Local development skills sought by US retailers

Local software development specialists GuruHut were recently called upon to partner with Dato Solutions to develop an upgraded warehouse management system to incorporate the latest in Web-based technologies for US-based AquiTec. The company recognised the ability of South African developers to fulfil their needs and commissioned Dato Solutions to do the job. Dato Solutions in turn sought to partner with the expertise of software development specialists GuruHut, in developing eWMS, the new version of AquiTec`s warehouse management system for distribution to a number of large international retailers.

James Matcher, financial director of Dato Solutions, explains: "AquiTec sought the services of a local company because software development services are more cost effective here. Since the technical expertise in South Africa is at least comparable to that found in Europe and the USA, at a considerably reduced cost, AquiTec saw local development as a good choice.

"The previous version of the company`s warehousing software was written as a mainframe based green screen application in Cobol, AquiTec required the new version to run entirely on the Java platform. This entailed integrating Java and Cobol into a single coherent application that could run, using Web technology, on any platform that supports Java. We identified the need for a highly competent architecture team and therefore commissioned GuruHut to architect, design and help build the new solution.

"In developing this system, integrating Java and Cobol posed the largest challenge for us. This hurdle was overcome by employing a Cobol compiler that turns Cobol source into Java byte code," says Nigel Bakker, director at GuruHut. He explains: "This application allowed the Cobol team to write in Cobol and the Java team to write in Java while allowing seamless integration and maintaining portability. This solved the integration problem and enabled us to reduce the total time required for the project."

One of the other important areas that had to be addressed was that of creating over 400 data capture screens. GuruHut created a solution to the problem that allowed developers to define the screens using XML, thereby eliminating 90 percent of the potential maintenance nightmare caused by such a large number of screens.

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In addition, since the compiler could handle many existing Cobol dialects, it allowed the combined GuruHut and Dato team to exploit some of the existing system`s business logic in the new system.

When GuruHut were brought onto the project, Dato Solutions had already hired two teams to address the Java and Cobol aspects of the project. GuruHut led these teams to develop the application.

"In keeping with our philosophy of working to make ourselves redundant, we worked to enrich the existing skills of the team to ensure that when we disengaged the team was self sufficient. We established the architecture for the application and transferred the necessary skills," says Bakker.

The entire project comprises in excess of 400 000 lines of Java code, 300 000 lines of XML and 300 000 lines of Cobol. It also utilised all three types of Enterprise Java Beans and exploits all key elements of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE).