Building a Better Mousetrap (Smarter)

Introduction Background The Challenge Our Approach Why build models Thoughts

Background OMNILINK 25 + yrs Spatial Systems Service Highly specialised Not an SDLC company But have software products

AssetWhere AM FM Tool for Schools 80 Customer Organisations Grew from Ms Access Then SQLSERVER, MapInfo (TAB files) ‘Most’ of the data replicated Hybrid Database/Proprietary Mapping MapInfo Plugins (end of life) Visual Basic Drives a Service Business Focus of the business is the spatial data service not software

AssetWhere

The Challenge Technical Most or all components end of life Desktop only Multiple/Redundant Data Sources Missing constraints No internal product knowledge

Challenge Data 80 Customers Data not necessarily consistent Resources 1 Dev 4 Expert Users and Consultants No technical documentation, no source code. No Real access to the customer (Culture)

Our Approach Build a sound foundation using independent standards Model Use cases RDBMS SQLSERVER Spatial

Use Case Model

Data Model Convert MapInfo directly to SQLSERVER Using EA, reverse Engineer the RDBMS Data Model (s) Visually created merged, clean and properly structured Model. Little a time

Slice by Slice

Rooms

Results Complete rebuild of AssetWhere 14 Mths (Me and guy) Runs across all platforms HTML 5, OGC Flexible, Robust Platform Ready for SAAS SAML, SAOML, etc OMNILINK’s development completely changed Thrown away the spreadsheets Agile but pragmatic

Thoughts, Learning Generating DB from the Model saved massive amounts of time. Solve most issues in the model rather than in coding Visualisation Saves Time. Communicating both the requirements and the solution was simplified. Modelling supports streamed development

Summary 1:10:100 Solving in the Model Save Time Building analogy. Only when digging stops does the building go up The Highlander Rule The Devil is in the Data