InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
July 26, 1999
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The medical group started its Clinical Information System as a two-tier system in 1994, says Kevin Trask, a software engineer at the hospital. It used a database from Progress Software Corp. running on HP-UX on an HP 9000 series Unix host. In early 1998, the hospital started converting to a three-tier model by running Progress' WebSpeed transaction server on top of Microsoft's Windows NT Server 4.0 with Internet Information Server. "WebSpeed is our middleware, and we copied most of the business logic from the earlier Progress database to the Web server," Trask says.
Progress Consulting Services provided early training help and a jump-start for the hospital, but using in-house expertise was helpful, Trask says. "We filled in all the details, and added more features."
Programs that control patient records, used since 1994, control the Web server and communicate with the previous Progress database; that database stores the data on the original Hewlett-Packard system.
To maintain the confidentiality of medical records, the nearly 100 sites in the hospital system are on a private, leased-line network. All user actions are processed by the Web server and then transferred to the HP 9000 host for actions against the actual data records. Results are passed back to the Web server and formatted for display to the user by the application's browser interface. The browser interface reduces training needs, since most users have been on the Web to search medical reference sites.
Another player in the Web migration game is Candle Corp., which rolled out its Roma Business Service Platform middleware last year. Roma supports communications across an enterprise network and works with middleware infrastructure messaging products, such as IBM's MQSeries. "There are tools and services in place now to help migrate to a three-tier architecture," says Steve Craggs, Candle's VP of enterprise application integration at Candle. "But the majority of [companies] need help making these things work."
The state of North Carolina is using Candle's Roma products to integrate its 23 agencies. Applications written at the agencies query existing data on incompatible systems scattered around government buildings. The Roma middleware speeds development time by eliminating the need to develop custom interface programs for each new agency application.
"We consider Roma a common backbone that all departments can connect to," says Emilie Schmidt, the state's chief technology officer.
State programmers used Roma during a nine-month pilot to cross-check driver's license data when issuing new hunting licenses. North Carolina driver's license holders now get hunting licenses approved more easily, since the agencies share previously incompatible data through the new system in the following way: When the Wildlife Resource Commission processes a new application, it sends out a query via the Roma middleware to the Motor Vehicle Division's IBM ES 9672 mainframe. The query checks for three types of information--name, date of birth, and address--then verifies whether the person has a valid driver's license.
The midtier link to the driver's license database is also used by the state Department of Corrections to confirm that prisoners' driver's licenses have been revoked. In addition, the state's Department of Labor uses the driver's license database to screen for minors.
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