| This case study is for an oil company that has operated in. This case study is for South Africa's leading integrated communications operator. They provide wire line and wireless services throughout South Africa and have extended their wireless services to other African countries. The 50% shareholding of one of Africa’s largest cellular providers makes them Africa's leading provider of wireless services.
The company has strategic equity partnerships with large international telecommunications companies.
|
Project Description
A robust report viewing and archiving solution was required to allow users to view large computer-generated reports on-line. The solution required powerful searching and indexing functionality in order to be able to search through vast amounts of data.
Performance with regards to the viewing of the reports over the network was a critical issue as large reports needed to be accessed and searched online. A critical project constraint was to implement the solution within a short time frame.
The Solution
DigiView was presented as the technology to meet the requirements set forward. The solution consists of three components, a Server, Processor as well as a Viewer.
The Processor takes raw text-base data and, together with form overlays and logos, converts it into DigiView reports that are indexed according to the customer’s needs. The Processor runs on Windows NT or above.
The Server runs a set of services that handle request from the customer’s viewer and web pages. Typical requests are searches and browsing, printing and e-mailing of reports. The Server runs on Windows 2000 or above with IIS and utilizes the .NET Framework.
The Viewer runs in the customer’s web browser and is used for viewing, searching and printing reports. It also allows annotations, exporting and e-mailing of report pages.
DigiView is not an imaging product as such but provides links to images. A single click on a report page can display a related image, e.g. on an invoice you can click on a POD (proof of delivery) number to display the POD image. In a high profile implementation, DigiView is linked to look up images on Alchemy. DigiView is currently in the process of of being integrated into more imaging products.
DigiView is keeping up with the latest trends and boasts the following features:
- Reports can be linked to each other and to images
- E-mail attachments can be in HTML, CSV and PDF formats. No third-party software required on PCs!
- DigiView is automatically kept up to date on each PC
- The server features centralized logging via .NET Enterprise Instrumentation
- The viewer communicates in both DCOM and HTTP to overcome firewall restrictions
- The server can accept requests from an Internet based website and deliver HTML formatted report pages to customers using the Internet
BB&D are constantly adding new features to the product in keeping up with the latest technological developments.
The DigiView viewer, which displays the reports, can be embedded in other (third-party or client-developed) applications. It can also link on-screen information to URLs, which means that you can link your reports to other files, e.g. images stored on an imaging database system.
The Result
The telecommunications company successfully uses DigiView to archive customer telephone statements. Twelve customer statement runs are produced each month. Over 4000 employees use the system on a daily basis. Employees can open reports with their web browsers and e-mail, print or fax with a single click.
Reports can be e-mailed in PDF, HTML or CSV format as required by the customer. Both the Viewer (web browser plug-in) as well as the web pages offers indexed searching. Additionally, the web pages offer simultaneous searching across multiple documents and the viewer offers clear-text searching inside a document.
The actual reports are generated on a mainframe using the unmodified mainframe applications. The approximately 80 GB of raw data produced are then converted into DigiView format via the Processor.
In addition to the base functionality, the telecommunications company requested the following customisations:
- Web based viewer
- A batch query interface which supports low priority queries which can be processed overnight batches can be created, edited and deleted. The results of the queries are presented in the format of an indexed DigiView report
- Prioritised report sourcing based on archive media performance. The company uses optical juke boxes to store older reports and these are searched last since they perform slower than the hard disk based reports
|
DigiView - Telecomms Client Testimonial
The DigiView - Telecomms Client Testimonial, complete with full diagrams, is available in PDF format.
|
 |
| 
