April 2007

APPX Certification Program

by Steve Frizzell, President, APPX Software, Inc.

I am pleased to announce the initial development of our APPX Certification Program.  Within a few months, we will begin to offer the first of several professional certifications for individuals working in the APPX arena.   The following certification programs are expected to be offered:

• APPX Installation and Configuration
  • Windows
  • Unix/Linux
  • File Management Systems
• System Administration
• Application Design
  • Basic Design Techniques
  • Advanced Design Techniques
  • Desktop Integration
  • RDBMS Design Techniques
  • Web Site Integration
  • External Device Integration
• APPX Financial Applications
  • General Business Applications
  • Distributor Applications
• Foreign Language Translation
• Security Management

An individual who obtains an APPX certification will be recognized as an expert within the scope of the certification.  Consequently, obtaining an APPX certification will not be easy.  Only those individuals who possess and demonstrate the highest level of knowledge and skill will be able to successfully obtain a specific certification.  As a result, we expect that the APPX certification program will provide significant benefits to the APPX community.

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Customer Focus: Swisher International, Inc. 

The names are familiar. But the numbers are mind-boggling. From its operational headquarters and manufacturing facility in Jacksonville, FL, Swisher International produces world-renowned cigars, brands such as Swisher Sweets, King Edward, and Optimo. With operations around the clock and 1500 employees, their products are shipped to nearly 90 countries. And it is all managed by a system written in APPX.

Brian Horton is Swisher’s Vice President of Information Technology. He manages an IT staff of 14, including APPX programmers, network administrators, and support personnel. “All of our corporate applications are in APPX—accounting, inventory, order processing, shipping, payroll. The only facet outside of APPX is our website.”

At Swisher, they’ve expanded the applications to include bar coding of all of their inventory. APPX processes generate the barcode labels, and hand-held scanners running APPX read and track the product as it moves through the plant.

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APPX Tech Tip - How to create a PDF Form Overlay

There have been a lot of inquiries on how to create a form overlay in APPX.

A PDF form overlay is a predefined image, or electronic form, that is printed underneath the data associated with the process.  The use of form overlays eliminates the need for preprinted forms or creating the forms from scratch in Application Design.  This article explains the basic concepts of creating an output process using a form overlay.

In most cases when data and a form are merged the data is printed first and the form is laid over the data (thus the term overlay).  APPX works exactly the opposite.  The form is printed as an image, and then the data is printed on top of the form.

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How APPX Handled the Big Daylight Savings Time Changes

It certainly wasn’t as big a deal as Y2K, but IT professionals and the companies they work for were concerned about, and impacted by, the US decision to begin daylight savings time three weeks earlier than before (and extend it three weeks further in the fall).

Microsoft released patches for Windows and for their Office suite. If, for example, you use Outlook, you had to run an update to adjust your calendar. As might be suspected, our APPX Tech Support people got several calls and e-mails asking how APPX was going to handle the changes to daylight savings time. Some of those callers had fear and dread in their voices. But all were told there was nothing to worry about, no patch to install, no adjustments to make.

APPX relies on the operating system to get its date and time data. So as long as each installation did whatever was necessary for the OS, its APPX applications would run happily and properly no matter what time it was.

There is one interesting aspect to this topic, though. How do APPX time calculations account for daylight savings adjustments?

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