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 Call us on 1890 946 881, or if you leave your details sales@tassoftware.ie, we will call back at a time convenient for you.
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TAS BOOKS v8
Check how your TAS BOOKS is set up
Until now we've offered single-user and multi-user editions of TAS BOOKS 2 and TAS BOOKS 3. Pervasive Summit works in a slightly different way to Btrieve on a network, so it's important you check to make sure that the way you have TAS BOOKS set up fits into one of the options below.
In the past we've not been able to offer a peer-to-peer workgroup option, or support for large networks - with Pervasive Summit these new options are now available.
When you upgrade to TAS BOOKS v8, you'll have these options available;
If you’re a TASCoverExtra subscriber and you have a multi-user edition of TAS BOOKS, we’ll send you a five-user workgroup edition of TAS BOOKS v8 – unless you tell us otherwise.
What is a single user?
A single user is when you have TAS BOOKS installed on just one computer.
Normally you would keep your TAS BOOKS data on the same computer – this provides the best performance in speed and reliability – but you can store your data on a network server if you prefer.
If you want to have TAS BOOKS installed on more than one PC, then you will need a workgroup or network edition.
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What is a workgroup?
A workgroup is small network of TAS BOOKS users that share their TAS BOOKS data. In general, a workgroup supports up to five TAS BOOKS users, but can be expanded to support a maximum of ten TAS BOOKS users. The workgroup is new to Pervasive Summit and did not exist in Btrieve.
With Btrieve, each computer with TAS BOOKS reads and writes information from the database separately. With Pervasive Summit there is a central workgroup ‘engine’ which acts as a gateway. All the computers with TAS BOOKS installed connect to the gateway to access your TAS BOOKS data.
Normally you would keep your TAS BOOKS data on a separate network server; this ensures the data is available to everyone.
If you don’t have a network server, you can have a peer-to-peer workgroup. In simple terms, running a peer-to-peer workgroup means that one of the computers with TAS BOOKS will also store your TAS BOOKS data - and will act as the gateway for the other computers. This is a new option that was not available with Btrieve and is a great low-cost way to allow more than user work on TAS BOOKS at the same time.
However, there are some things to consider before choosing a peer-to-peer workgroup;
- The computer with the TAS BOOKS data that acts as the gateway has to be switched on whenever anybody in the workgroup uses TAS BOOKS. If your computer is the gateway and you switch it off to go home – then no-one else will be able to use TAS BOOKS.
- If your computer is the gateway it must be powerful enough. If you run a other programs that use up a lot of memory and processing power, then the gateway ‘engine’ will run quite slowly - which will have an affect on the other computers in the workgroup running TAS BOOKS. Make sure that the gateway computer at least meets our recommended system requirements.
So if you do have a server on your network, it’s always best to set your workgroup up with your TAS BOOKS data on the server. But if you don’t, then most computers will run a peer-to-peer workgroup quite happily.
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What is a network?
The Pervasive Summit workgroup 'engine' generally supports up to five TAS BOOKS users, but can be expanded to support ten TAS BOOKS users. However, if you have more than five people using TAS BOOKS, you should consider opting for a network ‘engine’ running on a network server.
Your network server needs to be running a server operating system; like Windows Server 2003 or Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003. If you prefer, you can even store your data on a Linux server.
The network engine delivers enterprise-level performance, limited only by the speed and performance of your server and your network.
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Contact your account manager
If you’re a TASCoverExtra subscriber and you have a multi-user edition of TAS BOOKS, we’ll send you a five-user workgroup edition of TAS BOOKS v8 – unless you tell us otherwise.
Call us on 1890 946 881, or if you leave your details we will call back at a time convenient for you.
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How is the Pervasive Summit workgroup different to Btrieve?
Until now, if you had a multi-user version of TAS BOOKS, Btrieve worked in ‘workstation’ mode – which meant that each computer would fetch the data it needed across the network, process the record and post any changes back across the network. As each computer worked independently, it could lead to file conflicts or locking problems, especially if there were any network problems – e.g. a loose network cable.
Now that Pervasive Summit uses a central workgroup ‘engine’ it helps to reduce the amount of network traffic, which speeds up the normal operation of your TAS BOOKS and makes it more robust. All the processing is done by the central engine which manages the requests made by each computer.
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Connecting your computers together
Workgroups and networks
More people are connecting up their office and home computers into a small local area network, or LAN. Traditionally the connection would be using an ‘ethernet’ cable plugged into a network card on your computer.
Your network needs to be running fast enough because when you use a program with a large database – such as TAS BOOKS – there’s a lot of network traffic, as a lot of data is being passed across the network.
As a minimum, your network should run at 100Mbps – but we recommend using a 1Gbps network. The faster your network operates, the faster your TAS BOOKS program can run and the more reliable your network will be.
What about wi-fi?
A wireless network (or wi-fi) is an easy and low-cost way of connecting your computers together. They’ve become very popular as many broadband companies supply a wireless router as part of their broadband service. (A router is the central ‘hub’ that directs, or routes, all the network traffic.)
Although they are easy and cheap to set up, wi-fi networks do have some drawbacks; in general they are much slower than a cabled network. Most wi-fi networks operate at a maximum speed of 54Mbps, with a typical speed of 23Mbps - which is less than a quarter of our suggested minimum speed. (Some of the latest equipment is labelled as supporting the ‘802.11n’ standard and can operate up to a maximum speed of 256Mbps, with a typical speed of 74Mbps.)
Being radio-based, wi-fi networks are also subject to interference and the signal gets weaker the further you are from your wi-fi router – as a result they are more prone to data errors. It’s unlikely that you’d notice a small data error when just surfing the net, but when you’re using a program with a large database – such as TAS BOOKS – a data error could cause corruption to your TAS BOOKS data.
Therefore we don’t generally recommend that you use a wi-fi workgroup or network to post transactions in TAS BOOKS.
What’s TCP/IPv4?
In simple terms, TCP/IPv4 is a 'language' that computers use to talk to each other on a network. You need to have TCP/IPv4 running on your computers in order to use Pervasive Summit on a workgroup or network. It sounds horribly complicated, but it isn’t. If you can access the internet from your computer, you’ve definitely got TCP/IPv4 installed. And if you have Windows XP or Windows Vista, you’ll also have TCP/IPv4 on your computer, unless you’ve switched it off in the Windows Control Panel.
More advice
If you’re thinking of connecting your computers with a LAN, then speak to your local TAS Business Partner or computer hardware specialist for advice.
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