Well, here is some detailed info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing or http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

But in short : it all started with SETI@home (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home). To detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life in radiosignals. This asked for a lot of processing power that only supercomputers have (at a very high cost). So they invented this system to use the processing power of PC’s all over the world. Most PC’s use very little CPU, so the idle time can be used for processing BOINC-projects.

At the moment there are a lot of other projects (search for cures for cancer, medicine, climatology, astrophysics, mathematics, …). It can be you (=your PC) that discovers ET or a cure for all cancers or some other groundbreaking medicine (even if I doubt you will ever know it was your PC)!

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But this does not mean I don’t follow up on blogs, topics and so on. Lately I found some rather interesting things (but I don’t remember on which blog) for the transactionlog-performance.

First I will talk a little about transaction log fragmentation.

No, NOT about the physical fragmentation. I think that issue is well-known by now (at least, I hope so).

I want to talk about internal fragmentation!

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Why do I put double quotes around negative? Well, for testing it is a quite interesting feature. Why?

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First thing I noticed is that even the lowest priced computers are quite powerful! Maybe it looks to me like that because I am used to see server hardware and portables. It costs €233, has 2 GB of memory, dual core Intel 64bit (!) CPU (don’t remember the speed, but for performance this is generally not so imported). For the rest, it has a 160GB SATA drive and a SATA DVD. No floppy! An integrated ethernet card. I lost count of the USB-ports and various other ports on it. But no parallel port for the printer (I still use one that ONLY has a parallel port! Well, ok, I can accept that. After all, we decided to get rid of it anyway when the cartridge will be empty [a new cartridge probably costs more then the printer anyway]). An (Italian) Vista was pre-installed on the desktop.

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Read here for more info:Website maintenance (upgrade of forum)

Here are all the messages that have been send to you. If it happens your PM-box is full, you need to delete some PM’s to make place. This can also be done automatically by a setting (Private messages=>Rules, folders & settings=>Folder options [see later for more info]).

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What (and when or why) is reporting a post/topic?

• WHAT: Reporting means to bring a topic or post to the attention of the moderators/administrators.
• WHEN (WHY):
  • When you think that a post/topic is spam or advertising or if it contains offensive text or pictures,… In the forum rules is explained how a topic/post should behave. If it breaks one (or more) rules, you can report it (there is no need to be a back seat moderator). The moderators/administrators will then decide what to do with it.
  • When a topic contains a bad title (like Help me ; I am stuck ; I’ve got an error ; …)
  • When a topic is in the wrong forum
  • When 2 user created the same topic multiple times in the same or another forum.
  • When a topic can be ‘promoted’ to the Navision Tips&Tricks forum.
  • When a topic is solved (or is a good posting) and the attribute is not set. (BTW: DON’T report the ones that have [SOLVED] in the description. These we will find and in time, we will change them (actually we hope the topic-owner does this ).
  • Other reasons you might consider valid. (more…)
    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/reporting-a-posttopic/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:56:50 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/ Someone has responded to your topic and you want to give more information or ask some extra information on the topic.

    So, go to the topic and then click the “postreply” button (not the newtopic! This will create a completely new topic).

    

    For the rest, this is less- or more the same as for creating a new topic. Also here it is possible to attach pictures.

    After the reply-part, there is the attachment part and after that there is the complete history of the topic.

    

    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:46:43 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/ This has completely changed! The RSS-MOD we found has a lot of possibilities.

    Actually, it has so many options I had some problems too. After studying them, I advised Luc to remove some of them and to make some options standard.

    First thing: It makes a difference if you are logged in or not when opening this page! If you are logged in, you can also see the protected forums (like the 2 protected Romanian forums). Of course ONLY if your user account has access to it!

    Where to find the RSS-page? Well you can access it from anywhere (RSS Feed):

    

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:46:20 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/ After you searched the forum and didn’t find your problem (and solution), you decided to write a post. But first you needed to create a login and do some setup.

