The Client

The client is a US-based provider of software products consulting and services for the law industry.

What the client wanted

It has been years since the large scale application developed with VB6.0 was put into practice in the client's company, which deals with court employee, law executive institution, insurance company, bail agent and bond agency.

However with the business development, more and more new business requirements appeared and were added to the existing system, which made the system performance continuously reduced and raises the maintenance cost with time.

To stop the ever deteriorating situation, the client decided to migrate the already existing system into Microsoft .Net Framework. Excepting for the implementation of all the basic functions, performance enhancement was the focus in the migration/reengineering project such as the optimized work flow management.

With the successful achievement of the project, the client will provid a brand new and high quality business solution in the specific business field to better facilitate the end user.

Our Role

Our team was completely responsible for the development of all aspects of this system. This involved requirements analysis, design, implementation and successfully deploying the system onto Server.

Migration/Re-engineering Solution

Technology
The essential of the Migration solution is to transplant the existing system onto another software framework, meanwhile optimize business logic of the legacy system and add new features to it. The legacy system is developed with VB6.0 and SQL Server 7.0, therefore it will be applicable to implement the new solution with .Net Framework and VB.Net.

This new application is built on a custom .Net framework, the technical architecture of the solution was a realization of a three-tier model. The three layers of the system are business logic, the presentation layer and the database layer which makes it possible to achieve good system scalability with performance being not affected seriously.

Development Method
Because there was no complete document available for the developing team to review and understand the legacy system, training was a necessary and critical approach to drive the project to a successful end.

A project manager and a system architect with extensive migration experience were assigned to attend the training which is carried out with telephone and Netmeeting.

Thereafter, 3 intermediate developers with rich development experience in VB.Net Window application were allocated to the developing team to receive training. Simultaneously, the client began to assign specific developing tasks per day to its offshore development center.

Every working day morning, the client allocates task list of that day and upon receipt of it, requirements analysis and structure design are carried out together by the project manager and the architect, and then the tasks are assigned to appropriate developer. At the end of the day, all the completed tasks will be deployed on development server, on which the customer may track our work and verify whether the migration/re-engineering tasks comply with the legacy system or whether new functions are implemented in accordance with the requirement. Once the client's satisfactory is achieved, following tasks will be carried out and to be fulfilled.

With the good performance of the tasks, more and more new tasks are assigned to the developing team, new team members are introduced to the team. Now there are 10 group members including project manager, system architect, developers and testers taking part in this migration/reengineering project.

Because the migration project is carried out simultaneously by the customer and us, a development server is set up on the customer network to coordinate tasks on both sides and protect source code security. Our developing team access to the customer network with VPN first and then login to the development server with Windows Terminal Service to share same source code with the customer developing team which are stored within the same VSS library.

Efforts

120 man-months.

The Benefits

• Low development and maintenance cost compared with onshore development team.
• Practical and efficient development methodology guarantees a flexible implementation process and traceable quality.
• The architecture framework developed is based on the .Net Framework and three-mode, but is improved for more usability and upgraded with application specific architecture features.
• An enhanced stable and integrity system with optimized functions and features.
• The establishment of a stable and skillful developing team ensures following development and maintenance tasks to be carried out and implemented successfully.

The Client

The client is a US-based provider of spring probe in ATE industry. It is the most preferred probe brand for ATE in Test & Measurement World's most recent brand awareness studies.

What the client wanted

The client already had a website system which was a senior and integrative online e-business portal site, mainly realize product promotion/distribution and other correlative service, track and manage customers' account. With the business growth, the system can no longer meet the new requirement. So the client looked for us to help enhancing the legacy system:

• Development of new functions and pages was required to meet new business requirement.
• The development process should be a cyclic one for the one-by-one development of the business modules.
• The client hoped a low cost for the project completion.

Migration Solution

After deep requirement analysis by legacy system and interrelated document study and massive communiction with the client, we made it clear that the system architecture was over complex as it had been maintained for a long time. And the chaos of the business logic and the presentation logic resulted unavailable system for large-scale promotion. In light of the situation, we developed the solution of system migration, as well as business logic optimization and new functionality enhancement to address the client's requirement.

The legacy system was built on ASP, ADO and SQL Server 7.0. To cut down the cost and increase the efficiency, we migrated the system to ASP.Net, ADO.net and SQL Sever 2000 which are the promotion edition.

To enhance the system's maintainability and expansibility, we adopted a three-tier model to obtain the well-constructed system which involved the business layer, the presentation layer and the database layer.

• Presentation Layer Migration
  This layer transforms application data into common network format. We realized it by calling widget of Asp.net after the analysis of the presentation logic of the legacy system.
• Business Layer Migration
  In the legacy system, business logic was realized by function invoke and complicated code building. In the migrated system, the Business Layer gave a general overview of the business transactions between departments. We refined it from the legacy system and realized it by calling corresponding .Net component.
• Database Layer Migration
  We adopted ADO.Net for DB connection and operation instead of ADO in the legacy system. We also used Microsoft Data Access Block, including all data access code that are used in this layer.

  DB compatibility was required for the large number of business data accumulated in the past. So during the DB migration, we made little changes as far as possible to ensure the legacy data are still available as well as meet the requirement for the new DB construction.

Efforts

10 man-months

Benefits

• Low cost for migration and maintenance.
• Data migration completed without any losing.
• A stable system with functionalities integrated, maintainability and expansibility enhanced.