Mike Gunderloy posted a review of dtsdoc on Larkware site last week.
It’s a very positive review and it has brought some users interested in dtsdoc. I’ve got a lot of great feedback and suggestions not only from the review but from the traffic it has generated.
dtsdoc has already made some sales in its first two weeks, which is more than I expected for version 1.0. I’m pretty confident about the future of dtsdoc.
I’m very pleased to announce you the release of a new product called dtsdoc (www.dtsdoc.com).
dtsdoc is focused in helping database administrators document SQL Server 2000 data transformation packages.
I got the idea to develop this product after several requests from dbdesc users who wanted to document their DTS packages.
At first, I considered adding this functionality to dbdesc, but soon I realise that it would mean to do a major redesign of the interface and to loose focus: document databases. Besides this, only a small part of the people who has to deal with SQL Server actually uses Data Transformation Services. So the choice was obvious.
If you work with DTS packages give dtsdoc a try. I will appreciate any feedback.
I’ve used MSDE as my database engine for most of my contract projects. I’ve never had any issue with MSDE (at least none that could be avoided if I had been using SQL Server).
However, by using MSDE, sometimes I’ve had to deal with some customers’ objections regarding the ‘MSDE 5 concurrent users limit’. I think that none of my projects has ever hit that limit, not because the databases were used by less than five users at the same time but because that limit simply doesn’t exists. Of course there’s a limit, but not in the number of concurrent connections. MSDE will accept as many connections as SQL Server but it will add a delay processing requests if there are more than five operations waiting to be executed. Microsoft calls this ‘the workload governor’.
Here is an interesting read about the history of MSDE, the workload governor and the new SQL Server Express (found via Larkware News).
The good news is that there is no workload governor in SQL Server Express.
Yesterday I’ve uploaded a small maintenance release of dbdesc.
These are the changes and bug fixes since version 1.4:
Get the new installer directly from the download page.
Not being completely satisfied with the look of my site I’ve finally managed to do something about it. Gavin Bowman posted a link in his blog about OSWD.com and it has been extremely useful.
I selected a design by Andreas Viklund called ‘andreas08’ and after a few tweaks here and there I have a new site design! I hope you like it.
Yesterday I released a new version of dbdesc. This time most of the features are based on user feedback, like syntax highlighting and PDF export. This is the change log for this version:
New features
Bug fixes
You can download dbdesc from here.
I don’t know if this option has been available since the launch of Google Analytics, but is the first time I’ve clicked on it. (I’m still hooked with StatCounter.com)
This option shows your web pages with a small percentage bars located over every link. The blue bar represents the frequency each link has been clicked from that page. The green bar shows the “quality†of those clicks (you must have goals defined). Clicking the bar displays more detail in a small tool tip. It’s a nice visual way to analyze navigation patterns.
I released the first version of dbdesc as soon as it was useful. It was only a command-line utility to document databases but, although it was still far from the product I would like to create, it had the core functionality ready. I followed the ‘release early, release often’ strategy and it was a good move; it allowed me to “test the waters” early.
In order to get people to start downloading the app, I set up a very modest Google campaign. People started downloading dbdesc and the first orders came in. Cool!
I concentrate in improving the product, releasing a new version every ¾ weeks. My conversion rate was about 2%, which I think is not a bad figure. However I did not increase the Google campaign budget then and I did little effort to promote the product, if any.
Once I released version 1.3 (December), I started to dedicate more time and money to marketing. I played a bit with Google AdWords campaigns, submitted dbdesc to be listed on download.com and other directory sites and you know what… downloads started to go up together with sales. Indeed, now I have a little bit over 2%.
More downloads also means more user feedback. So the next version of dbdesc will have more features based on user feedback, which I think is key to build a successful product.
What I’ve learned is that you should start promoting your product as soon as possible. Prior to the first release: set up a blog, participate in forums, launch a beta, etc. and once your app is released, spend some money to bring targeted users to download your product, even if the product still lacks the most exciting features.
Magna CRM, a web based CRM software product from Rapid Signal has reached public beta stage. I’ll try to find time to check it out before January 23.
Good luck!
Today I’ve released version 1.3 of dbdesc. These are the main changes since version 1.2:
New features
Bug fixes
I’ve updated the web site with more sample output using Northwind and AdventureWorks databases from Microsoft and I added a new mini-FAQ in the support section.