Service record card access through the company Intranet
Technical Environment
After reviewing the business process relationship, it was apparent that this data would be
accessed in a wide variety of technical platforms. The initial focus was on those internal
users (Intranet) that occupied the greatest number of seats in the organization as defined
by their common technical platform. The desktop environment was running either #1 -
0S/2 or #2 - WIN95/NT. Our first generation approach at satisfying the needs of the user
community was to employ the Borland Delphi tool. The application was designed to
provide both the graphical and the attribute data about requested facilities. The sketches
are available in a CIT IV format and the attribute data was housed in an Oracle database.
This architecture works well with the exception that data replication for availability
(business continuity) or performance reasons is not entirely handled by the Oracle
replication manager due to the associated CIT file located outside of the Oracle
environment.
While we were successful in the application development and deployment, it became
apparent that the on-going costs to support this mixed platform were cost prohibitive in
spite of the fact that Consumers Energy has automated software distribution architecture.
There has to be a better way. Enter the browser based application. Many of the
application features such as buttons, tool bars and other common browser based fimctions
are inherent in the Delphi based application. The nature of the data architecture, both
graphical and text, and user profile as typically read only, make this a natural browser
application.
Application Architecture
The browser based application has required JAVA programming to provide the user
interface similar to that currently in production. Additionally, the server side has required
JAVA scripts to facilitate the appropriate client server interface to the Oracle database
and the compute engine that converts the sketch image from a CIT IV to a browser based
format and delivers it to the user. Debates over appropriate security mechanism(s) have
complicated the application. It appears a more robust security scheme will enable this
application to not only satisfy internal Intranet access requests but serve to self provision
those entities outside the organization (Extranet) that need frequent, timely access to this
facility data. This external access strategy also serves our interests in that the physical
network layout to the external Intemet connection point will minimize the network traffic
to a small LAN segment. This shift in network traffic to infrastructure outside the
company (Internet) makes good business sense as it preserves our limited internal
bandwidth.
Application Requirements Analysis
The core functions of the browser application are to:
-
Find locations quickly through address, name, facility information
- Choose exact features you want displayed
- View and print
- Provide Windows Clipboard capability for copying into other applications
The application is designed in a user friendly, unrestricted manner. The user is presented
a forms based application that allows either complete information to be entered (if
known) or the opportunity to input limited information using a wildcard method. In fact,
one of the first significant modifications not anticipated in the original design was the
need to restrict the number of "hits" to a reasonable number. It was too cumbersome to
the user and too intensive from a network resource standpoint to allow large numbers of
qualified records to "stream" to the requesting desktop. We have now limited the
maximum number of hits to 300 records. This appears to be a reasonable compromise.
Users may in some instances have to define the request more explicitly but it in no way
restricts access.
Conversion of paper records to an electronic medium does not eliminate the need for hard
copy. The electronic format does offer the advantage of abandoning the "old" style of
paper documents that you may have based your conversion effort on. Try hard to develop
a "new" style of paper presentation that meets the users needs.
Lastly, the ability to paste images (sketches) to the Windows clipboard offers unlimited
opportunities to create related documentation. This can be used to support a number of
business processes from outage notification, design, leak survey and so on. This benefit
should not be overlooked. Communication can be significantly enhanced with this tool.
Conclusion
The Intranet (Internet, Xtranet) offers fertile opportunity to enrich a corporation's
application portfolio. You can avoid or at least aggressively manage your application
portfolio to realize the greatest possible payback of your limited application dollars by
leveraging web based application technology. Many vendors continue to rapidly address
the needs of the increasingly sophisticated web based developer. It is an application
environment that is worthy of serious consideration. Desktop management issues,
application portability and data presentation are all valid reasons to explore a web based
application architecture.
