Our staff is well into the miscellaneous phase of the Goldenseal Pro project. That means tidying up small details until it’s all shiny.
First thing, we enhanced the database verification reports so they catch a few more potential errors. The reports will make the final testing go much faster. Rather than waiting around to see if file error messages pop up, we can run Verify File a few times a day. It will notice any problems right away.
It’s quite possible there won’t be any more database issues. The data conversion from version 4.96 to version 5.0 already futzes with many thousands of records, and it may already have hit every possible problem. Really, database code is not that huge a task. It’s much simpler than construction estimating or payroll. A database has to locate records on disk, make sure they don’t write on top of each other, and manage gaps (otherwise the file becomes an enormous hunk of Swiss cheese). Most of our database code is just sanity checking, and duplicating info so it’s possible to recover if data is corrupted by the outside world.
Since we are already converting data from old format to new, we decided to simplify bank accounts and transactions in the new accounting software. Goldenseal Pro only has 3 types of bank accounts instead of the current 7. The update process converts any old records, and also converts links between records. As we started using the Reconcile command, one missed link turned up. We fixed it.
Right now, Passwords are on the plate. I personally designed the Goldenseal interface, with little sliders to set the access each employee has to different parts of the data. It looks nice, but it was so non-standard that it took more than a month of programming. Too much time for a minor feature that many companies don’t even use. In Goldenseal Pro it won’t look quite as nice, but it will use existing code. One more day to finish it, instead of a month.
Our staff started work on the Custom Layouts view more than a year ago. Some things work, but we got stuck on a few things and moved on to other code. Our staff is revisiting it, now that we’re more experienced with Cocoa. It’s the last major interface element. The first release doesn’t absolutely need Custom Layouts, but it will make Passwords easier to finish.
Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com