    After all that, finally you can make a new topic.

    First problem: in which forum? Well read the forum-descriptions and it will be clear where to write it.

    Second (and probably biggest problem): a good title!

    Remember a good title describes your problem and gives other uses directly an idea what the topic is about.

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:57:54 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/ This one is new and quite interesting. What are friends for? Well, in general you want to keep them close! How? I think it is easier to explain it with an example.
    • Manage friends

      If for example you send a lot of PM’s to a certain person, in the new version you always needed to type in his/her name or search it in the list. If you define the person as a friend, you don’t need to do it anymore. You can just click on the add-button near the name and it will be added as the person to send a PM to (later more on PM’s). You also see if they are online or not. If the person wants his online status to be hidden, you won’t see him as online.

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:49:42 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/
  • Edit memberships

  Until now, Luc did change some things in the forum software to simulate groups (Administrators, Moderators, MVP, Site Supporters).

  Now this is integrated in the forum-software.

  

  All users, once they confirmed the registration, are placed into “Registered users”. In some you can apply to join and if you meet the conditions, you are admitted. This is all done by the administrator.

  • Manage groups

  You have this menu if you are leader of a group. For the moment only the administrator can do this.

  

  ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:41:54 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/
• Edit global settings

Also this is quite familiar.

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This is quite familiar, I would say.

Ok. I admit it, the birthday part is new…

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If there are forums or topics that interest you, you can subscribe to it. If a post is created in that forum/topic, you will be notified.

To subscribe a forum : Open the forum and in the top, you wil see “Subscribe forum”

To subscribe a topic : Open the topic and in the top, you wil see “Subscribe topic”

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From now on, I will call the User Control Panel the “UCP”!

And here is the UCP front page:

It gives some basic information like when you joined, how many posts you have. In which forum you are most active, and your most active topic.

There is so much in the UCP that I decided to divide it into parts. I will make a separate blogpost for:

• UCP Overview
• UCP Profile
• UCP Board Preferences
• UCP User Groups
• UCP Friends & Foes

Also the private messages are a part of the UCP now. I will come to these in the end. First I will handle the other UCP-topics, then about posting, RSS, PM’s, reporting.

But were are they? In the old version they are “hidden” in the “Announcements”-forum as an announcement. Now we have a better place! There is a link on the main forum page!

We did some restructuring of the rules. They are now grouped by topic:

When we make changes to the rules, we will still put them in the announcements, so check them regularly (RSS is useful for this [later more on RSS]). And then change/add them in the forum rules page.

In the old version, I always missed this possibility.

Including the message texts in the search can give you a lot of extra topics that are NOT about your problem, but they are selected because your keywords happen to be in it.

The title does NOT have that problem (or at least SHOULDN’T have it). BUT this means EVERYONE has to create good titles that REALLY explain what the topic is about. This the BIG reason, I do insist on having a title that says something and not “Help”, “URGENT”,…

In reality, I only have 2 advices:

1. First and for all: use good titles when you write a topic.
2. Try to put your search-parameters to limit as much as possible the replies. If you don’t find what you need, you can always try to remove some parameters and have a wider search.

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First what is there to blog about? I made a tour of Mibuso 3 to see what is new and make some note for a blog. I noticed that in almost (or all) places something was changed or added.

Now I have a beautiful list of things to blog about. But now I have another problem: in which order to blog about them?

After some days I found the answer. I will blog about them in the order that a new user should use all the functionalities of the Mibuso 3.

But why does someone come to the forum?

Because you have a problem and are searching for an answer to your problem.

So first part is to search something. If you don’t find it, you need to write a topic but first you need to register as a user (and while waiting for the confirmation-email, it is a good idea to read the forum rules).

Then you setup your user account (at least I do that).

And then you write your topic, wait for answers (through email or RSS), respond to the replies (through a post or also a private message [=PM]) and then (hopefully) confirm your problem has been solved.

