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Short Line Data Systems ROCS Update – May 2005
Website: www.sdsrocs.com
Greetings –
As we move into May from what turned out to be a very busy month of April, we have a number of things to bring you up to date on. They include the ASLRRA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Anaheim, a host of changes to Version 9 of ROCS, and a group of new features built and planned for ROCSDispatch.
ASLRRA Anaheim
It’s hard to believe that the meeting was almost a month ago, but it was really that good a meeting. ASLRRA should be commended on the superb job they did planning the program. I was fortunate to serve on the planning committee for the meeting, and while we did a lot of the work, the staff in Washington did the lion’s share of the job.
The program for the meeting was the best one I have seen at an Annual Meeting. To give you an idea of how the program has grown, in Chicago a couple of years ago there were ten speakers for the entire program. This year there were seventy. The program has grown into one that really covers all current areas of interest for our industry, and continues to adapt to the current issues.
It was great seeing everyone at our booth in the exposition hall. It was a pleasure to demonstrate the three members of the SDS family: the parent, ROCS, the child, ROCSMobile, and the cousin, ROCSDispatch. Congratulations to Gary Shields of the North Shore Railroad for winning our Mickey Mouse watch raffle. Next year the meeting will be in Orlando, and I suggest if you haven’t been to an annual in a while, or you’ve never been to one, make plans to go. It really is one of the top meetings in our industry.
Version 9 Changes
We have continued the development of Version 9, and have revised some screens, and made some improvements “under the hood.” The more visible changes have taken place on the Crew Status screen, where we have revised the interface, and made it easier for the user to select which customers or tracks the switch lists are generated from. The change also eliminates the need for us to make a change to the screen when a new track or customer is added. A second change has taken place to the Storage Track report. The report is available to list the contents of any track in the system. The change now allows the user to select which tracks to print, and like the Crew Status screen, doesn’t need to be adjusted by us if tracks are added or deleted.
An “under the hood” change now lets all users on a server-based system access all consists and waybills that have received but not added to the Advance Cars list. While most people won’t notice the change, it’s a small change that will help some of the users.
ROCSDispatch Changes
We’ve started making changes and improvements to ROCSDispatch, with many of them coming from our experiences using the system every day at the M&E. The first big improvement is that we’ve added logic into the system to warn the user when an attempt to give permission for a train to occupy a track that has already been taken out of service. We will be adding other preventive warnings in the future.
The other big addition to the system is the addition of employee monitoring functions. We anticipate that this section will make it easier to keep the many different qualification dates that an employee has. We are anticipating adding a crew board (extra list) and time sheet functions in the near future.
Well, that’s all for now. If anyone is interested in an online demonstration of any of our products, please give us a call.
Stay safe,
Steven Friedland President
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