Panopea Consulting - iMIS Blog

More on Vista

From WindowsITPro Update newsletter, an article by Paul Thurrott:

But there is more evidence that Vista won't be impervious to attack. Last week, Microsoft actually released two critical security updates for Vista Beta 2 and later.

Why Pick iMIS?

I was just looking at the NiUG thread called "iMIS the Best?" and thought about how it relates to the post I made below re: Microsoft's decision to not support SQL 2000 or lower in the upcoming Vista operating system.

My previous post was about how that could change your upgrade plans for OS, SQL Server and iMIS, and had tone of "oy, this could be a pain."

But in response to the "iMIS the Best?" question, this situation could also be an excellent opportunity for explaining why an organization should go with iMIS.

This OS change could be a tipping point for the many NFP organizations who have custom systems built on older versions of SQL Server/MSDE and/or operating systems to finally make a change in their core database system. Is their vendor or in-house programmer still around to make the changes needed to keep up with Vista/Longhorn?

I don't know when ASI will be ready, but the sooner they can be, the better the release of Vista/Longhorn can be used to prove the "iMIS for life" slogan.

Longhorn/Vista won't support SQL 2000/MSDE

Wow. Just read this morning that Microsoft has announced they won't have backwards compatibility with SQL 2000/MSDE in the much awaited, much delayed Longhorn/Vista operating systems. They announced this back on July 20, but I hadn't read it anywhere until this morning. Here's what Microsoft has to say:

In an effort to provide customers with more secure products, Microsoft Windows Server "Longhorn" and Microsoft Windows Vista will only support the follow on release to SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later. Earlier versions of SQL Server, including SQL Server 2000 (all editions including Desktop Engine edition, a.k.a MSDE), SQL Server 7.0, and SQL Server 6.5, will not be supported on Windows Server "Longhorn" or Windows Vista. Customers running applications with these earlier versions of SQL Server should consider evaluating and upgrading to SQL Server 2005, which was designed to take advantage of the upcoming security and performance enhancements in the operating environment.

For those of you who like to be early adopters of new OS's and want to get the supposed security advantages of Longhorn/Vista, this may put a wrinkle into your plans. You may need to plan a SQL Server and iMIS upgrade before you can do the OS upgrade. Vista is supposed to be released in "early 2007" and Longhorn sometime in 2007.

For iMIS users upgrading to SQL 2005 means you must be on at least iMIS 10.6 and you run your iMIS database in the compatibility mode of SQL 2000 (8).

For those on MSDE, what does it mean? Not clear to me. ASI has not, to my knowledge, made any official announcements regarding SQL Express support but the NiUG Discovery Conference is less than a month away.

ASI to go with VanDamme!

It's official! ASI is working with VanDamme Associates to create a new version of the e-Series that will be .NET and ready to go with iMIS 15, targeted for a December 2006 release date. Really, really cool news.

The product is a new version of the very successful VanGo product with some changes to meet ASI standards and requirements. VanDamme has been working on it for sometime now as well as implementing a ton of VanGo sites.

For more info, here's the VanDamme press release.

Way to go, VA people!