We are planning the upgrade in first half of September 2008!

This is the first post about the new version. Other posts will follow in which I will explain the new features and some differences.

First of all : we have tried to keep the forum-look as close as what we are used to (As a first ‘taste’, Luc showed me the new forum with a complete new look. HORROR! PANIC! I don’t recognize MY forum any more! We decided immediately to keep the look we all know too well.)

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But the practical maximum we ever reached (or heard/read from others) is around 850MB.

The same for me. I never installed or heard someone install a native database service and got over that 850MB limit (and sometimes even getting there is difficult).

I also got once a problem when installing the service with less memory and it wouldn’t install. I got angry, restarted the install-batch (I always use a batch with the install parameters to install the service) several times and after about 10 times I got the message that the service was installed. Why didn’t the install work from the first time? I didn’t find out at the moment and I still don’t know the answer. But at least the installation was done and all works.

NOW I can confirm someone who arrived at a 950MB cache!

And even more, it is not from someone who told me he arrived there! I DID IT MYSELF!

I have a customer who put some more memory in their server (from 1GB to 2GB) because they had a cache of about 550 MB and they are suffering some performance issues lately when doing their end-of-month processing.

I just tried 850MB and it installed immediately. So I thought:why not try more : I tied 950MB and it installed from the first time!

Why don’t we have 1GB? To be honest, I didn’t even dare to try it out (after I got so easily 950MB). I’ve had to much problems in the past to even get at 850MB.

And to win another 50MB is not so much. We just got from about 550MB to 950MB: a gain of about 90%!

Why this post?

Well, finally I have someone who installed a native database server with over 850MB of cache! And I don’t have it from hear-say, but from a trustworthy source (Well … I consider myself a trustworthy source…).

This latest phrase convinced me to refer to that blog. It is quite hard to create good indexes. But if you don’t know the data or how that data is used, how can you possible think to index it in a good way?

This is the blog:
How hard is it to pick the right non-clustered indexes?

I found this blog : How to Integrate Performance Monitor and SQL Profiler

So why talk about them?

Well, this bug is REALLY different. This bug is a very ancient one. One that came from the era of the first computers!

What it is the story?

Well, I was at a customer when suddenly someone told me to have a look on his screen because of a bug.

So far, nothing special.

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The “NAV” in Dynamics NAV is pronounced letter by letter using the English alfabet and not as 1 word.
I write this because I noticed a lot that people don’t know exactly how it should be pronounced.

I also noticed that most demo’s are done from a VPC. This really has some advantages:
-You don’t need to install anything on your PC.
-Also if someone prepares it and sends it to someone else, you don’t need to worry if the person has installed everything. (Just worry about the fact that the portable that needs to run it needs enough memory and it needs MS Virtual Machine installed.

Also some jokes about me:
-When others were searching for me they just looked for an electric socket because they knew they would find me there writing and blogging.
-Another joke was that they said that I had my portable attached to my hands. Because each time they saw me it was with my portable under my hands.

-I definitly have to learn MS OneNote. Waldo told me (I asked for some tips&tricks for blogging during the events) he used OneNote to write his blogs and also meetings.

Maybe some words about Directions EMEA 2008 (after all THAT was the event)
I can’t compare other events because it was my first one. I find it a great event with a good mix between salesstuff and techstuff.
Neither sales, neither techies could fall asleep while listening (Some did anyway!) to an annoying session (salesstuff for techies or techstuff for salespeople).
I also heard a lot of times that people found it a great event.
Some of those also went to Directions US and they found EMEA was better.

Why do you care about training your people?
-more consultants=more revenue, more margin.
-more productive consultants=more revenue, more margin, higher profitability
-avoid burn them out

Partner launch portal
-one stop shop
–product downloads
–VPCs/CTPs
–training materials&recordings
–sales and marketing materials
–etc
–see also on the partnersource. There are some links for NAV5 and NAV2009! Keep also that page in mind, they will continue uploading new material.

