Census Bug Tracking and Defect Tracking - Frequently Asked Questions

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Census Enterprise is sold on a concurrent-use basis (floating licenses). With concurrent licensing you do not need a license for every user who will use Census. You need licenses only for the maximimum number of simultaneous users (users logged on at the same time).

For example, if you have 30 users who need access to Census, but you don't expect more than 20 to use Census at the same time, you need only 20 licenses. When all 20 licenses are in use, no additional users will be able to log on to Census.

Volume discounts are available.

It depends on your specific requirements. The following documents from Microsoft will help you decide what type of licenses are best for you.

• SQL Server Processor Licensing Clarification March 02, 2003
• Choosing How to License SQL Server July 22, 2003
• How to Buy SQL Server July 02, 2003

You do not need to purchase any Crystal Reports licenses to use Census in its default configuration. Census includes the Crystal Reports v9.0 Runtime Software, which Census installs on your Web server. By default, Census uses the Crystal Reports v9.0 Runtime Software to display custom reports, and a built-in HTML report engine to display listing reports, print issues from Web views, and format notification contents such as attachments.

When do you need to purchase Crystal Reports? When you want to:

• Use Crystal Reports to display listing reports. In this case, you need to license the Creation API for Crystal Reports 9 for your Web server.

  Why use Crystal Reports instead of HTML? With Crystal Reports, Web view users can export listing reports and issues to a variety of formats, including RTF, Word, Excel, and PDF.

• Build custom reports, print issues from Web views, or format notifications. In this case, you need to license Crystal Reports (v8.5 or v9.0) to be able to customize the reports inside the Crystal Reports editor.

  Why use Crystal Reports? With Crystal Reports, you can add features such as charts, formulas, field highlighting, and running totals. You can also import graphics (such as company logos) and completely reformat a listing report. Similarly, notification attachments can be RTF, PDF, Word, Excel, and other formats (with the HTML report engine, attachments are either HTML or text).

To build custom reports, you need:

• Crystal Reports v9.0 (Standard, Professional, Developer, or Advanced edition).
  -or-
  
• Crystal Reports v8.5 (Standard, Professional, or Developer edition).

Crystal Reports must be purchased separately from Business Objects or another supplier.

Power customizations involve using the Microsoft Access development environment, Visual Basic, Javascript, and other advanced techniques to customize Census.

Power Customization functionality requires Microsoft Access 2000 or Access XP.

Yes. To build custom reports, you need:

• Crystal Reports v9.0 (Standard, Professional, Developer, or Advanced edition).
  -or-
  
• Crystal Reports v8.5 (Standard, Professional, or Developer edition).

Nothing. Users access Census through their Web browser.

Setting up Census involves installing Census on your Web server, performing some out-of-the-box customizations (point-and-click editors), and generating some Web views (point-and-click editor).

Deploying Census is a snap, because its Web-based. There's no client software to install.

After you install Census, the first thing to do is out-of-the-box customization.

This involves creating projects, customizing the defect record, defining users and groups, and setting up e-mail notifications. All this is done through the Census Admin program, which provides a set of point-and-click editors. For example, you use the Field Editor to customize the possible values for fields like Product and Version. The Census Admin online help provides detailed information on how to perform all these tasks.

The next thing to do is to generate Web views for your Census users. Web views are different views of a Census project. Each Web view defines which issues can be viewed and modified and which fields are displayed. You use the Web View Editor to generate Web views.

To secure Census for external use you should consider the following when setting up Census.

Standard Configuration

In this configuration all components (Census, IIS and the SQL Server database) are hosted on the same computer inside the internal network and protected behind the firewall. The firewall needs to be configured for Web publishing to listen for incoming requests and redirect to the Census server virtual directory (or directories) only when appropriate.

Most firewalls, including Microsoft ISA Server (the default firewall in Windows), support this configuration.

A firewall that permits only inbound connections from the IP address of the external partner is another way of restricting even more unauthorized Internet users from opening network connections to the Web server.

Distributed Configuration

The distributed configuration isolates the data on a separate computer not accessible to external users. In this configuration all Census components are installed on the Web server. And all databases are SQL Server, and are located on a separate SQL Server computer.

For both the standard and distributed configurations, if the data sent over the Internet is of sensitive nature, it can be secured using SSL (https protocol).

Known problems including installation and startup problems our posted on our Online Knowledge Base. The Online Knowledge Base includes known workarounds.

You can also purchase our Premium Support and Upgrade plan.

Technical support is also available to customers evaluating Census.

MetaQuest offers a variety of training and consulting services, including on-site training courses covering the administration and usage of Census.

No, the Upgrade updates the existing installation without destroying your projects and databases.

Upgrades do not touch your current defect data or customizations. For more information on upgrading, please read the upgrade README.