Summary

  • Customer: Pharmacy system provider
  • Country: Canada
  • Product Used: Ispirer Toolkit License
  • Source Technology: PowerBuilder
  • Target Technology: C# WPF
  • Project Scope: 1,800,000 LOC
  • Project Duration: 2014-2015

Customer

One of the leading and innovative companies in integrated pharmacy technology, based in Canada.

Challenge

The customer’s management concluded that their development environment was not flexible enough, and thus initiated the consolidation of the system from PowerBuilder to C# .NET.

Solution

All major projects begin with a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) stage, which demonstrates Ispirer's reliability and competence to the customer. The scope of the PoC was about 10,000 lines of PowerBuilder code, and the time limit was 6 weeks. At the beginning of the stage, the level of automation was not high enough to meet our customer’s requirements. Therefore, several customizations were made, with many conversion rules added.

The Ispirer specialists completed the PoC and proved to the company that the project can be completed in a short time. Moreover, the team demonstrated how the level of automation could reach the maximum within a few weeks, despite the new application conversion direction.

After that, the customer acquired a 6-month license with support for converting about 1,800,000 lines of PowerBuilder code to C#.

During the implementation of the project, it was recognized the need to select the MVC design pattern, and as a consequence the customization of Ispirer software for this purpose. As a result, the MVC UI pattern was automated in the tool. In the PowerBuilder code, a lot of data was selected in the queries in DataWindows objects. The Ispirer specialists built a special .NET framework for this process with proper performance. Close interaction with the customer's team through WebEx ttsessions allowed Ispirer to quickly and effectively solve the problems. In other words, all customer requirements were taken into account, Ispirer Toolkit was set up in a short period of time, and after each adjustment a modified version was provided to the company.

Benefits Derived from Conversion

The Ispirer’s solution enabled the customer to effeciently migrate all scripts related to application and begin the deployment and testing of WPF C# solution. Furthermore, the solution supplied by Ispirer fully complied with the expectations of the customer and made it possible to overcome the main problem of consolidating systems to .NET.

The Ispirer team successfully demonstrated the development of the PowerBuilder to C# direction, as well as the possibility of adding extra rules to the tool, producing the desired effect.