XactMan (Web) WhitePaper

Quantum Software has developed the tools and environment that allow you to provide your manufacturing business with the knowledge and functionality gained with a tried and true manufacturing application (CA-MANMAN^®), coupled with the very latest, most powerful technology, preserving master data integrity, and gaining the benefits of true distributed processing in the Internet world.

CA-MANMAN^® has been a long time player in the manufacturing environment. Unlike many of the less mature applications available today, CA-MANMAN^® is a mature product that was specifically developed for the business of manufacturing. Over the years it has continued to evolve and reflect the unique features that are found in the manufacturing workplace today. This knowledge and experience should not be considered outdated but should be managed in a way that allows businesses to take full advantage of the massive growth in the technology and communication fields. Manufacturing should not be driven by the vendors of software or hardware, but should be fully and robustly supported in an efficient and productive manner.

Quantum Software has coupled the business functionality of CA-MANMAN^® with powerful, faster, more flexible client/server hardware, taking full advantage of the most recent developments in communication and technology. What we have is a multiple tiered environment that looks something like this.

First lets talk about MASTER DATA. Every process needs immediate access to the most up to date data at all times. This says "Master Data is NOT Distributed" but rather is centralized, and accessible to all entities of a business at all times. Data should be protected without loss of access or usefulness by the business.

That drives the statement "Processing should be done at another tier". Updates to the 'master data' must be done immediately...so all editing, calculating, quality control, and application of business rules must be done on this second tier, without impacting the performance of the 'master data' engine. The added advantage here is that location specific logic can be managed at this level with out interruption to the rest of the business. This may be logic specific to international sites, currency conversion for example, or logic specific to the function being handled such as distribution processes. IT groups can more effectively manage application functionality, version control, and security processes at this more controlled yet more distributed level.

Then we see that the number of users on any given CPU has always been a problem. Users would walk away from their screens, turn their machines off...we all know the problems caused when these things happen...how do we protect our 'master data' and 'application servers' from being locked up and causing a standstill for the entire company? We use screen handling PC's using the web browser to access all applications. This protects the environment, allows some customization for each user, and completes the scenario of 'Distributed Processing'.

This methodology is not new. For the first time in the computer industry, all the technology, and communications necessary are available that allow a true distributed, multi-tiered, heterogeneous environment. This allows manufacturing businesses to enter the 21st century with the most innovative and flexible information management systems while actually supporting the high volume transaction oriented manufacturing business. This is much more than advertising fluff or abstract theory that can not be implemented. Quantum Software is dedicated to bringing e-services to companies using CA-MANMAN^®.

XactMan is a multi-tiered product that takes advantage of the proven reliability of the HP3000 and Image, the vast years of manufacturing expertise that define CA-MANMAN^®, and couple them with the latest technology available in the Internet world. In the simplest XactMan environment there exists a HP3000 networked to a web-server, accessed via the World Wide Web by a PC with an Internet Explorer.

Quantum Transaction Server (QTS) is a native language program that resides on the HP3000 and is responsible for completing transaction requests from the web-server. The web-server is a member of a web farm hosting active server pages, HTML and Java programs communicating with the end user and the HP3000. The end user by using the Internet Explorer communicates with the web-server and dispatches requests for data from the HP3000. Requests are processed, validated by the web-server and data is retrieved from QTS and then delivered back to the end users PC. With this N-tier environment data is centralized on the HP3000 to preserve data integrity while allowing scalability of front end (web-server) processing.

QTS has been developed from ground up with request broker architecture in mind. This allows multi-access with parallel request processing. This method has significant performance improvements relative to serial processing or screen scraping products. A dedicated transaction server process is created for each IE session connected to the web-server. HP3000 and CA-MANMAN^® security processes are fully enforced by QTS for internal employees attempting to access data. For external access another level of security has been designed to further secure the confidentiality of company data and processes.

The web-server component of XactMan primarily consists of Active Server Pages (ASP). The business logic for the product is encapsulated in COM components that run under MTS to improve performance and scalability. The COM objects are re-useable in a variety of ActiveX containers (Microsoft word, Excel, Outlook, etc...). This technique allows the use of thin client technology.