Soft Tech Software Adopted by SATCOM Giant
July 27, 2012
The need for product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions perforates across industries with the communications industry being no exception. It was recently announced that the General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies located in Richardson, Texas, will begin using the PLM software, ProductCenter, created by Soft Tech Inc. in the Equities.com article, “United States : SofTech Product Selected by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies”.
The reasons for the adoption of the PLM solution by the communication company were discussed in the article:
“ProductCenter streamlines engineering documentation processes and supports multi-CAD tool integrations and the vaulting of product related data. ProductCenter also enables Engineering to manage the Bill of Material (BOM) for improved efficiency in product manufacturing. Although ProductCenter is focused on the product development processes today, it will be used to manage any document that requires access control and routing to any department and/or individual.”
The need for PLM solutions to support mult-CAD files and be accessible across departments is not relegated to this company or this industry alone. Inforbix, another leader in the PLM field, understands that any industry utilizing CAD/CAM files needs a solution that can easy work with such files and yet remain fluid, streamlining processes. They pride themselves on being able to enable all of their PLM users to ‘find, reuse and share product data’ regardless of the size of the enterprise.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 27, 2012
Open Search Engine has Black Duck Soaring to New Heights
July 27, 2012
Black Duck is getting some wing support from Ohloh and plans on helping developers soar to new heights in the future.
Now, by utilizing the Ohloh code and open source search engine, Black Duck can give flocks of developers a new flight plan. eWeek’s article “Black Duck Launches Open Data Initiative, New Code Search Engine” tells us developers can utilize a free comprehensive resource to find and explore open source projects and code.
The officials at Black Duck stated:
“Visible metrics help open source project teams better manage the operations of their projects, track progress, recruit new members and share their progress with others. Black Duck’s decision to open up the data in Ohloh will make it easier for open source projects to be more transparent about the success and activity of a project.”
“We’re proud to freely license Ohloh data under this respected license, and believe that making this resource more accessible will allow contributors and consumers of open source gain unique insight, leading to more rapid development and adoption.”
Since 2002 Black Duck Software has been giving developers strategy, products, and services for the enterprise scale adoption of open source software. Their adaption of the Ohloh code and search engine gives developers a direction to fly other than south.
The tail feathers of the Black Duck may just carry developers way above the clouds in the future.
Jennifer Shockley, July 27, 2012
Interesting Reads
July 26, 2012
There is a very enlightening source of reading references to be found in Jeff Huang’s “Best Paper Awards in Computer Science.” He conveniently provided a list of informative papers neatly categorized by area of expertise, like artificial intelligence or human computer interaction.
While scrolling down the list, two interesting papers seemed to jump right out.
The first of which, “Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging with Bilingual Graph-Based Projections,” describes a new approach, as:
“A novel approach for inducing unsupervised part-of-speech taggers for languages that have no labeled training data, but have translated text in a resource-rich language. Our method does not assume any knowledge about the target language (in particular no tagging dictionary is assumed), making it applicable to a wide array of resource-poor languages. We use graph-based label propagation.”
The second paper, “How does search behavior change as search becomes more difficult?” Describes some research on search and their conclusions, with:
“When having difficulty in finding information, users start to formulate more diverse queries, they use advanced operators more, and they spend a longer time on the search result page as compared to the successful tasks. The results complement the existing body of research focusing on successful search strategies.”
Researchers are consistently developing models to predict and understand changes in text entry. Sadly, most of the models fail to account for varying system parameters and the ever changing human factor, nor their evolving relationship.
The latter explains the dumbing of search…but they were interesting reads.
Jennifer Shockley, July 26, 2012
Sign In as Difference User in SharePoint 2013
July 26, 2012
The “Sign in as a Different User” menu option has been done away with in SharePoint 2013. Microsoft has made it known that they have worked to make SharePoint 2013 a more streamlined, efficient, out-of-the-box solution, and in doing so are discouraging users from customization. However, some of the features that were removed still need to be navigated in some way. The “Sign in as a Different User” command is one example. Nick Grattan’s SharePoint Blog gives us a workaround in, “Sign in as Different User and SharePoint 2013.”
