For a leading electronic content and information firm, GDI developed an integrated acquisition system by combining the processes, data and applications of a newly-acquired company.
The Challenge
Client Background
The client company provides access to information from periodicals, newspapers, out-of-print books, dissertations and scholarly collections in various formats as a result of agreements with more than 9,000 publishers worldwide. Its archives include more than 5.5 billion pages of information, spanning 500 years of scholarship, in formats that range from print to microform to digital. This company serves academic, public, corporate and K-12 libraries, in addition to K-12 classrooms and higher education students and faculty.
Project Objective:
GDI’s client sought to integrate the operations of a recently acquired Canadian company with its own operations by combining processes, data and applications. The recent acquisition had a Progress database depository of research publications issued by the federal government, the ten provinces and two of the three territories; hard-to-find non-depository publications issued by hundreds of Canadian government agencies and departments; scientific and technical report literature issued by research institutes and government laboratories; policy, social, economic and political reports; and Statistics Canada monographs and serials.
The main objective for the project was to integrate the systems from the acquisition by consolidating data and creating a single application to use and manipulate the resulting collection. The objective was to achieve ease of use and reduce administration costs while improving the company’s ability to provide outstanding service to their Canadian customer base.
The Solution
Technology Employed:
Oracle Designer 9, Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g
Project Details:
The Progress system had 8 separate databases. The main design goal was to combine these into one database. This involved understanding the data model in Progress, creating an improved data model in Oracle (addressing the identified issues with normalization in the old database), and developing a new acquisition system for our client.
The new acquisition system needed to replace the eight applications used for eight separate product lines while still handling the individual requirements of each. The GDI solution was a single system that integrateed all eight applications from Progress into one Oracle database. Additionally, the new acquisition system shares data with an external cataloguing module.
GDI used Oracle Designer 9 for the data modeling, Oracle Forms and Reports for the application, and Oracle 10g Application Server for deployment of this complex system of approximately 85 tables, 16 views, 55 forms and 33 reports. The solution took only five months to convert and was completed one month ahead of schedule.
Key Responsibilities:
GDI provided a team of two consultants to execute the data modeling and application development aspects of this project. The GDI team partnered with the staff at the Canadian company and the client staff.
The key to combining the eight systems into one database and making it look like eight different databases (but still with a common look and feel) was the use of a separate view in Oracle for each of the eight products.
To accomplish this, the GDI architect created a new, improved data model in Oracle using Oracle Designer 9. Both consultants were involved in using Oracle Designer to generate 100% of the forms. No handwritten code was added to the forms after generation. This saved from 25% to 75% of the effort it would have taken had the forms been created using Forms Builder, depending upon the complexity of any given form.
The team then developed parameter-driven reports and performed forms and reports integration. They also configured webutil for implementation of client_text_io to export files to client machines and created Oracle procedures for common code.
The Results
The new Oracle system accomplished the project goals by providing a flexible, easy to learn and use interface, with a fast, secure and scalable Oracle database. This application will drastically reduce the time required to maintain the Progress-based systems, sometimes by as much as 50%. Also since the client staff has prior Oracle knowledge, they will not need to hire or retrain staff with knowledge of Progress databases. This will generate an additional savings of about $100K per year.