Forewarning, this newsletter is going to be a bit lengthy as we have quite a few announcements and topics to explore. First you may have noticed we have not sent an eNewsletter in several months.  Where have we been?  Busy is the short answer. The longer answer is that we have been working heavily caffeinated overtime hours on client projects as well as a major release of NukeDK.ListX, our data integration toolkit module.  We are uncertain the average amount of hours other designers and developers invest in modules and skins but in terms of NukeDK.ListX it has truly been a Herculean effort by our Bi4ce crew.  Literally hundreds of hours and over 19,000 lines of code have been devoted to building NukeDK.ListX.  (Read more in the New Release section below). Many thanks go out to our loyal and patient customers for feedback and testing of the pre-release.

My take on things: Patterns. Awaken, shower, work, eat, sleep. Repeat. Sound familiar?  How about this? Get a customer request, design, build, test and review with the customer, receive change request and bug fixes. Repeat ‘x’ times!  We all live our personal and work lives with good and bad pattern cycles. It is difficult or even painful to change our patterns.  DNN is part of a significant and recent global pattern of creating effective technology based solutions using an open source development and delivery methodology.  DNN is also part of a historical trend in which technological advances break traditional patterns, specifically methods used to build and manage various types of portals.

I would argue that the use of the best tool during any period of time represents a historical cycle of pattern creation and change. Stay with me now – here is the point.  DNN is timed perfectly and is causing traditional solutions, design and development practices to change. I believe DNN will continue to make old patterns break and create new patterns because it represents the best tool in its market segment today.  If you do not think this is the case, ask yourself how has DNN changed your personal domain and work environment, your view on Microsoft and the make or buy technical and business decision process?

Final thought. Growing up, I always looked forward to summer with its care-free feeling; timed perfectly with warm weather, no school and vacation with family and friends.  Subconsciously I convince myself each summer that I can return to this liberating feeling.  In the “anytime, anywhere” world the reality is this is not the case.  Out of habit, commitment or self chosen life-style, I find myself connected via email or phone to employees, customers, friends and family all the time - even vacations, leaving little time for the care-free moments.  What does this have to do with patterns?  One part of an answer is it demonstrates how the latest mobile devices influence my lifestyle and that directly or indirectly it is here to stay.  The other part involves DNN and how it is now a significant part of my personal domain.  The DNN community is 24/7 and this forces active participation to remain connected.  We have chosen to hop on this moving train and go along for the ride even if it means giving up some things along the way.

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

Staff:

Kevin Schreiner, our in house DNN evangelist and technical product lead has recently been named DNN Project Team Leader for the DNN:Map project.  Recognizing our goMap module as a well constructed and popular product, DNN has enlisted Bi4ce to lead the Map Module project.  So now that Kevin has completed the NukeDK.ListX release he needs something to replace his newly acquired spare time!  Expect more announcements and a BETA release soon.

We welcome our latest software engineer to the Bi4ce staff, Sowmya Satish.  Technically, Sowmya worked for us a year and a half ago but took sometime off when her first baby boy was born.  As employee number 15 we welcome Sowmya to our growing Bi4ce team!

Modules:

We are pleased to announce our release of the latest version of ListX.  Similar to DNN we feel the latest ListX release is THE BEST database integration tool for DNN.  The original goal of ListX was to have a module to present various data sources in a report or list (thus its name).  This has expanded dramatically to where ListX is now the ultimate DNN utility module for overall database integration and beyond.

“This is two GREAT products in one and both work hand in hand. It is hard to put into words what a wonderful product this is. It will allow FULL control over any SQL data (you can connect to) with FULL customization of output. This is NOT a simple data display tool but a complete data application builder. You can cut and slice your data anyway you wish through simple or complex t-sql commands. Also pass varibles to other pages to query based on the value passed. IT's $60.00 dollars WELL SPENT. The product in now reaching maturity with good documentation and examples.”  SnowCovered 5 Star Review 7/24/2006

Good Read:

Check out a recent blog entry by Shaun Walker where he has a comparison matrix of DNN and other content management solutions including Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Content Management Server.