I'm currently looking at developing a web solution for my rugby club. We are looking at ways to improve communication between players and coaches and have several ideas on how to achieve this. I have been investigating the best technology to use to satisfy my needs. I ideally want a structured framework that will support a scaleable application as I will be looking to add functionality bit by bit.

This is where MVC comes in. MVC is an old architecture that was originally proposed in the late 70's by Trygve Reenskaug. The concept was to separate business logic from the presentation layer this ultimately leads to cleaner code that is easier to read and to maintain. The last few years has seen MVC become very popular amongst web developers who have strived to clean up their web applications. It is also useful as a web designer may not need to or know how to go rooting around in business logic. With MVC they don't have to as they can just concern themselves in writing the views.

MVC centres around the controller. The controller is responsible for delivering the correct view to the user. The user can then interact with the view. The controller can react to the interaction and has the ability to trigger actions in the model and then build a another view that can be based upon the model that is then presented to the user.

For the rugby club site I am going to use Ruby on Rails which is an MVC framework for Ruby. In the past I have also used Spring MVC which is a part of Java's wonderful Spring framework. I found Spring to be an incredible framework and loved the concept of Aspect Oriented Programming and Dependency Injection. If you are unfamiliar with these terms you should definitely find out about them.

I'm currently looking at developing a web solution for my rugby club. We are looking at ways to improve communication between players and coaches and have several ideas on how to achieve this. I have been investigating the best technology to use to satisfy my needs. I ideally want a structured framework that will support a scaleable application as I will be looking to add functionality bit by bit.

This is where MVC comes in. MVC is an old architecture that was originally proposed in the late 70's by Trygve Reenskaug. The concept was to separate business logic from the presentation layer this ultimately leads to cleaner code that is easier to read and to maintain. The last few years has seen MVC become very popular amongst web developers who have strived to clean up their web applications. It is also useful as a web designer may not need to or know how to go rooting around in business logic. With MVC they don't have to as they can just concern themselves in writing the views.

MVC centres around the controller. The controller is responsible for delivering the correct view to the user. The user can then interact with the view. The controller can react to the interaction and has the ability to trigger actions in the model and then build a another view that can be based upon the model that is then presented to the user.

For the rugby club site I am going to use Ruby on Rails which is an MVC framework for Ruby. In the past I have also used Spring MVC which is a part of Java's wonderful Spring framework. I found Spring to be an incredible framework and loved the concept of Aspect Oriented Programming and Dependency Injection. If you are unfamiliar with these terms you should definitely find out about them.

Agile project plans should allow the plan to be changed throughout the project. At the start of the project it is impossible to be able to see into the future and to anticipate every event logically then we shouldn't expect to be able to produce a completely accurate plan. As we move through a project and requirements and functionality evolve so should the plan to incorporate these changes. By constantly maintaining the project plan we can ensure that we are able to make increasingly accurate decisions, mitigate risks early and build trust with the customer by keeping them in the picture as the project evolves. It's also important to define methods of tracking the progress of a project.

Recently I've been looking at a few pieces of software to help keep track of how long tasks are taking me to complete. I particularly like ClockingIT which is a great open source web based application and what is more you can have it hosted for free.

Aprils v6.0p and  v6.1d patch has been delayed.  The new target release date for this patch is Friday 2nd May 08.

DMC Software has recently have recently joined the Agile Alliance.

This exciting development enables us to keep on the cutting edge of software engineering and shows our commitment to Agile methods. By continuing to embrace new ways of working we will ensure that our ability to provide customer satisfaction will increase.

We are extremely pleased to advise you that DMC Software has been chosen as one of the four finalists for The Small to Medium Sized Business of the Year Award in The National Business Awards 2008.

Following last weeks Sage 200 Commercial Update we are delighted to announce the official launch of Sage 200 v5.10.

The release of Sage 200 v5.10 is a milestone in the Sage 200 roadmap with a number of exciting enhancements, for example:

• Sage 200 CRM (v6.1) delivering tighter Microsoft Outlook Integration, additional data management, customisation functionality and PDA access.
• Full Microsoft Vista support (Business and Ultimate editions) across the Sage 200 Suite
• Full Microsoft Office 2007 support (Standard and Professional editions) across the Sage 200 Suite
• Reconciliation enquiries for both Debtors and Creditors
• Financial statements for next year
• Import & Export of financial statement layouts
• Purchase invoice validation
• Excel integration improvements, including both performance (Sage 200 v5.1 is on average 30 times faster than Sage 200 v5 in this area)and formatting enhancements
• Goods received - receive all and invoice options
• POP accruals to include non stock items
• Stock take improvements, including stock take for traceable items, new stock take criteria and stock take templates

More information can be obtained by contacting DMC Software.

A view can be created by two methods; graphically or by code.

To create a view graphically:

• Right click on the views folder of the relevant database within Object Explorer(the tree on the left hand side of the screen).
• Select New View from the menu.
• From here you are effectively in the graphical query builder. If you construct a query as you would normally and when happy click the save button in the toolbar at the top. You are prompted to provide a name for the view.
• Once saved the view can be queried like any other SQL table.

To create a view via code:

• Open a new query.
• Write the query as normal.
• To create the view, enter the following above your query.

  CREATE View <View Name> AS <Query>

• When you execute this the view is created.