Hi everyone,

First off let me apologize as it has been quite some time since I’ve updated this blog. I have been working hard on getting a new update out to the system and it has taken up a lot of my time.

That being said, I’d like to announce a rather large update to the system. Specifically one change I’ve made is that I’ve replaced our internal database engine. The old database engine was Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition (CE) and the new engine is called Vista DB. You can find more information about Vista DB from their web-site: Vista DB.

The main reasons for changing back end databases is due to a coupe of limitations that Microsoft has artificially imposed on SQL Server CE. The two main issues that affected my customers were limiting the size of the database to 4 Gb and not allowing for networked connection. The first issue I could have gotten around by allowing my users to create secondary and tertiary databases to store information. That could have been problematic but I could have worked around it. The bigger issue of the two dealt with networked access. I am planning on releasing a complementary version of MissingLink that will allow you to connect to another users database across your LAN. This wouldn’t have been possibly with SQL Server CE so I started looking for new back end databases.

I heard some great reviews about Vista DB and downloaded their trail version and gave it a serious look. Initially it seemed like a great solution because it acted as a direct replacement to SQL Server CE with little code changes. It also removed the requirement of having databases smaller than 4GB and allows for networked access. After some thorough testing I decided to make the switch and I’m happy to report that everything transitions quite nicely.

I’m hoping that my users won’t notice any change and the old saying “no news is good news” would be a good solution in this case.

On an entirely related note I’ve made some other changes that are more visible to my users:

1. I’ve created the ability for my users to create sub-tasks on their task list. This will allow my users to categorize and “nest” tasks to further clarify what needs to be done. To the best of my knowledge this can’t be done with Outlook currently, so I’m quite excited to be able to offer this functionality.

2. You can also re-adjust the order of your tasks in how you’d like to accomplish them. There is now a “Move Task Up” and “Move Task Down” menu item that will control the order in which a task is displayed the grid.

3. The bigger impact item that a number of users have requested is easier access to Files stored within MissingLink. Now on the File popup menu you have the ability to select “Open File”. This will take the latest version of the file stored in the database and “run” that file and allow you to make changes to it without. Also if you double-click on a file you’ll be presented with a window allowing you to either open the MissingLink file information or “run” that file directly. I’m hoping this makes your file changes easier to accomplish.

As you can see there are a lot of changes with this release. If you come across and bugs or problems, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email.

And a big Happy Thanksgiving to my American users.

All the best,

Kevin