Dear CIO/IT managers,
This CPTTM CIO newsletter is to bring useful news to you, CIO/IT managers in Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or recommend your friends to subscribe, just let me know. Old issues are available here.
Kent Tong, Editor in ChiefYour applications may be running on Oracle, which is quite expensive. Although there is the free Oracle Express edition, it limits you to 4G data, a single database and you don't get any support. There are reliable open source alternatives such as PostgreSQL but it is incompatible with Oracle. It means you may have to modify your applications. Now, there is another option: EnterpriseDB.
EnterpriseDB is based on PostgreSQL but it adds Oracle compatibility (PL/SQL, stored procedures, Oracle specific SQL syntax, Oracle admin tools) to it. This way your applications may run with no (or just minor) modifications. For exmaple, Sony Online Entertainment has started the migration from Oracle to EnterpriseDB for its mission critical systems (billing system first and online gaming services later), saving one million US dollars annually.
Of course, it does NOT deliver 100% compatibility (a client reported 75% of their applications were migrated without any changes, so the rest 25% did require some changes), nor does it have built-in clustering support as in Oracle. As always, test it with your specific applications! You can download it for free for testing and low-volumn production use.
ODF is an ISO approved format for office documents. This ensures your archived documents are still accessible in many years to come (unlike doc or xls formats which may not be used anymore in 20 years). The bad news if Word doesn't support ODF (for obvious reasons :-). The good news is that there are some free plug-ins for Word to provide this function:
| Sponsor | Where to get | Works with | Can make ODF as the default format in Word? |
| Microsoft | Here | Word XP, 2003 & 2007 | No |
| SUN | Here | Word 2003 | Yes |
There has been a flurry of US states adopting ODF (the bills look surprisingly similar):
| Country/region | Adoption status |
| Malaysia | Plans to adopt ODF as a national standard by the end of 2006 |
| Brazil | Recommends ODF in its Interoperability Framework and marks DOC as "in transition" |
| Belgium | All document exchanges with the government must be in ODF from Sept. 2008 |
| Denmark | Government publishing in ODF (along with HTML, PDF and DOC) from Sept. 2007 |
| Italy |
Adopts ODF as a national standard |
| Hong Kong | Added ODF to its list of supported formats in its Interoperability Framework |
| Switzerland | Considering using ODF for use in its government |
| State of Massachusetts, US | All desktops in the state government will use ODF by Jan. 2007 |
| State of Texas, US |
Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
| State of Minnesota, US |
Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
| State of California, US |
Bill proposed to mandate the use of ODF in the state government |
If your programmers are motivated and working efficiently, your
company may not need you any more. So, check out how to demotivate them
here...
Any questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at 28781313 or kent at cpttm dot org dot mo.
Until next time,
Kent Tong