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December 4, 2009

New Schedule of Fees

We’ve just published our new schedule of fees on our support center. Nothing much has changed except for a fee reduction on high e-Pledge transaction volumes.

Helix Development Week

December 7-11, 2009

Every year we assemble all of our Customer Service Representatives from across the country into our offices for a week of internal meetings and cross-training sessions. This allows us to discuss better ways to serve our customers, to improve our processes, and to prepare for the coming year. On Thursday, December 10th, our entire staff will be off-site for an all-day meeting.

Our Help Desk will be open as usual except for Thursday, where the Help Desk will be open for emergencies only. We ask that you leave a voice mail message detailing the urgency of your situation. The voice mailbox will be monitored hourly. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause.

Common Logic Errors

What we say is often not logical... from a mathematical or computer's point of view. Let's say we want a list of all donors living in New York and Chicago. We would probably write the following:

Select individuals where city = "New York" and city = "Chicago"

Sorry, that's wrong. The computer will take each individual, one at a time, and perform the test. With an "and", both conditions must be true in order for the individual to be selected. Obviously, the individual's address cannot have both New York and Chicago in the same record. So, we will get no data. Although, in English, we typically say "New York" and "Chicago", in computer-speak we should say "New York" or "Chicago". With an "or", either or both have to be true for the individual to be selected. So, we should have written "or" instead of "and."

We also need to be careful when mixing "and" and "or." For example, if we were to write the following:

Select individuals where city = "New York" or city = "Chicago" and gift > $1000

we may have a problem. The "and" is always paired before the "or." In other words, we have actually written the following:

Select individuals where city = "New York" or (city = "Chicago" and gift > $1000)

We will actually end up with everyone from New York plus only those individuals in Chicago that gave over $1000. This can be a bit hard to remember so it's always a great idea to put the brackets in so we don't need to remember and neither will other people. So, the above should have been written as follows:

Select individuals where (city = "New York" or city = "Chicago") and gift > $1000

This will select all individuals in New York and Chicago (careful with my English) that have also given over $1000.

SQL Data Model

Did you know that most of the Andar SQL Data Model is available in the online help? Some of our customers want to write their own custom applications that integrate with Andar's database. To do this, you need to know about the definitions of the SQL tables and their relationships. First, let's clarify one concept. All the values of all pulldowns throughout Andar are stored in one big SQL table called "TableMaster". It's like a table of tables. This is where you will find all the codes for employee types, address types, demographic types, etc. This SQL table maps codes into long descriptions that users see in the pulldowns. Each pulldown is identified by a table number that is a key into the one "TableMaster" SQL table. So when the online help refers to table number so and so, this refers to a specific group of rows in the one "TableMaster" SQL table.

** Important ** What programmers know as SQL tables, the Andar help calls "Database Files". So if you look at the Andar HELP table of contents, you will see two sections, one called "Andar Tables" that refers to the "TableMaster" pulldown tables and the other called "Andar Files" that refers to the SQL Database Tables.

Andar has a very easy way to find information about the underlying database. Let's look at a specific example. Let's say you need to write a program that requires the employee ID but you don't know what SQL table has this data. First, go into Andar and open a donor's employee information window that shows the employee ID, then click "Help" on the top menu bar and select "What is this?" Your mouse pointer will change into a question mark. Point and click on the employee ID area of the window and an "Andar Help Topics" window will pop up. The topics listed will include "About the EmployeeRelationships database file." If you select this entry, the help page displayed actually describes the SQL Table (i.e. database file) called "EmployeeRelationships" and all of its columns, including the "EmployeeID" column. The help page will also include key field information, links to related information and descriptions of TableMaster tables used to describe employee types. The "What is this?" help is available throughout Andar and can assist you in using Andar and developing new applications that integrate with it.