The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Where MYOB's purpose-built database structure has become a stumbling block is when companies invariably wish to develop their own custom reports, or to streamline data analysis within Microsoft Excel or other tools.
Out of the box, an MYOB database cannot be read by any piece of software besides the MYOB software itself. An ODBC database driver is provided but an additional license fee must be paid to 'turn on' the ODBC access for any given database.
A successful industry has developed around supporting MYOB, which includes building custom applications that hook into MYOB and thus necessitates ODBC being enabled. Licensing connectivity on a per database level adds a level of administrative complexity and is uncommon among conventional database products.
Nevertheless, it's all now moot. In one move, these many and varied gripes and concerns look set to be eliminated with MYOB currently re-engineering their product range.
In a touch of marketing-speak, the new platform is touted as the somewhat ambiguous "SQL.NET," but a quick question to MYOB's developer support team confirmed that this is indeed meant to signify Microsoft's SQL Server database engine coupled with a .NET front-end. What's more, MYOB's project team have also embraced Agile development philosophies, putting this project on the cutting edge.
Registered MYOB developers will have an early peek of the new platform in seminars being held in Australian capital cities during November, and a preliminary webinar is available for download through MYOB's developer resource site.
MYOB expect to make a beta release available in February 2009, and anticipate a full release to the New Zealand market in June/July 2009, and to Australia in September 2009.
MYOB's decision to move towards SQL Server puts them in the same category as another well-known financial system, namely MicrOpay who, in recent years, also transitioned their payroll software from a proprietary closed database to SQL Server, much to the pleasure of app developers, systems administrators and database gurus everywhere.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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