dbNews™ Frequently Asked Questions

1. General
2. Databases
3. News Sources
4. Publications
5. Subscribers & Subscriptions

General

Q: What is dbNews used for?
A: dbNews is a powerful, automated agent that works behind the scenes to identify, extract, and communicate targeted business information. Click here to see some of the ways leading enterprises are using this versatile tool to increase productivity, improve decision suport, and enhance customer satisfaction.
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Q: Which systems does dbNews work with? We'd like to send automatic notifications from Oracle Financials as well as our proprietary manufacturing software.
A: dbNews works with any database application, whether it is a commercial system such as as SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, etc, or an in-house system. The point and click interface walks the administrator through setting up news sources and news publications based on the underlying database table and column structure, so dbNews can extend the functionality of any database application you use.
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Q: What's required for someone to receive information from dbNews? Can it send messages to people that aren't on the same email system?
A: dbNews publications can send information to any person with a valid internet email address. This means that you can send information to your customers, vendors, business partners, etc, in addition to people in your company. For security purposes, however, you can specify that a publication may only be distributed to certain domains (e.g. anyone at yourcompany.com).
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Q: We have hundreds of users in different locations. How would we rollout dbNews to them?
A: dbNews is made up of two primary modules: the dbNews Studio and the dbNews Server. The Studio module is used by the person(s) in your company responsible for creating news publications and the dbNews Server module runs in the 'backoffice' as an application server. This design means that most of your users would never need to interact with the actual dbNews application directly. However, they would be able to subscribe to publications which accepted subscriptions (as opposed to direct mail publications) using the provided dbNews Web subscription application.
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Q: What is normally involved in implementing and configuring dbNews and can we do it with our own IT staff?
A: dbNews was designed to be easy to implement and easy to use. Our business model is based on selling you a valuable product that you can use right away, not in selling you costly consulting services to make the product work. Usually, dbNews customers can install and configure the software themselves using the online help guides or contacting us with questions as necessary. Contact us about a fully functional dbNews evaluation version to see how easy it really is.
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Q: What new features are you planning for future releases of dbNews?
A: We're continually enhancing dbNews based on input from our customers. A recent update included new enhancements such as the ability to fully control message layout and formatting using HTML template files, the ability to run SQL scripts to update or migrate newsworthy data, and support for additional databases. Please contact us directly to hear about what we're currently planning for dbNews.
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Q: What are the hardware and operating environment requirements to run dbNews?
A: These can vary depending on the quantity of messages that will be generated each hour, but in most cases the requirements are:

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Databases

Q: We have both Oracle and SQL Server databases - can dbNews work with both of them?
A: Yes, in fact, a single dbNews installation can connect to multiple database server types concurrently if that's where you have defined your news sources.
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Q: How does dbNews connect to the database?
A: dbNews connect to the database using your database vendor's native drivers. This offers the best possible performance and also avoids ODBC setup hassles.
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News Sources

Q: Your literature says that any database table or view may be defined as a News Source, but what about situations where the data to report on is spread across multiple tables?
A: When you define a News Source in dbNews, you can define it as a single table or view and then choose the table name from a list of tables in your database or you can define it as a multiple table souce. If you specify multiple table, you can use any number of tables and specify how they should be joined together using standard SQL syntax. All of the columns from the joined tables are then available to publications using that News Source.
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Publications

Q: What's the difference between "subscription" and "direct mail" publications and when would each type be used?
A: When news is found, a publication that is distributed based on subscriptions checks to see who has registered to receive the publication and then sends the issue to them. Direct Mail publications, however, are defined with the news content associated in some way to a recipient name or email address so when a direct mail publication identifies news, personalized news messages are automatically sent to the appropriate people. A single direct mail publication can send personalized news messages to any number of people.
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Q: Can dbNews generate web pages that people can view on demand rather than send email messages?
A: Yes, any dbNews publication can publish the news directly to HTML file rather than transmit it via email, allowing you to automatically refresh web or intranet page content. In fact by specifying a 'Break On' column, a single publication can generate any number of HTML pages with personalized content. For example, if you specified that a publication should break on the Supervisor column, dbNews would create a separate HTML page for each supervisor's news content and name the files based on the supervisor's name (the break column value).
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Subscribers & Subscriptions

Q: Who can subscribe to receive news publications?
A: Technically, anyone with an internet email address can subscribe to publication of interest. However, you may want to restrict who is able to subscribe to certain publications or categories of publications. A self-service web subscription application is provided which can be modified as necessary or can be selectively made available to certain user groups for subscription to the appropriate publications.
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Q: Can I setup certain people to receive publications directly (without them having to enter a subscription)?
A: Yes, the dbNews Studio allows you to create and manage subscribers and subscriptions easily. You can also create Direct Mail publications where the intended recipient's email address is available in the database so no subscriptions are required.
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Q: What kind of security is there so that only I can change my subscriptions?
A: When you create your dbNews subscriber account you can provide a password. You'll then have to enter this password in order to view or change your subscriptions in the future. If you forget your password, you can enter your email address and a password reminder email message will be sent to you.
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