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    API: Two new functions, two huge optimizations…

    6 August 2010

    As part of our ongoing commitment to make the best possible ERP integration platform available, we’ve added two new often-requested functions to the API this week:

    OrderLine.GetAll() will allow you to retrieve all order lines across all orders.

    Debtor.FindByPartialName() enables wildcard searches for customers by name.

    Finally, bulk downloading of invoices and products have been sped up tremendously. Internal testing has shown speedups of factor 50 for invoices, and 7-8 for products.

    If you’re using .NET, to use any of the new features, you’ll have to use the latest version of our .NET assembly – which is available here. The optimizations for bulk downloading of invoices and products are purely server-side, and thus, you’ll benefit from them automagically.


    Storage upgrade, phase 2 – complete

    31 July 2010

    The second – and currently last – phase of our move to faster storage has now been successfully completed, and e-conomic is back online again.

    Preliminary benchmarks show quite some performance improvements – although we expect this to be most noticeable as ‘much smaller peaks at high load’.

    In addition to our storage upgrade, we’ve also been working on some ’softer’ optimizations, particularly for the e-conomic API. More on this shortly…


    Move to faster storage – phase 1 complete

    24 July 2010

    We’re happy to announce that phase 1 of our previously mentioned storage upgrade has now been completed – and rather successfully at that, with e-conomic being fully available more than 4 hours earlier than initially publicized. As such, the move itself actually reaped the first benefit of our faster storage :-)

    Regardless, we once again regret any inconveniences caused by e-conomic being offline.


    Planned maintenance

    21 July 2010

    In order to support our continued growth, as well as improve performance, we’ll be moving to faster storage media during the next two weekends.

    Therefore, both the e-conomic application and API will be offline during the following two periods:

    Friday, July 23rd 10pm CET through Saturday, July 24th 6am CET

    Friday, July 30th 10pm CET through Saturday, July 31st 6am CET

    We will of course keep you updated throughout this, as well as when we’re online again.

    We regret any inconvenience caused by this – but we also look forward to welcoming you back to a faster e-conomic.


    Performance update

    30 June 2010

    Following up on our last performance update, we have made a number of changes to both our hardware and software setup – working on multiple levels, such as optimizing code, tweaking our network infrastructure, updating storage, etc..

    Regarding code optimization, a number of tweaks have been made. This should be particularly obvious when bulk-synchronizing data via the e-conomic API, or in general use of the Stock Management module (although said Stock Management module does still reduce the speed of a lot of operations, due to the much more complex housekeeping required).

    A major change is a move of our database from traditional mechanical disks to flash (memory-based) disks. In addition to a general performance increase, this also results in much more consistent performance, thus resulting in fewer extreme peaks. This isn’t the end of our storage performance improvements, however – during the summer, we will be moving our entire setup to even faster storage.

    On the database software side, we are currently looking into an update of both the database engine and operating system. However, such updates always involve a certain risk – both in terms of performance and compatibility – a risk we’re currently working hard to resolve.


    API updates

    13 June 2010

    Once again, a new feature, as well as some bug fixes, have found their way to the e-conomic API.

    In the new features department, cash book entries – as represented by the ICashBookEntry class – now have an Employee property. This effectively allows you to add per-employee costs to projects – just like you can already add time entries.

    Additionally, two annoying bugs have been fixed:

    When adding lines to a subscription, an exception is no longer thrown if no Department is specified (thanks to Claus Aaberg for reporting this in our API forum).

    The recently-introduced new entry type ManualDebtorInvoice – allowing you to create customer invoice entries without creating actual invoices – can now be created with the DueDate property set.

    As a final note – please remember that we’re always more than interested in your comments, questions and suggestions in our API forum.


    How to speed up your daily workflows

    29 April 2010

    Hello.My name is Christian and I have an addiction; an addiction to constantly look for ways to do things easier in front of a computer. In more technical terms and from a usability point of view: how to minimize the number of steps on frequently performed work flows or to put it in laymen terms:

    How to work without ever reaching for the mouse.

    Read the rest of this entry »


    e-conomic is available again

    2 April 2010

    The planned system upgrade 1-2 April has been completed earlier than announced and e-conomic is now available again (from 4:15 pm 2 April).

    Some of the tasks planned for this maintenance took longer than we expected. The remaining tasks will be carried out at a later date and time to be announced. We will do our very best to interrupt you as little as possible.

    Sorry again for any inconvenience this scheduled maintenance might have caused you.

    Now continue your Easter lunch :-)


    Releasing new languages and currencies – on popular demand

    1 April 2010

    Due to numerous request for new languages from our users, we are releasing several new languages and currencies that will be available to our users after the Easter holidays. The languages that will be released are Quenya, Na’Vi, Klingon, and Lingua Franca, and both Republic (REC) and Federation Credits (FEC) will also be availabe as currencies. 

    Read the rest of this entry »


    Service disruption 1-2 April

    26 March 2010

    Please note that due to system maintenance, e-conomic will be unavailable from
     

    10 pm CET on 1 April to 6 pm CET on 2 April

    We will keep you updated here on the blog during the application downtime and will of course notify you as soon as the system is up and running again.

    We apologise for any inconvenience related to this downtime.

     

    Update 10.00 pm CET 1 April: The scheduled service disruption has now started and e-conomic is not available. We will keep you posted.

     

    Update 12.00 am CET 2 April: The operation has so far taken longer than we expected. We still expect to be online again no later than 6 pm today (2 April), but part of the planned operation might need to be carried out at a later stage.

     

    Update 4.15 pm CET 2 April: The planned maintenance has been completed earlier than announced and e-conomic is now available again. We did not complete all of the planned maintenance tasks and will schedule the rest of the work to a later date.

    Thanks for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience related to this downtime.