Automatic Upgrade Switcheroo

For all those customers who have discovered the convenience of using our automated upgrade option there is a download you'll need to get before you can use that feature again. We switched on-line databases servers this weekend which means the Installed Modules Screen has to request product version information from a different place than in the past. You can get the updated Installed Modules Screen by downloading the Maintenance.App program on our web site. Just go to the Downloads Page and it is the first item in the Programs section. With that file in place you'll be all set to use the automated download feature in the future.

ArcGIS Access To ZonePro Via SQL

I don't know why this had never occurred to me. In the past I have always advised customers to link directly from ArcGIS to the DBF tables in ZonePro. Problems started arising with ArcGis 9.0 however because it would no longer link to a table that contained memo fields. But there is another way to get data into ArcGIS. You can create SQL queries in ArcGIS to any data source that is OLE DB compliant. ZonePro data is stored in Visual Foxpro tables which are in fact OLE DB compliant. This means that if you go to the Microsoft web site and install the OLE DB drivers for Visual Foxpro, you can then query those tables from ArcGIS using its SQL query option. We don't run ArcGIS in our office so I am not able to play with this option myself but from everything I have read it should work fine. I'd love to hear from someone who is brave enough to give this option a try! (Here is another link to an article that shows how to query to an Access table from ArcGIS using SQL. It should be the same process for linking to Foxpro tables.)

Pick Box List Manager

The biggest feature in the new upgrade for ZonePro 32 users is the Pick Box List Manager. This feature allows you to save Pick Box lists in local text files and edit those list using the new Pick Box List Screen in Maintenance. The next time you use the Pick Box option for that field, your choices will be pulled from the text file rather than the database. This gives users a way of controlling exactly what options are presented in any given Pick Box. I just posted a video on this new option on the Training Videos page of our web site. This new feature is a direct result of development work in ZonePro SQL where we wanted to devise a way to reduce the need to pull database lists across the internet.

New ZonePro Newletter

A newsletter has just gone out announcing the Fall upgrades for ZonePro. This is an unusual newsletter in that most of the space is devoted to introducing ZonePro SQL. Even the new features in ZonePro 32 are a direct result of the development of ZonePro SQL. As always, you can view a PDF version of the newsletter on the Downloads page our web site if you don't receive a copy.