large company has Oraclebased business system – imaging you ship your goods worldwide and you do it in Oracle custom system for ten years. In this case even if you are looking for budget CRM solution – you might still need integration between Oracle and Microsoft CRM, regardless of the fact that these are coming from different software application worlds: Microsoft and Java realms.

If you are developer – you should probably be informed about two solutions:

Microsoft SQL Linked Server approach – using ODBC driver to Oracle – create linked server in MS SQL Server 2000/7.0 and then use OPENQUERY, OPENROWSET technique to access Oracle data. You can create crossplatform Transact SQL Stored procedures or views to facilitate your development

Oracle Transparent Gateways and Generic Connectivity – these two give you control from Oracle side. If you feel that you are more comfortable with Java/Oracle – this is the way to go. Generic Connectivity gives you common solution to access database via ODBC and OLE DB mechanisms to FoxPro, Microsoft Access, etc. More interesting is second product Oracle Transparent Gateways. Its components are created individually for each platform, resulting in more efficient and fast access and better performance.

Currently Oracle Transparent Gateways are available for the following platforms:

Oracle Transparent Gateway for Informix available on Solaris, HP/UX

Oracle Transparent Gateway for MS SQL Server available on NT.

Oracle Transparent Gateway for Sybase available on Solaris, HP/UX, NT, AIX, Tru64

Oracle Transparent Gateway for Ingres available on Solaris, HP/UX

Oracle Transparent Gateway for Teradata available on Solaris, NT, HP/UX

Oracle Transparent Gateway for RDB available on Alpha OpenVMS

Oracle Transparent Gateway for RMS available on Alpha OpenVMS

The disadvantage is the fact that these products are not available for all platforms and priced relatively high.

Happy developing and designing! If you would like us to do the job, give as a call 1630.961.5918 or 1866.528.0577 [email protected]

About The Author

Boris Makushkin is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Colorado, New York, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Canada, Australia, UK, Russia, Europe and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, Navision, C#, VB.Net, SQL, Oracle, Unix developer.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 15

by Boris Makushkin

Microsoft and Webmasters

Microsoft and Webmasters

by: Jeff Wyrick

Does Microsoft care for Webmasters

It’s always been a problem with websites appearing exactly the same on different platforms. As a web developer / webmaster it is extremely difficult to make user experiences rich by having the site look the same in any OS / Browser. The biggest problems they have with there famous Internet Explorer browser is security issues and W3C Standards compliance issues.

Does Microsoft have a vision of having the world’s most popular browser still? Yes but currently IE is dropping it’s rate pretty fast as Mozilla and Firefox support CSS2 and PNG Transparent Alpha where’s IE does not support. What’s really interesting is IE 5 for Mac supports both CSS2 and PNG Transparent Alpha but IE for Mac development has been discontinued. Makes me think Microsoft likes Apple more then there own Flagship Product ขWindowsข.

So why is it important for Internet Explorer to follow the W3C Standards?

Makes it easier on a developers end to produce 1 website that looks great on other browsers besides just IE

Provides developers with more choices for design formats a.k.a. PNG24 with Transparency, CSS2, etc. that want to develop for Internet Explorer.

Make IE continue to be the worlds #1 web browser

A look into Microsoft’s next generation Longhorn with IE

I am sure you have heard of the next big OS that is a few years away from the final release. As IE is only up to version 6.05 there’s not much difference besides the new Longhorn look. I see one day Microsoft will have a fully supported W3C Standards browser. Most people’s wishes on the next version of IE are basically Standards support.

The main issue with IE as far back as IE 5 on a Windows platform has been rendering CSS2 and Transparent PNG24 images. IE does not support Transparent PNG24 files as it will display a grey background with the image.

My list of things Microsoft needs to support/fix

W3C Standards Support

Security

Full HTML 4.01 / XHTML / XML / XSLT support

People may think I am crazy for not being AntiMicrosoft but even though they ether have tons of flaws or don’t support something like W3C Standards in there products I still love Microsoft and there products and always will until the day Microsoft falls or I die.

What happens if Microsoft does not support W3C Standards in there next version of IE?

Well there are ways to fix the compliance problems they have with the W3C Standards. Tonight I thought of a possible development of a plugin that allows IE users to render content currently supported by other browsers but not IE. As for previous versions of IE that don’t render content the plugin would be basically be compatible with IE 5.x to the latest in Longhorn as people may not have money to buy a new highend computer for just Longhorn. I am sure there are other ways besides a plugin to make IE render correctly but a plugin is the only thing I could think of.

About The Author

Jeff Wyrick is the owner of Michigan Web Solutions, a growing Web Design Company serving customers in the mid to high budget web design field. We specialize in mid to high budget design services such as Flash Authoring and Web Visual Effects

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 04, 2004

by Jeff Wyrick