Data Migration From Existing Application example essay topic

Client and Business Information Kellogg Towing has been in business since 1985. The company provides vehicle-towing service for most California regions. Daily pickup requests from customers are received via fax machine. The request is entered into a Q&A based application running on a windows 98 computer. Transactions are printed, collated and given to a driver for that day's pickup schedule. Another copy is sent to a customer for billing, and finally another copy is submitted to accounting.

The same transaction is entered manually onto QuickBooks for billing and tracking purposes. This workflow happens daily. Hardware The company currently has six workstations. Each device (printer, scanner, etc) is connected to a specific computer and is shared throughout the network via peer to peer connectivity. The company recently upgraded all of their computers to a faster processor. The workstations came preinstalled with Windows XP Professional.

They came to find out that the Towing application written in Q&A does not work with this platform. Through research they found out that the vendor, Symantec, no longer supports the Q&A software. The owner subsequently requested a study on software upgrade cost of the Towing software. Software Analysis: Though the application has been used for many years, there are aspects or features of the application that are no longer used and / or never worked. A driver / employee that has some knowledge in software design developed the software many years ago. The software evolved as the company required more features.

At some point the application became harder to manage due to availability and limited knowledge of the original developer. The application has accumulated almost 1 million records since its inception. Reporting and search features originally developed no longer work. Knowledge transfer from one data entry operator to the next is non-existent. Needless to say, as the years went by the only feature that worked consistently is the Entry module and Invoice Print module. The database size has grown to 25 megabytes.

Though small by today's database standards, it holds millions of records that are un-searchable. The application lacked an archiving feature. From time to time, the database becomes corrupted from power failures or user error. The current entry operator is tasked to "fix" the database from notes created by the original developer. When this happens, the company's business is "down" for many hours, sometimes even days. The only recourse is to recover from a previous working backup and re-enter the information back onto the application again.

If a working backup is 5 days old, the entry operator has to re-enter the information again until it is current. Database reporting is useless since the report does not ask for a date range before querying the database. They are limited to printing one transaction record and this is filed manually to a daily log folder. Needles to say, the company adapted to the "features" or lack thereof of the application and managed to oversee its inefficiency in many areas. The owner, who has been reluctant to upgrade the software for many years, now has to make a decision to invest in a software upgrade.

Research into finding an "off-the-shelf" software package that caters to the towing business resulted in finding software solutions that were either too expensive, or offered too many features that would never be used. It is time again to hire a competent software developer that can deliver a custom designed application that caters to their specific needs. Requirements and Constraints 1. The initial constraint is the budget; it must not exceed $4500.2. The application must be ready for beta testing within a month.

3. Support - the newly hired developer must be available for support or any future enhancement requests needed by the company. 4. Ability to migrate existing data onto the new solution. 5.

Ability for the new application to upload transaction information directly to QuickBooks Accounting Software; to get rid of the need to enter the same data twice. 6. Reports must include date range. 7. The solution must include Archive and database maintenance module. 8.

Training and Documentation. The delivered solution must include a users manual for existing and future data entry operators to review. Solution: Due to budgetary constraints, a MS Access database application is recommended for the solution. Only one MS Access license is required for the office, other workstations will use the runtime version of the application. It is conceivable to develop such an application within a month and within budget. QuickBooks integration will require a third party ODBC driver.

This tool will enable the application to read and write transaction records from / to the MS Access solution. Also due to budgetary constraints, data migration from existing application will not be implemented. Further research into Q&A application, data extraction tool cost and how the data tables were originally created, will cost the company more money and the developer more man-hours to develop. This part of the requirement will not be pursued, or will be pursued at a later time when funds are available. Microsoft Access offers a robust reporting feature that a date range based report is possible. An archiving module is also achievable using this data platform.

The solution is extensible in a way that a future module can be implemented to allow existing customers to enter pickup requests on a web page, thus eliminating the need for a data entry operator. Given this media, customers can log in and view (through report modules) activities and status on a given record. Customers can also pay via credit card or check through the website. Payment transactions entered through this medium will also affect Accounting modules. This feature is not included in the current proposal but can be viewed as phase 2 of the overall enhancement project.