MANN-india Technologies

Case Study

Panafoto is Panama City based client, dealing in Electronic equipments, like television, tape recorders, digital camera etc. The architecture of the firm is that it has one main location from where all the main functionalities are processed and at the same time it has many a outlets which are responsible for the sale of the products as well as their maintenance/repair in their particular locations.

What they wanted
The client was looking for an automation of all the departments like Store, Purchase, Accounts, Personnel etc along with the decision support system to enhance the overall efficiency. Integration was their main concern for smooth working, tracking of all the information and alerts in case of shortage or slippages at any level. As understood by us it was not just a simple workflow which was to be implemented to meet their requirements, but they also wanted a continuous data replication among the main locations and the outlets for instant reporting to the concerned person or department. Security was also a prime concern for the client. The connectivity among various outlet was also required for online transfer and updates.

What we proposed
Mann-India proposed intranet/internet based workflow application (PANAP) to automate all the departments the functionality of the firm. In PANAP there will not be a change in the approach of existing workflow. As for the connectivity among the main house and the outlets we proposed that to prepare a system which will be connected through intranet/internet and to make the system faster we used the concept of XML on every location to view the data of other locations. For the security we used the concept of authentication server in order to restrict outside user and manipulation with the database at any level. Data transfer takes place in the encrypted form. To cut down the cost of implementation we used database Mackoi/postgres which is free of cost. System is platform independent and functions smoothly on any platform.

The System broadly consists of two main components namely, the Framework and the Modules.
PANAP is a front and back office application and will run on web-based environment. The Framework of the PANAP Application supports centralized model of implementation. The framework will provide common utilities like access control, logging, and exception handling mechanism to other modules.

Semi-Centralized Model
The Security database would be centrally installed. However a part of this application would be required to be locally implemented at the Outlet. All authentication and security checks would be performed on the central enterprise server itself, except for the sales module. For sales module all required users have to be created at respective outlet installation. For all other module the security and transaction data will be done on the central database. There will be periodic updation of sales data from various local outlets. This updation will be done by exporting data in XML format to the central server. The XML data will be parsed / read and fed into respective tables on the central database.

By virtue of design the application would be database independent however it is neither the requirement nor the purpose. The design has been proposed to have one more layer of abstraction. This layer helps in keeping all the pl/sql part separate from the logic or view part. This further adds on the feature of application upgradeability, adaptability to new database. As specified in the documents database would be in oracle to be installed centrally. Hence auto generation of sequences would be sequence data type of oracle and sequence of posgressql.

As per the requirements a subset of database would be kept at outlets, which could be on posgressql, hence the data type defined for such data would be database independent, thus making the data portable from client to main server. Or for possible scenarios of data portability an interface would be provided which would itself convert one data type into required form of data type.