Profile

VISaer Inc. is a small but rapidly growing Boston-based software company. It develops and sells fully integrated computer systems that address the needs of companies operating in the aircraft maintenance, and equipment repair and overhaul (MRO) industry. Development of the VISaer application began almost twenty years ago using Cognos® PowerHouse®, a 4GL application development tool. Over the years, the application had become became very large, with over 4,000 modules, 2,500 screens, and 1,500 reports and processes.

The Challenge

VISaer was finding it increasingly difficult to sell a character-based “blue-screen” application in a highly competitive market. In the past few years, other vendors, including SAP, had released web-based versions of their products. In order to remain in business and be competitive, VISaer had no choice but to modernize its core application.

VISaer’s “Version 3” requirements were very clear. They needed a web-native solution, delivered as quickly as possible, that aligned with their chosen technology standards (Microsoft ASP/COM+ model and Oracle’s database). They needed to preserve the custom functionality that existed within their PowerHouse application. But they also wanted a robust platform that could support ongoing future enhancements to their product, as they already had a list of over a hundred product enhancements that needed to be made. And whichever approach they chose, they needed to ensure that their R&D team was intimately familiar with the new application.

Why CORE Migration™

VISaer explored a number of alternatives including Cognos Axiant®, the forward path for PowerHouse, building a new application themselves, and using modern screen-scraping technologies. However, only CORE Migration was able to guarantee preservation of their existing functionality in a modern, web architecture, provide sufficient support and knowledge transfer throughout the process, and deliver a solution in a short period of time. “We explored other alternatives, but chose CORE Migration because of its systematic and focused approach to migrating PowerHouse applications,” said Geoffrey Andrew, CTO and VP of Product Development. “CORE Migration also offered the right technology. We wanted to preserve the original application, and quickly realized that CORE Migration’s workbench of software tools provided the only automated approach that would allow us to avoid an otherwise labor-intensive process.”

CORE Migration

The Process: Because they needed to be closely involved with the migration process and understand the inner workings of the new solution, VISaer chose to go with the Self-Directed migration option in which CORE Migration people work together with the client, as partners in the migration process. Using this approach, the CORE Migration team completed the design preservation process by parsing the source code and putting it in the new Oracle repository. The CORE Migration team customized the Forward Engineering (FE) tools that are necessary to migrate the application, to ensure that the generated code would be optimized for VISaer’s specific requirements. VISaer’s team was also trained to use the tools and understand the structure of the new code. VISaer installed the FE tools on a local PC, and connected back to the CORE Migration repository via a VPN connection.

VISaer engineers (primarily intermediate to senior level developers in ASP/COM + and Oracle) used the FE tools in parallel, on a module-by-module basis, to generate VB code and ASP pages in Oracle packages. The FE tools generated 90% of the code, and the rest was done manually. CORE Migration experts also worked closely with VISaer by assisting with the production of certain key screens at a key stage of the project. VISaer looked after all the functional, unit and other testing. “The CORE Migration team’s responsiveness and attention to detail in all stages of the process contributed significantly to a successful migration,” concluded Andrew.

The Solution: The VISaer Version 3 technology architecture provides a native web architecture using Active Server Pages (ASP) with DHTML for the user application interface, with COM+ components executing business logic on the server. The web-native architecture provides full Internet or Intranet data entry, query and information distribution with reporting capabilities in DHTML, PDF, XML or other web-enabled formats. This is especially beneficial for companies with line maintenance requirements as well as multi-site and multi-national companies.

“Our VISaer Version 3 technology architecture makes extensive use of the Oracle 9i database architecture,” says Andrew. “Business logic is processed by a combination of COM+ objects and database level triggers and procedures that maximize reliability, performance, extensibility and maintainability. System access is controlled using a single logon component from Oracle Portal, while reporting and query are managed by the Portal and Reports components of Oracle Internet Application Server (Oracle 9iAS) architecture, along with the Cognos Series 7 Business Intelligence suite. The VISaer Event Manager is fully integrated to Oracle WorkFlow for alert notification and workflow processing. Additionally, the VISaer Version 3 architecture provides complete, user-specific language independence; support for double-byte characters; context sensitive help and embedded computer based training wizards.”