United Case

1.The faults with the old system is that Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC) was using six disparate databases. Each database served a different purpose: outages, dispatches, electricity usage, geographic mapping, billing, and accounts receivable. (260) The major problem was that none of the databases were connected to each other which caused a delay in responses and often times errors. Due to the fact that none of the databases were connected technicians would have to drive back to the facility to pick up service orders that were prioritized by the supervisor. This system caused a major delay in the response time because the technician was constantly having to drive back to pick up slips; which is a total waste of time. Instead, the technician could have received the information from a computer or other form of technology in his vehicle in order to eliminate having to travel back to the facility.

2.The original databases were not changed in any way. SEC decided to build a real-time integrated system which would be accessible by all employees of all departments. (261) SEC used a service-oriented architecture (SOA) systems which allowed them to integrated all the systems together in order to increase efficiency in the company. The six databases were all integrated by using IBM’s WebSphere which consists of three software components: messages, adaptors, and broker. (261) The messages are the data, the adapters are used in order to retrieve relevant data from a database and sent it to and from the broker. (261) The broker is connected to all the databases and is programmed to know which data need to be sent to which database. The new system is the same as the old system, the only difference is that everything is in one place instead of six places like before. The new systems allows for real-time updates, technicians do not have to drive to the facility to pick up slips, there is no data entry involves, and much more which make the process a lot smoother and