Benefits

Maintainability

All of the processes and maps were created in a single Pervasive Data Integrator design environment and cloned out, making maintenance a simple matter.

Reliability

Any issues with network latency or outage can be managed by the Pervasive process, making it very fault tolerant. Also, the use of compressed message files eliminates the need for a consistent open connection to be maintained between offices such as an ODBC/database connection or a long-duration OpenFile operation.

Development speed

"Once you know how to use the product, you can easily create a process end-to-end to complete a job, whether on a one-off or a regular basis. If I had to build something up from scratch using VB or any other language, it would take much much longer. And you can’t easily build in the fault tolerance and reliability that you get using Pervasive," said the DBA and developer. "I’ve been more efficient in my job. I think that the returns are going to get greater and greater over time."

Extensibility

"The beauty of the Process Designer is that you can plug in. You don’t just get the functionality of Pervasive itself, you can control external applications via it as well, which makes it just incredibly powerful and flexible," said the DBA and developer.

Support

The DBA and developer did the global synchronization project entirely on his own, but requested help from the Pervasive support team for a few issues. He was very pleased with Pervasive responsiveness, saying that he "couldn’t believe how quickly they got back to me!"

Reusability

Pervasive has already succeeded with flying colors on two major projects, front office data migration and global application synchronization. Another is currently in the works, a data warehouse/business intelligence project. The DBA and developer notes, "From the initial purchase of the product, it’s realized its value, and other members of the organization are seeing it as an asset, too. Our IT director has a great deal of confidence in the product. We really benefit from the ‘buy once, use many’ capabilities provided by Pervasive Data Integrator as we expand to additional uses."

Printable Format

Pervasive reusability is a key to worldwide synchronization of heterogeneous data

This case study looks at one of the world’s leading professional recruitment consultancies. With 38 offices spanning 17 countries, it operates in Europe, Asia, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the U.S. The company manages standalone front office recruitment databases at all offices as well as region-specific back office financial and management databases at three key offices. Maintaining a competitive edge means designing processes to share global data in a way that can increase company performance. With company growth, new offices have opened along with the need to migrate systems from other platforms and integrate data into the global fold. Management reporting requirements drive the need to centralize global financial and recruitment data.

Pervasive provided a solution that allowed the organization to migrate their front office recruiting system at one office from an Oracle database to a Sybase system with a different schema and architecture. The complex project went very smoothly, and since then the company has implemented numerous one-way migrations in other offices and implemented ongoing synchronization worldwide.

Heavy data loads; A need for simple, fast, lightweight updates

The biggest challenge to the first phase of integrating data around the world was that the wide area network could not handle heavy data loads. Updates had to be compact, simple, fast and lightweight. They needed to exchange HR recruiting information, disseminate data pulled from the website, clear unsubscribe mailboxes and transfer financial data to a central financial management system–all without overloading the network. In addition, as the company Database Administrator and Developer explained, "The solution had to save development time–we couldn’t afford a build-out. And this is a multi-phase project so it had to provide reuse benefits."

Pervasive Process Designer plays key role in meeting data load needs

Pervasive provided a solution to migrate the company’s front office recruiting system at one office from an Oracle database to a Sybase system with a different schema and architecture. Both systems needed to be operated in parallel for over 12 months, so data had to flow in both directions. This complex project went very smoothly, and gave the company’s personnel an idea of what Pervasive Data Integrator could do. Since then they have implemented a dozen one-way migrations in other offices. With Pervasive as a proven technology in house, it was the natural pick to begin solving the organization’s global synchronization issues. The company placed Pervasive Integration Engines in seven offices–in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK. These seven offices served as integration nodes. Data would be moved between these nodes and taken to either databases or people who needed it around the other offices. The company DBA and Developer points out, "If we had to push that data out via ODBC, we’d be waiting hours for it to run, and invariably, it would crash."

Using Pervasive Process Designer, a solution was set up that exported new or changed data out of Oracle or Sybase databases on a daily basis into a simplified ASCII delimited format with the largest file around 240 MB. The largest file was then compressed down to about 20 MB as part of the Pervasive process and pushed across the WAN to each of the other nodes. With the full process of exporting, condensing and pushing across in place, the DBA and Developer said, "Pervasive Data Integrator condenses the time from hours to minutes." On the other end, a Pervasive process monitors the folder where the file would land and then downloads, decompresses, and reloads it into the local database or emails it to personnel who wanted that information. "The beauty of it all is that using the Pervasive Process Designer, you can visually and easily control and design it, and then plug it in as a job," he added.

The nodes run about 25 Pervasive Data Integrator maps and processes. Each job initiated by a node is different, so the number of maps and processes associated with a job may vary from 10 to 40. The process is automated and there is a basic management interface. The DBA and Developer said, "We can push about 70,000 records in one job associated with a transfer of financial data from say Australia to London. This equates to an uncompressed 7MB ASCII file."

Global synchronization deemed a major success

The new global synchronization process has been running since October 2007. Each Pervasive process sits over a lightweight Access database. At any time, the database can be interrogated to find out the status of jobs, history, etc. The process also can send a series of email notifications to give the status of each node, whether there is a problem, whether there are jobs outstanding, etc.

PM financial data consolidation planned with
Pervasive Data Integrator

The next phase of global information integration coming on line for the company will be an Infor PM financial data consolidation for management, accounting and reporting. The Infor PM database is essentially a data warehouse for financial data based in London. The company will need to extract, transform and load data from three back office financial systems scattered globally, as well as front office data from all global offices, including HR and recruitment information and data from other databases such as credit control systems and payroll systems.

The DBA and Developer is ready: "All processes have been built, including directory polling and ETL of the data from each office system. Having the Pervasive product in place and having the structure to be able to pull and move data means I just have to focus on the start and end components of the process. Once I have an understanding of where and how I’ve got to push that data into the system, I can very quickly create that using Pervasive."

He added, "With Pervasive, we can integrate anything if we want to. With recruitment, information is a key to being proactive. This year, with the introduction of a new performance management product, and also with the future data warehouse database coming on line, we’ll have more information to make better decisions. We’ll be able to ride out the harder times better than we have in the past. And, of course, Pervasive will be a part of it."

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