PowerVista RollCall Technical Information

Software Built for Change
PowerVista RollCall was built using PowerVista Bridge. The specialized RollCall Regeneratable Style generated most of the windows in RollCall. RollCall was designed to be an excellent base application for managing the member/student relationship, and is intended to be customized to uniquely suit each organization's particular needs. 

This is an important benefit. Organizations looking for packaged software begin by expecting to find an excellent fit - they expect 'everyone' to have identical needs. At some point, it's apparent that each organization is unique.  This is why there are many applications for the same vertical market, and the primary reason that companies outgrow applications. It's why many organizations spend more on customization than on the original software purchase. 

RollCall is different - it grows with you as you change to meet the demands of the educational marketplace, so does RollCall. Customization is easy, reliable and continues to extend the application to meet your growing business. We take customer suggestions and add them to the base product every month (see What'sNew for a history). If you have very unique requirements, the two 'developer' bundles include a customized development environment, source code for RollCall and a database application development toolkit.  Customization can be done by internal programmers, external consultants or PowerVista consultants. The Standard Developer and Enterprise Developer bundles include the customized RollCall development environment and the RollCall source code. Each bundle allows a single developer to alter RollCall in any manner required by the end user. There are no royalty or license fees charged for distribution of the completed application. 

System Requirements
RollCall operates on Windows operating systems, including Windows98, Windows2000 and WindowsXP. Installation and licensing of the Windows operating system is the responsibility of the end user. RollCall contains 182 windows, 152 of which were generated using the RollCall Style. The database contains 113 tables. RollCall exports data in a comma delimited form and includes several templates as examples for merging information to Microsoft Word or Excel. Microsoft products must be purchased, licensed and installed to be used with RollCall information.

The single-user Standard Edition of RollCall uses the PowerVista database. This (free) database has no internal limits on the number of records stored, and will display data from tables containing hundreds of thousands of records. A table may contain up to 256 columns, there is no limit on the size of the record's data. Up to a database under a half million records, the performance a specific RollCall implementation is dependent upon the hardware configuration (disk size, CPU, memory, etc.). A standard configuration at or above 800 mhz CPU, 96 mb memory and disk size capable of installing the operating system, any related third-party software (Word or Excel) can be used to efficiently operate RollCall. If you have a single administrator and 500 or fewer students, the Standard Edition will work well for you.

The multi-user Enterprise Edition of RollCall defaults to use Microsoft SQLServer Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) to store and retrieve information.  Alternatively, you can use installations of SQLServer, MySQL, Oracle or  DB2 (note that Microsoft Access does not support some of the more complex queries in RollCall, and is not supported). Support can be added for proprietary databases, contact PowerVista for additional information. If the target database is not the installed edition of MDSDE, it must be purchased, licensed and correctly installed prior to operating RollCall. The size and performance a specific RollCall implementation is dependent upon the capacity of the database platform and the hardware configuration (disk size, CPU, memory, etc.). Generally, the database manager requirements will be more than adequate to operate RollCall.

RollCall supports QuickBooks 2006 Pro and 2006 Premier editions. It supports multi-user access to QuickBooks if the Enterprise Edition of RollCall is installed.

PowerVista Bridge is comprised of a C++ based interpretive engine that reads PowerVista Markup Language and renders interfaces to the computer monitor. Data is connected to the application via an internal (to the interpretive engine) Database Independence layer.  The PowerVista Markup Language (PVML) is a hierarchical language used to describe the graphical user interface (windows) and its behavior. PVML is written using the PowerVista Bridge development environment and compiled into a binary resource for delivery to the end user. The RollCall Regeneratable Styles generate PVML to create RollCall windows and their behavior. There are 10 Styles in RollCall, 9 of them generate windows and one generates export definitions. See RollCall Style for more information. 

Installation Options

RollCall can be installed as a standalone application using RollCall-Standard Edition. This version uses the PowerVista database, which comes free with RollCall Standard Edition. 

RollCall Enterprise Edition is used to install the application on a network for multi-user access and installs Microsoft MSDE (a version of SQL Server) by default. Alternatively, you can install using ODBC compliant databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle or DB2. License and installation of the selected ODBC database is the responsibility of the customer. PowerVista RollCall connects to the installed database manager via a user data source name (DSN) set up in the Windows Data Source Administrator. 

PowerVista RollCall can be installed and operated across the Internet using PowerVista ApplicationServer. This installation option supports an Application Service Provider model of delivery and a single, centralized data repository with remote clients. An operational copy of RollCall Enterprise Edition is required. Then, the ApplicationServer is installed, and remote sites may access, update, print and view RollCall information on the main server.

*Microsoft products must be purchased, licensed and properly installed before they may be used with RollCall data.

©2007 PowerVista^® Software, Inc. All rights reserved. PowerVista is a registered trademark of PowerVista Software. Other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Questions or Comments? Contact lynne at powervista.com or call 1-866-PWRVSTA.
Last Modified: 7/2/2005