- Domain: Manufacturing
- Technologies Used: GeneXus, IBMi, SQL, Java
- In the client's various plants, flat-rolled steel is purchased from different mills and transformed into products that meet the exact specifications of customers.
- Electronic Contract Review System (ECR) plays an important role in this business flow. Electronic Contract Review is a process through which all new Sales Items must go, before the material is produced. The ECR is started by Inside Sales.
- Every Sales Item contains the customer requirements such as Physical properties of Item, Chemical properties, Mechanical properties, Processing Instructions, Packaging Instructions, and Shipping Instructions etc.
- Tech Service reviews the newly entered Item to determine the type of processing and material required to process. Purchasing reviews Item and determines if the item can be placed in existing base item or a new base item is required.
- Once ECR is complete, all the further processing (like Inventory Creation, Purchase Order Creation, Shop Order Creation, and Bills Creation etc.) is managed in AS/400.
- The client had an 'ECR application', which was accessed through intranet portal. This application was using SQL and AS/400 databases. This application had very long forms with a long response time.
- The old application was redesigned using Genexus with Java. Also, the application started using only one database on AS/400. The user interface was transformed and workflow was introduced into the application. The security module was completely aligned with its AS/400 counterpart.
Challenge:
- Extracting the business knowledge from the old ASP code of the old application.
- Distributing the long forms into tab structure which would be fast and efficient.
- Migrating database from SQL Server to AS/400.
- Introduction of workflow.
- Integrating new change requests into the application and align them with existing logic.
Solution:
- After getting initial understanding of project, we prepared study documents for each ASP page to understand data movements and application navigation better.
- We created working templates for forms which included loading, data movements, validations and database operations. Each form was transformed into a composite unit consisting all procedures, web panels and web components. We used this template for designing each form.
- We prepared detailed field by field table structures for new tables on AS/400. Experimented with data movements from SQL to AS/400 fields before moving them into the final application.
- We first created demo workflow application to understand the internal working structure of GxFlow (Workflow implementation module of Genexus). One tested well, we introduced it in the final application. One of the distinct features of introducing workflow was that it was completely transparent to the end users. The user interface was kept intact even after introduction of workflow.
- The existing and new functionalities were merged seamlessly into the new application. We prepared detailed technical specifications which detailed the data flow of each field from database and screens.
