Client/server version of app abandoned in favor of whole new interface
New York (08/05/97) — What do you do when your effort to develop a client/server version of a complex financial application gets bogged down by performance problems and users are balking at complicated installation procedures?
Computer Associates International Inc. decided to give up on a client/server version, and instead developed a new interface for its Masterpiece high-end financial management product using Java.
Early users of the new version, called Masterpiece/Net, that launched at the beginning of the quarter, say they are happy to avoid the time-consuming and costly installation of client/server software.
About a year ago CA had rolled out a few modules of the client/server version of its Masterpiece product, complete with a new graphical interface. But early users found performance sluggish, and were daunted by the process of installing the complex client-side software on users’ machines, according to CA officials and users.
Casting about for another solution, CA hit on the idea of rewriting the interface layer of the multimodule package in Java. The core functions of the package could stay the same or be updated at will on back-end servers. Meanwhile, all users would need to do to take advantage of the new interface controls (and get access to the latest version of the core functions) would be to get a Java-enabled browser.
This is, in fact, what’s happening now as early users of the new version start implementing it companywide. Masterpiece/Net retains the basic core functions of the previous Masterpiece 3.0. It does include some enhancements to the base modules, including new currency and data-search enhancements. But what it mainly does is offer a Java interface.
“Using a browser to run your financial applications is awesome,” said Marc Hetrick, a senior business analyst for Kaman Sciences Corp., a government defense contractor based in Colorado Springs, CO.
Kaman uses Masterpiece’s general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, job cost, and labor distribution modules, as well as the CA-Hrisma human resources software.
CA’s move to Java coincided with Kaman’s overall effort to develop online access to a variety of information, Hetrick said.
“We’ve been developing everything else for our intranet, so it was right in the direction we were going anyway,” he said.
One reason for the move to online access over the company intranet is to avoid installing fat clients on end-user machines. The big hassle in installing client/server software, according to Hetrick, is that DLLs (dynamic link libraries) from one program overwrite DLLs in other programs, leaving IS personnel puzzling over which ones should be kept in order to have all the end-user software running correctly, Hetrick said.
“When you’re pulling in Java applets into browsers to get online access to things, you don’t have to load anything on users’ machines,” he said.
Originally, Kaman chose Masterpiece over Oracle Financials and other products because it had job-based accounting features, which is helpful for a project-oriented contractor, as well as good general ledger consolidation features, Hetrick said.
The Masterpiece application modules still run on an IBM RS/6000 machine running the AIX flavor of Unix, and store data in an Oracle database.
Over the past few years, Masterpiece has added workflow features. And now, with the release of Materpriece/Net, it has added visual alert features that can be linked to the workflow business rules. Kaman will use these visual alerts for users on the company intranet, Hetrick said.
In one scenario, an employee who needs to get a job cost approved will submit the expense by accessing Masterpiece via a browser. The request is then sent to the appropriate project manager, who gets alerted by a button flashing on an on-screen timecard, which Kaman employees always have running, since they work on timesheets.
By clicking on the button, project managers pull up an applet that lets them approve or reject the item. The applet sends notification to the person who requested the item, and, if necessary, automatically creates a purchase order. Along the way, the history of the request, its resolution, and any financial data is captured by Masterpiece.
“It’s revolutionizing how you do financials in your business,” Hetrick said.
For Bob Zitnay, the comptroller at The William Carter Co., a manufacturer of children’s clothes, Masterpiece/Net is appealing because it combines the new world of graphical user interfaces with the speed of high-end, character-based Unix applications.
In addition, the elimination of the need to install clients on user machines, and the resulting simplification of the IS role in the upgrade and ongoing maintenance, will let the company allow up to six sites access the software, rather than the current three, Zitnay said.
Right now, the company is still using the character-based Unix version of Masterpiece 3.0, running the general ledger, accounts payable, and fixed assets modules on an AIX-based RS/6000, using CA’s OpenIngres as the underlying database. Thirty-five to 40 users at three different sites, including Zitnay’s Shelton, Connecticut office, access the application through terminal-emulation software running on standard Windows-based desktop machines.
“[Masterpiece] is the best of both worlds,” said Zitnay. “It’s got the interface of a Windows product, which users are used to, but has the speed of a character-based product. LAN-based packages are much slower.”
The company is running a pilot of the new software, and plans to go live over the next few months.
One drawback of CA’s move to Java is that the customers who started to install some of the client/server modules are running into a dead-end, since CA isn’t going finish that upgrade. However, CA said, it will support those users and offer them a migration path to Masterpiece/Net.
The architecture of Masterpiece/Net allows companies to store data in a variety of databases running on mainframes, Unix, AS/400, and Windows NT platforms. Databases supported include OpenIngres, Oracle, Informix, DB2, Datacom, and VSAM. The software can operate on a three-tier structure, with, for example, the Java presentation layer running on an NT Web server, application modules running on Unix machines, and the back-end database running on a mainframe.
Pricing is based on a number of variables, including server type and number of users. Yearly maintenance for a user such as The William Carter Co. costs about U.S. 0,000 to 5,000 per year, according to the company’s Zitnay.
CA, based in Islandia, NY, can be reached at (516) 342-5224, or at https://www.cai.com.
