1. World of HELIOS – Just how important is backup?
2. HELIOS WebShare upload progress bar now available
3. New SQL desktop database is available (beta)
4. PDF-native OPI (Update u0584/u0585; Techinfo #103)
HELIOS Newsletter 12-II/2006
Dear HELIOS client,

Welcome to the latest information from the world of HELIOS. Keep your networking lead and stay one step ahead. Turn your colleagues on to this newsletter as well, subscription details are below. Enjoy the news.

Your HELIOS team

Helmut Tschemernjak, CEO & President



Do you have plans to attend the upcoming Macworld 2007 Expo, January 9-12, in San Francisco, CA? If so, contact us for a free Expo pass, and visit us at the HELIOS Booth S1538-38.
Hot News
Sun SPARC T1000/2000 servers versus Sun AMD x64 server >>
HELIOS WebShare QuickTime movies >>
HELIOS supported platforms >>
HELIOS TCP Printer driver for Intel Macs >>
HELIOS UB test drive >>
HELIOS Mac OS X Intel support status >>
1. World of HELIOS: Just how important is backup?
This December, a burglary at the HELIOS headquarters reminded us just how vulnerable we all are. Our office is well secured but four windows were broken, and although nobody entered the building, a single laptop was stolen via a hole in the window. We were lucky – on the same night our neighbor had a real problem – every piece of equipment on two floors was stolen.

There are ways to secure your data so that burglary, lightning, fire, flooding, etc. will not prove catastrophic to your businesses. Therefore some advise is:

• Store all the company data on a central server
• Ensure that users don't store jobs/data on their workstations
• Do a nightly server backup on tapes
• Store the backup at a different secured location
• Regularly store backup offsite (e.g. one backup per week)
• Additional disk synchronization to a different machine in a secured room/location allows instant access to data

Like many things, data availability/backups are not a question of budget. Taking responsibility is the key. Don't wait until it's too late – implement a backup plan for the worst possible scenario. Be prepared and stay one step ahead.


2. HELIOS WebShare upload progress bar now available
One of the features most requested by customers was to add a progress bar to the WebShare file upload. That new feature is now available.
In addition, WebShare can now handle multiple simultaneous file uploads per session, and can also continue to work during file uploads. WebShare customers with a Software Upgrade Service Agreement can download the latest WebShare update from the HELIOS server.

The upload progress bar displays the upload performance and duration. Finally this makes the streaming ZIP-upload with on-the-fly unpacking straightforward.


3. New SQL desktop database is available (beta)
The desktop database contains an index of all files/folders within a volume with their unique IDs, to ensure full Mac and Windows client compatibility. If a server aborts without a proper shutdown the previous desktop database automatically started a rebuild to re-index the volume.

In such a case, the new SQL desktop database does not need to run a rebuild anymore. The built-in transaction journaling ensures that the desktop database is consistent and volumes can be mounted within seconds.

Over time, disk systems are growing into many terabytes and millions of files are stored. A rebuild to re-index the data could take hours, depending on the file system and disk performance. The new SQL desktop database avoids an automatic rebuild and the volume data is immediately available. Online desktop flushing allows re-publishing a read-only snapshot of a file system while continuing with the live read-write volume.

The new HELIOS SQL desktop database software (beta) is now available for testing at:
http://www.helios.de/support/SQLdesktop_DB.phtml.


4. PDF-native OPI (Update u0584/u0585; Techinfo #103)
HELIOS PDF-native OPI supports transparency features in an OPI workflow, e.g. via the PDF export feature in Adobe InDesign CS2. This worked great for raster-based ("bitmap") images but not for vector-based EPS (object EPS) files.

Many customers wish to place layout images irrespective of the high-resolution file format. The new update supports placing any layout image, including vector EPS files. Vector EPS files contain the original EPS data and will be converted automatically into PDF during the InDesign PDF export. All bitmap images (original TIFF, EPS, etc.) will be replaced and color matched by the PDF-native OPI solution.

Exporting a 60 page high-resolution PDF file from InDesign took more than an hour – with PDF-native OPI this takes only a few minutes.
Mailing List Preferences
To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, notify support (at) helios.de
Smart Ideas for better networking.
Contact us with any questions or feedback, to arrange a personal
consultation, or to find a sales partner in your region:
www.helios.de/news/newsletter-feedback.phtml