| Our Spring 2007
meeting was held at the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes on 10th May
2007. 43 delegates registered to
attend and of those, 38 actually attended, which we reckon is a pretty good
turnout.
As well as seven plenary sessions, there
were 5 planned hands-on sessions, and though we probably didn't arrange this
as well as we might have, several members found it useful to be able to try out what had been talked about at the
plenary sessions. The main plenary
sessions were:
 | a talk from NCC about software software
Escrow |
| a demonstration of the PROACTIS Group's employee
expense control |
| a talk about how Bath Spa University
collects student debts online |
| two sessions about Dream 3.3,
covering upgrading, the use of entities and UDI considerations |
| an interesting review by Philip Taylor,
the father of DREAM - see details |
| an update on Report 7 |
Feedback from delegates (out of 5) was:
| Two sessions received more than 4.0 |
| Four sessions received between 3.0 and
4.0 |
| One session dropped just below 3.0 |
We are very much indebted to Mike Booty
for all the preparatory work he did for the meeting, and for his
presentations. We are grateful to
our other speakers: Nicola McNally; Neil Patterson and Rod Jones; Jon
Sebright; Simon Miles; Philip Taylor.
We are obviously sorry that CODA declined to
attend the meeting.
|
All
presentations are available in the members' website in the Spring 2007
meeting data folder. Feedback about
the meeting itself from members was:
|
The venue received an average
score of 3.7 (out of 5) |
|
The catering received an average
score of 4.0 (out of 5) |
|
The location received an average
score of 3.6 (out of 5) |
|
The organisation received an
average score of 3.9 (out of 5) |
|
The event format received an
average score of 3.8 (out of 5) |
 |
Feedback
"Well Done. Best conference so far (2
years)."
"A useful event. Encouraging start."
|
|
 |
Philip Taylor talking to a
delegate during lunch. |
| Jon Sebright of Bath Spa
University showing members the way his organisation handles the online
collection of student fees and debts. |
 |
 |
Simon Miles demonstrating
Report 7 during a hands-on session. |
|
Philip Taylor's points of interest |
Philip pointed out a few interesting things
which the Dream user/administrator needs to look out for.
| Dream 3.2 does not work on SQL Server 7
– Input fails with an error about ‘scope identity – function not found’ |
| Dream 3.2 used on SQL Server 2005 needs
a database 'compatibility level' of 80 |
| Dream 3.3 works SQL Server 2005 without
the above restriction |
| SQL Server 2005 will not work properly
out of the box on Windows Vista - it requires an enormous update to be
downloaded from Microsoft |
| He has written a piece of XML to
show supplier name and address based on XLEDGER and XACCOUNT fields in
DREAM detail data |
He also made some general points about the
increasing use of electronic communications with the government, notable
with respect to the CIS scheme and VAT.
|