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Web services
-new method of interacting programmatically with the MS Dynamics NAV system
–Access over a network
–execution on remote system
-Widely-used, industry-standard
–Understood/used by other systems/products
–Best way to integrate across systems

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Directions EMEA can become bigger then Directions US, because we have a very big community.

MS business solutions guiding principles
-build most recognizable brand in business applications market
-deliver most innovative&easily adaptable platform of ISV’s
-preserve our customer and partner investments while strengthening their overall experience
-enable and equip an industry-leading ecosystem of solution providers
-deliver a competitively superior value proposition for customers

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Luckily the hotel provided some coats to protect us:

Luc (at the right) and me (at the left).

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Doomsday:What is there for the future: .NET, C#, reporting services,…? I will be out of business because I just have C/AL programmers.
No problem! NAV2009 is there to make a bright future!
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Why does business want hosted applications?
What does this mean to the delivery model?
What does this mean to your business model? It is an opportunity!

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Why use datawarehouse when
-native db is used for NAV
-many users on NAV
-large SQL Navision DB
-need to combine or consolidate several companies in one report or cube with same structure and currency
-heavy use of NAV dimensions
-when you have additional data sources
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At least the salestalk ended fast and for a techie it was interesting anyway (can’t say the same about other techtalk)

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Until know I didn’t understand a lot, probably because I don’t know anything about .NET…

Demo-time:
office business application
using:
-Visual Studio tools for Office
-Windows Presentation Foundation
-LINQ to SQL

Creating a worddocument, it shows also the items in the bottom of the screen and you can scroll between them and it shows them big when selected (the fish-eye view). It is easy to do. On the internet you can find info how to. I haven’t the slightest idea on how to start programming it.

Basically it is a first impression for Navision guys/girls that it is also possible and quite easy to program some things in Visual Studio.
The question is : do we, C/AL diehards, need to learn Visual Studio or can we just hire guys/girls to do it for us, telling them what we need, how to connect to the DB, which tables to use and so on.
I think it is better to find other people to do it. You cannot specialize in all things (even if I would like to).

But I have to admit that the Visual Studio environment is flashy. I can imagine that when the Visual Studio developers see the Navision environment, they get a bad surprise.

SQL benefits are :
-better performancee
-higher availability
-better backup/recovery
-new technologies (analysis/reporting/integration services)
-64 bit technology.

Upgrade path for NAV2009 (this one is new!).
Get as close as possible : fully upgrade to 5.0SP1 and SQL2005.
Doing this will avoid some risks of business disruption. A lot of smaller upgrades are lesk risky then 1 big.
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Going international is completely different from staying local.
A lot of companies spend 3-4 years to get their add-on international. This is too long because they make mistakes.

These are 25 points to remember when going international.

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I am not writing everything he said or showed, only the things that are most important or something I didn’t know myself.

In general performance problems are created by the application (80-90%) and sometimes (10-20% by infrastructure).

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To fight spam in the comments (and there is a lot), it is up to you, bloggers, to help fight it.

How? To define some options to control the comments.

You have to do some things in the administration part:

-Plugins=>Peter’s Random Anti-Spam : Activate this

-Options=>Discussion=>E-mail me whenever : put both values to yes. This way you will know faster if someone wrote a comment on your blogs.

-Options=>Discussion=>Before a comment appears: Best put both “Comment author must fill out name and e-mail”,”Comment author must have a previously approved comment” to true. This way you know who posted a comment and once you know you can trust him, the comment is directly ready (best control your email/RSS-feeds anyway).

If everyone follows these rules, I think we can very easily control the spam in the blogs.

And if you find some spammer that created a blog, you can always write a topic (with a link to the spam) in the Feedback forum. This way we can block him faster.

Error: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired
State ID: HYT00

—————————
OK
—————————

I finally found a method to avoid it!