Grattan states:
This ‘Sign in as Different User’ menu item is very useful when testing applications, but it can lead to problems especially when opening documents, say in Microsoft Word. So, it may be for these reasons that the option has been removed in SharePoint 2013. You can add the menu item back in, but I would suggest only doing this on test or development SharePoint servers. To do this, repeat this edit on all servers in your SharePoint farm:
What follows is a step-by-step list of instructions to help you successfully complete the function.
For users who are concerned in general about the lack of customization options in SharePoint 2013, we would encourage the addition of a smart third-party solution. For instance, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint infrastructure to increase efficiency and intuitiveness. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a trusted industry leader based in Austria, and consistently wins recognition for by KM World.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
CAD Interoperability a Cinch for Renault
July 26, 2012
Several industries struggle with multiple CAD systems and are slowed by interoperability issues. A recent Design News article, “Renault Fast Tracks CAD Interoperability”, explains how one of the world’s leading racing companies, Renault Sport F1, is using new data management solutions through product lifecycle management to overcome such inconveniences.
PLM manager at Renault Sport F1, Jean-Francois Plusquellec, was quoted as saying,
“Working with suppliers is “our No. 1 issue. We need to have a lot of loops between our design team and our suppliers, and we need to have high quality for the 3D translation.”
The solution to the multi-CAD problem is as follows:
“Using Elysium’s technology, Renault Sport F1 has created a supplier portal that integrates with its ERP system and product data management system and allows suppliers using different CAD programs to exchange data and models quickly and accurately without manual translation or cleanup on Renault’s end.”
Although most engineers in a recent survey conducted by PTC agreed that CAD interoperability was one of the major hurdles facing the industry solutions do exist. By adopting PLM solutions designed with CAD/CAM in mind, interoperability ceases to be a problem. Data management solutions are rapidly overcoming many of the traditional challenges facing engineers in the manufacturing industry and will continue to advance in the years to come.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 26, 2012
Governance Listed as Top Challenge in Enterprise
July 25, 2012
A new Gartner report shows that more SharePoint users are failing in the category of governance than in any other. SharePoint Joel gives his opinion on governance in, “Governance the #1 Challenge to Managing SharePoint.”
SharePoint Joel begins:
According to Gartner 66% of SharePoint Customers do not believe they have adequate governance. (Based on a recent Gartner survey) Governance can be defined as a set of defined roles, responsibilities, policies, and procedures that will help your company to proactively manage your information technology resources in a way that maximizes business value.
But governance does not have to be an ongoing struggle or an agonizing process. Third party solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can work with an existing SharePoint installation to add efficiency and functionality. Fabasoft Folio Connector works with Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise to specifically address the issue of governance.
Fabasoft Folio is the standard software product for Enterprise Content Management, Collaboration, Compliance Management, agile Business Processes and Information Governance. The solution provides uniform, reliable and controlled management of digital content in the enterprise. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise links Fabasoft Folio for uniform enterprise-wide information access.
Do not continue to struggle with governance issues, allow Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their suite of smart solutions to ease your enterprise troubles.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Kapow Buddies up with Google
July 25, 2012
Kapow Katlyst announced this week that it will be joining the Google Enterprise Partner Program.
Through this partnership, Kapow, leading innovator in the application integration market, will be extending the power of Google search across the enterprise and will hopefully help enrich the relevance and quality of search results for users.
An article on Yahoo Finance, “Kapow Software Joins Google Enterprise Partner Program,” tells us about the partnership. The Google Enterprise Partner Program provides “experts” in various services and products to Google customers. Kapow offers the ability to make any application searchable.
John Yapaola, CEO of Kapow Software, commented in the press release:
“Joining the Google Enterprise Partner program helps us provide enhanced Google search to enterprise users. With Kapow Katalyst our customers rapidly create fully enriched feeds from any content source, maximizing the return on their search technology investment. Kapow Katalyst extends the reach of Google Search Appliance to incorporate content locked within applications, even those without APIs, and enhances its value by enabling powerful metadata enrichment that dramatically improves search quality and content findability.”
