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Customer Overview

Scientech, a Business Unit of Curtiss-Wright Flow Control Company, is a global provider of commercial nuclear power instrumentation, electrical components, specialty hardware, process control systems, and proprietary database solutions aimed at improving safety, plant performance and reliability as well as reducing costs.

Scientech’s client, Arizona Public Service Company (APS), approached CipherSoft about a Forms upgrade project after seeing a presentation on CipherSoft’s Oracle conversion tools and services. Scientech contracted with CipherSoft to complete the project for APS.

Challenge

APS wanted to maintain its investment in their SWMS application by keeping up with current technology. Converting all existing SWMS Forms from Oracle 6i to 10g would also ensure continued Oracle Technical Support on the current platform.

The primary objectives of the conversion project included:

• Using the existing database and workflow functionality without any migration.
• Increasing remote access capabilities to the SWMS application.
• Changing Forms background color from gray to tan.
• Changing row, detail navigation and required field colors to softer versions of the current color.
• Increasing the window size to 1024 by 768 pixels.

The client researched several options. As part of that process, APS evaluated each Form for possible retiring and/or merging. APS also considered redesigning the major Forms in each application module to improve end user usability and productivity.

In selecting a solution, APS interviewed the SWMS business area groups to determine each group’s issues and priorities.

Solution

The project involved upgrading 385 Forms and 90 libraries for the APS SWMS application. The project also included functionality upgrades across the application, as defined by Scientech and APS, and changing the look and feel of the LOV components, including color schemes, graphics and prompting.

Scientech chose to use CipherSoft’s in-house Forms Upgrade service due to CipherSoft’s fixed price project, minimal downtime and a relatively short project duration. CipherSoft was able to offer a list of client references that could vouch for the high level of satisfaction and quality of project deliverables.

A key differentiator was that CipherSoft had no proprietary software and once the solution was up and running, neither on-going support nor assistance with the environment configuration would be required. CipherSoft’s technical team, with its many years of experience with all versions of Oracle Forms, was able to provide practical recommendations and advice to the Scientech team.

Once the entire application was delivered to CipherSoft, four Forms were chosen as the pilot project. The CipherSoft team upgraded the Forms, and all of the associated libraries, and then demonstrated the newly migrated Forms to the Scientech team. Some initial questions were answered, additional global changes were requested, and then the Forms were delivered to Scientech. Scientech then deployed the migrated Forms and libraries in their testing environment, and conducted their own testing. All results were reviewed with the CipherSoft team, and global type migration issues were added to the list of criteria for the migration project for all of the remaining Forms and libraries to be upgraded.

Late in the project, three enhancements were requested by the client, which affected about 3,300 individual data items. Changes included modification to the navigable properties and some of the visual attributes. Although CipherSoft was able to scan the application to find all of the occurrences, once a level of effort was completed and proposed to the client, it was agreed that these particular changes were not necessary and not worth delaying the project so close to the end of the testing cycle. These particular enhancements were unable to be automated, and would have required manual editing to almost all of the Forms. In many cases, CipherSoft was able to automate global changes and accommodate requests for enhancements. These project changes and enhancements were made in agreement with the client, and only after the client was apprised of how the changes would affect the development and testing processes.

The client also requested Web Hand and Hoover Hand functionality. After much research on CipherSoft’s end, it was discovered the request could not be implemented by way of creating Java beans to be executed at runtime, as originally requested. The Scientech Forms team then did some research and provided alternative solutions for implementing both functionalities at design time by modifying the item level properties.

The project took four months to complete, including the pilot project.

Results

Scientech and CipherSoft worked as a team to produce an effective result. All objectives were met and the new application provided a more user friendly application, allowing end users to be more productive.

The project metrics were also achieved. All objects were converted in a timely manner.

For Forms that have been redesigned, users now only need to go to one location for the necessary data. In the past, several Forms were used to get the desired results.

Many new features have been added to the SWMS application as a result of the upgrade. Each of these features will save time and allow the users to be more productive. Some of the changes will also result in less training time for first time users because the new application is more intuitive and user friendly.

“It was a pleasure to work with CipherSoft on our 10g upgrade project. Lorraine was very accommodating and was always willing to work with us to find a solution. Khalid and his fellow developers were very qualified and provided solutions that met our needs. He was also very willing to work with our group in trading ideas and working together to determine the best solutions. I would recommend CipherSoft for any type of conversion. They kept to their quote and to the schedule and delivered a quality product,” said Kevin Woodeshick, Scientech.