Instead of using the name, I use 127.0.0.1 to connect. And after a few seconds I am in Navision!

This method works (at least for me) in case you have a default installation (not a named instance). I don’t know what to do in case of named instances.

I think it is worth to check the “SQL Server Configuration Manager”. Then “SQL Server Network Configuration”=>”Protocols for MSSQLSERVER”. Doubleclick on “TCP/IP” (it needs to be enabled) in the right pane. A new window opens, go to tab “IP Addresses”. I think you can use any TCP/IP address that is enabled in there to connect to your DB.

First thing I noticed: WHERE ARE MY SIFTLEVELS! They are gone!

How can we decide which levels we want to keep?

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And sooner or later it will happen. I think I can consider myself lucky. This is the first time in my (computer-)life this has happened.

I always keep in mind that it might happen, so generally I make backups of my data. It may take some time to restore all but I can do it.

And sometimes you see it coming and sometimes it happens when you least expect it:

YOUR PORTABLE DIES (a software or hardware death or even worse : you forget it somewhere or it gets stolen)

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The RSS feed on the main page didn’t work. After several retries to fix it (and creating/deleting a new blog) I found out what messed up the RSS-feed.

In Options=>Permalinks=>Common options I changed the radiobutton from customized to numeric. This messed it all up. I tried to put it back to its default setting but it didn’t fix the problem. So I deleted again the blog and recreated it.
With the option to export/import (Manage=> Export and manage=>Import) I could just copy the posts and replies to my new blog. The only problem is that I couldn’t export the blogroll-entries, so I had to recreate those again and again (very annoying job!).

So I advise to NOT change the “Common options” in Permalink if you want to avoid the problem.

Now you can check it very easily.
Benford’s law defines how the first digit of the amounts are divided.
As you can see in the picture, the CRONUS International Ltd. company is cheating!
The numbers in read are quite diverse from the ones it should be. It is possible they are somewhat diverse, but in case the percentages don’t decrease, I think you have a very good indication.

Check these sites for more info on Benford’s law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
http://www.physorg.com/news98015219.html

En this is the object (fob+txt) of the form: Benford’s law fob+txt

Ok I’ll admit it: I found 1 blog in Dutch.

GOOD LUCK FOR THE NEW COMMUNITY.

This is a good starting point. Only it is in Dutch, but I posted a comment to ask to also translate his blog to English.

This is the answer (or better: these are the answers):

3.01..5.00 : 256 GB (maximum 16 files of maximum 16 GB)
2.50..2.65 : 64 GB (maximum 16 files of maximum 4 GB)
2.00..2.01 : 32 GB (maximum 16 files of maximum 2 GB)
..1.03 : 32 GB (maximum 16 files of maximum 2 GB) (if I remember correctly)

But a small advice : if you get over 10GB, you’d better starting thinking about migrating to SQL.
Why 10GB? Well, with the Navision-DB, I’ve had some performance-tuning projects and it is my feeling (I know, it is not a scientific method, but it worked) that the DB-cache should be at least 10% of the db-size in use to have a good performance (=using few disk-reads). With this, a normal DB should have at least 90% of its reads from the cache. If your average is below 90% (for a Navision DB; a SQL-DB should be over 95%), you should add memory to the DB-cache (of course you should NOT give so much that the OS is swapping it to disk). And keep in mind that the theoretical limit is 1GB. The real limit is around 800-850MB.

Until … not so long ago, I had something to post but I hadn’t a good forum for it but I didn’t want to start a blog just for that one. So I just put it in Navision Tips & Tricks, but I did feel comfortable with it because it is not a real Tip/trick but more something to avoid a possible pitfall. This is the link : copy fieldfilters from 1 table to another

So I started thinking about starting a blog somewhere, but my admin (=Luc) was faster and proposed to blog on Mibuso.

Well here we go ….
…
…
Oh, I already finished my first blog. :-)))))