June 2004 — Product Watch
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Administrative & Student Management Software
FileMaker has announced the availability of FileMaker Server 7, the new server software for easily sharing, managing and accessing database information with others, while dramatically increasing productivity. Server 7 offers numerous breakthroughs in data sharing and administration, as well as advanced security features. With Server 7, users have the ability to perform searches and calculations on the server instead of the client database, which provides data speed gains and greater performance from hard disk storage systems and multi-CPU servers. Each of the 125 database files that can be hosted on Server 7 can store up to 8 terabytes of information - 4,000 times the old limit. And, because each FileMaker database file can now contain multiple data tables, a single FileMaker Server can host thousands of data tables. For added scalability, users can add FileMaker Servers to their network as their needs grow. The new FileMaker Server 7 Administration Tool (SAT) allows users to accomplish tasks such as performing maintenance on live databases, and auditing remote administration through a new "Event Log" entry that identifies Administrators and their activities. Server 7 also provides three new key security functions: account authentication management, database visibility control and data encryption. For more information, visit www.filemaker.com./products/fms_home.html.
Higher education institutions looking to uncover and resolve student issues in real time need to look no further than GoalQuest's FYRe (Freshman Year Retention) and other related programs, which integrate a suite of unique Web-based tools with custom content and research services that help colleges and universities identify and address students at risk. The key to the programs' success is providing students an ultraconvenient, confidential path to reach out to existing academic and personal support services that they might otherwise ignore. GoalQuest's proprietary technology delivers a series of interactive Web-based sessions, each designed and written to help students assess themselves and potential problem areas. Through fun, engaging editorial features, "social-norming" polls, attitudinal surveys and progress reminders, the software encourages students to identify issues and solution paths. Participants can choose to send confidential queries to campus support resources, or they can choose to solve their own problems by utilizing a wide range of interactive FAQs that help determine their next steps. Using GoalQuest's real-time reporting tools, university personnel (typically student affairs executives and "first-year experience" faculty) track student progress and monitor attrition risks on a daily basis with sophisticated robotic search agents such as GoalQuest's Enrolligence Alerts. For more information, visit
www.goalquest.com.Helping special education teachers focus more time on teaching and less time on paperwork is the main function of OASYS Online by OASYS LLC (www.oasys.ws). This ASP model of OASYS' software suite streamlines the process of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and monitors the progress of children with disabilities.
