Service record card access through the company Intranet
Kevin P. Bowman Staff Analyst Consumers Energy 212 West Michigan Ave. Jackson, MI 49201 Office: (51 7) 788-0430 Fax: (517) 788-1732 David S.Lucian P. E., Project Manager Consumers Energy 516 West Willow Street Lansing, MI 48906 Office: (517) 374-2306 Fax: (517) 373-8419 Introduction This paper discusses the design, construction and implementation of a Service Record Card electronic data repository system. As is any repository development effort, one of the key success factors is the appropriate selection of information that will be converted. For information that is selected, the system(s) must be able to ensure information integrity at a consistent quality level throughout its life cycle, regardless of the business process that may be exercising the data. Failure to achieve this data consistency will soon render such a repository in a highly questionable state. Considerable forethought, planning, and recognition of the inevitable technological change may enable us to position ourselves for the economic optimization of this data asset over its complete life cycle, in some cases as long as 70-80 years. This paper will use Consumers Energy Service Information Management System as a case study for facility record access through the company Intranet. Business Functions The Service Information Management System (SIMS) supports the creating, reviewing, updating and deleting (CRUD) of underground facility information managed by the physical SIMS data repository. This information supports Consumers Energy dispatching, stake and locate, inspection and other business processes. By design this paper does not address in detail the data conversion of existing records. The repository is updated in a variety of ways including scanning, electronic file conversion (vector to raster) or a number of other potential data collection methods. Model Data Requirements The principle objective of any application is to support some aspect of the CRUD model as it relates to a given scope of the enterprise information repository. Given the potential impact of erring in data content, it was imperative that a comprehensive, professionally facilitated data modeling session be conducted. The goal of this session was to determine the business processes that exercised this data, potential users and an understanding of the qualitative aspects that must be ensured throughout the data lifecycle as well as the repository content. The logical model describes the information content and becomes the "standard" by which application development can be measured. The outcome of the modeling session suggested that a graphical sketch as well as attribute data describing the facility was the optimal solution to the users needs. The physical database will therefore contain both textual attribute data and graphic data in the form of a raster image. Develop Conversion Process With the information requirements well defined and documented the effort can now be focused on moving the repository construction forward. Creation and publication of record conversion rules are necessary to ensure that errors can be effectively eliminated as the documents move from a paper based medium to an electronic environment. The challenge is to appropriately realize those opportunities that ensure the desired level of accuracy for successful integration. Facility systems can be accessed through a number of different geographic query schemes. The scrubbing of the records either before the conversion or during the quality assurance process enables you to achieve the designed level of integration. Post conversion software auditing of the converted data is a powerfd and cost effective way of achieving highly reliable integrated data. 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:
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. | ||
|
|