Look for Kapow to become a big player in the search technology realm. The array of features offered by the company will be an asset to the Goog. We believe the technology is worth a look if you are looking for something that is powerful, proven, and beginning to get recognition.
Andrea Hayden, July 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Siemens Recognizes Asian Manufactures
July 25, 2012
The Asian manufacturing market is one of the fastest growing markets for utilizing product lifecycle management solutions. In an effort to recognize the efforts and hard work of Asian enterprises Siemens presents its annual Asian-Pacific Innovation Awards. According to the recent Manufacturer’s Monthly article, “Siemens PLM Software Celebrates Ingenuity in Asia”, Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers won this year’s highest honor for implementing Technomatix portfolio enabling them to come closer than ever to real-time manufacturing.
As the article explains of the award,
“The top award is presented to the company that uses PLM technology in a way that enables them to be a hallmark of success in the manufacturing industry, maximising the value derived from their products throughout the entire lifecycle to streamline their productivity and performance. While Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers walks away with top honors, it is not alone in showing ingenuity and innovation in its use of Siemens PLM Software’s technology. Each of the nominees demonstrated outstanding innovation in their application of PLM solutions for their businesses.”
Recognizing manufacturers for their progress is very important especially during turbulent economic times. Behind every successful manufacturer is an equally great PLM provider that often goes overlooked. We like to bring attention to all of the state-of-the-art PLM providers that work tirelessly to allow manufacturers around the world to reduce waste and solve complex manufacturing issues through new data management solutions.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 25, 2012
How to use Oracle Full Text Search in an Entity Framework
July 25, 2012
Oracle has the solutions, but how do you use Oracle full text search in an entity framework? We are not sure what this means, but the info you need can be found in Devart’s article, “Using Oracle Full-Text Search in Entity Framework.”
Devart began with:
“We decided to meet the needs of our users willing to take advantage of the full-text search in Entity Framework and implemented the basic Oracle Text functionality in our Devart dotConnect for Oracle ADO.NET Entity Framework provider. For working with Oracle Text specific functions in LINQ to Entities queries, the new OracleTextFunctions class is used, which is located in the Devart.Data.Oracle.Entity.dll assembly.”
It enables working with such Oracle Text functions as:
- CONTAINS
- CATSEARCH
- MATCHES
- SCORE
- MATCH_SCORE
Devart presents a very detailed sales pitch for OraDirect, or dotConnect as their calling it now. Whatever name you choose, the gist is the software offers native connectivity to the Oracle database, tools and technology. They also offer a customized set of their own tools to increase Dataset productivity such as Dataset Wizard and Dataset Manager.
If you can decipher their article, than the wisdom of the Oracle is yours. For the most part this article reads like a coder handbook, and I am not a coder. If you happen to speak that very enlightened language, you will probably grasp Devart’s meaning a lot quicker than this gosling. If not, maybe the Oracle will see you some other day.
Jennifer Shockley, July 25, 2012
Streamlining SharePoint at Work
July 24, 2012
On the Microsoft SharePoint Blog, Chirag Patel addresses readers’ questions about what SharePoint can do for them professionally with his entry, “8 Easy Ways to Change SharePoint at Work.”
Before diving into his list of eight tips, Patel gives an introduction to his ideas:
With endless possibilities and boundless optimism, SharePoint obviously has a great deal more to offer and [sic] the manner in which it is implemented and governed. You will also find mountain of articles and how to guides on the Internet but my response almost always touch on the following areas. In this post I will share 8 easy ways that by themselves may not dramatically improve productivity, but combined can result in significant performance gains and hopefully help you leverage SharePoint functionality.
In terms of leveraging SharePoint functionality, not every organization can afford a team of SharePoint developers in-house or contracted out. For these organizations, a smart third party solution may be a good addition to an existing SharePoint infrastructure, or as a standalone piece.
A third party solution with good reviews and user feedback is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. With a listed of notable technology partners, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can ensure high functionality with limited additional effort. For users who have to choose between intense customization of SharePoint and adding a third party solution, many will find a third party solution like Mindbreeze to be the least stressful option.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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