Appeon Moves Pharmaceutical Enterprise to the Web
Business
Challenge |
To
reduce costs and improve the maintainability and usability of its
IT systems, need to move a set of disparate PowerBuilder client-server-based
systems to a unified Web-based platform |
| Solution |
Appeon 2.8
for PowerBuilder |
| Results |
- Implementation time a small fraction of that required to
rewrite with mainstream tools
- Faithfully maintained existing user interface
- All systems managed from a single Java-based application
platform
|
| Industry |
Pharmaceuticals |
About Jewim Pharma
Jewim Pharma is a major producer of pharmaceutical products for both
the domestic Chinese market as well as overseas markets. Jewim is headquartered
in Beijing and has branch offices in 29 provinces and cities in Mainland
China.
Since its founding, Jewim Pharma has grown at a phenomenal rate - over
45% annually in recent years. To sustain this growth rate, Jewim is constantly
seeking to increase the maintainability, scalability, and flexibility
of the IT systems that run its business.
Can We Get to the Web without Discarding Past Investment?
To improve costs and efficiency, Jewim has since its inception realized
the value of highly efficient IT systems in supporting its operations.
Since 1994, Jewim had been building up systems based on client-server
architecture for business functions such as finance, office management,
and management of its chain of retail stores using Sybase's PowerBuilder
tool.
As the scope of Jewim's IT systems expanded with its business, the deficiencies
of the client-server architecture became increasingly obvious. "For
example," says Xue Feng, CIO of Jewim Pharma, "Operating the
system from external locations was difficult, data updated slowly, and
adding new features created serious maintenance headaches. Each time any
one of our systems was updated, we had to deploy new client software to
every end user." With the rise of the Internet, moving to a unified
Web-based platform became a critical item on Jewim's IT agenda. But doing
so would force Jewim to make difficult decisions.
The problem Jewim faced was that it had already made enormous investments
in its legacy client-server systems and, despite their problems, the systems
were stable and complete. It would be hugely wasteful to throw them away
and start work on a new Web-based system from scratch. In addition, Mr.
Xue and Jewim's IT staff were concerned about the many widely recognized
limitations of Web, such as the limited user interface, the high cost
of development, etc. Ideally Jewim would be able to turn all of its client-server
applications into standard Web applications automatically.
The Solution: Appeon for PowerBuilder
Xue Feng "Had consistently been looking for a way to reduce the
cost of moving from client-server to the Web". Then, in June 2003,
he happened upon Appeon for PowerBuilder. "I discovered this product
that could take a PowerBuilder app and automatically convert it to a Web
app with identical UI, meaning that we don't need to retrain end users
for the new system."
Appeon for PowerBuilder (APB) is the only product that can automatically
migrate a traditional PowerBuilder client-server architecture application
to the Web. Based on the original client-server application source code,
APB automatically creates an n-tier Web application. The migrated application
precisely replicates the rich user interface of the original application,
including powerful DataWindow functionality, a multi-window interface,
and advanced printing capabilities. The migrated application possesses
the scalability, security, reliability, flexibility, and other benefits
of an n-tier network architecture. Because the entire process is automatic,
there is no need to spend time understanding the application business
logic, which greatly cuts down migration effort.
Technical Architecture
The Appeon for PowerBuilder architecture has following characteristics:
- A single PowerBuilder code base deploys to both client-server
and Web architectures.
- The deployed Web applications are based on highly scalable
Java and Web standards-based n-tier architecture:
(1) The client-side presentation layer uses only pure HTML, XML,
and JavaScript. The applications do not require browser plug-ins,
ActiveX, Java applets, or other downloads to the client machine.
(2)Server-side presentation and business logic is contained within
the Sybase EAServer Java Application Server.
(3) Application data is stored in the existing database and accessed
through JDBC
- Applications use only standard HTTP over port 80, making them
interoperable with existing firewall and security infrastructure
without special configuration.
- The report printing functionality of the original client-server
application is preserved using the Adobe Portable Document Format
(PDF) printing capabilities of Appeon for PowerBuilder, avoiding
the hassles that usually come along with printing on the Web.
|
|
Figure 1: Appeon Web Application Architecture |
Implementation Results
Using the Appeon for PowerBuilder solution, Jewim Pharma realized a highly
cost effective, highly productive system:
- Implementation time: Leveraging their existing investment
in PowerBuilder development, Jewim was able move all of its PowerBuilder
systems to the Web within 9 months, whereas doing the same with mainstream
Java or .NET development tools was estimated to require three to four
years to complete.
- User Productivity: With the Appeon solution, Jewim's
end users retained the rich, productive user interface they enjoyed
with the client-server application. There was no need to learn a completely
new workflow for the new applications.
- Maintainability: Jewim now runs all of its systems
off of a single Java application server, vastly simplifying maintenance
tasks. Version upgrades need only take place on the server side, and
all users will see the new version the next time they open their Web
browsers. There is no need to deploy software to every user's machine.
- Ubiquity: The applications are available to end
users anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and Microsoft
Web browser.
For Now and for the Future
The new system has greatly simplified life for Jewim's IT staff - they
no longer need to expend great effort deploying application updates to
end users, and did not need to deal with the hassles of implementing and
testing a completely new system. End users are happy as well - they now
need only enter a URL in a browser and can access the application from
anywhere in the world. And of course, Jewim's decision makers are greatly
pleased by the money they saved on development and training costs for
the new system.
But what Mr. Xue and others at Jewim appreciated most about the Appeon
solution was that it not only future-proofed their existing PowerBuilder
investments but also gave the company a tool for developing new Web applications
that was more productive than any they had encountered before. Developers
now use the familiar PowerBuilder development environment to develop new
applications in exactly the same way as before, then deploy to the Web
with one click of the Appeon "Deploy" button. According to Mr.
Xue, "Appeon not only gave us the lowest-risk, lowest-cost path to
the Web, it also gave us the most productive way to develop new Web applications
going forward, and using our developers' existing skills."
View more Success Stories > |
