Read the IEEE Case Study for further details of this project.

Client: IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Date: 5/2005—9/2005

Project Goals:

• Increase ad revenue for IEEE Spectrum Online magazine
• Double online readership from 200,000/month to 400,000/month

Responsibilities:

• Architecture and implementation of J2EE application
• Unit testing and acceptance testing to ensure codebase quality
• Integration with Vignette Enterprise Portal
• Integration with Accipter Ad server
• Integration with Akamai caching network

Key Features:

• Custom page-level caching framework to maximize scalability to 100s of concurrent users in a very constrained environment (a heavily-shared, 2-machine cluster maintained by IEEE IT staff)
• Robust staging vs. production feature to allow editors and writers to preview the next month’s issue before going live
• System to override Vignette Portal to allow the use of meaningful site URLs

Results:

• On-time, on-budget delivery
• Deployed since September 2005
• The Spectrum Online technical articles, although always thorough and in-depth, are now more popular in high-visibility places like Slashdot

Also Involved:

• Fergus O’Daly Associates (primary contractor)
  • Marketing and advertising strategy
  • Site design
  • Client liaison
• IEEE IT staff
  • Deployment

Technologies:

• Java, Oracle 10g, BEA Weblogic 8.1, Vignette Application Portal, JSR-168 Portlets, Hibernate, Tapestry, Selenium, Groovy, Hessian Web Services, OSCache, Velocity, Freemarker, RSS

Read the BDMS Case Study for further details of this project.

Client: US Air Force, Date: 4/2005—9/2005

Project Goals:

• Modernize a system used to calibrate F-16 radomes

Responsibilities:

• Design and implementation of an embedded system to control, poll, and multiplex data from 4 laser OEM components

Key Features:

• Real-time operations for sensor control and timing
• Capture laser device readings at exact intervals
• Integrate readings with external systemic error correction factor
• Planned 20+ year active service lifecycle

Results:

• Successfully gathering data at specified intervals
  • Previous contractor tried Windows NT-based solution and failed due to it not being a real-time OS
  • Exigence evaluated that a real-time OS was crucial for the exact nature of the system

Also Involved:

• Total Quality Systems (primary contractor)
  • Windows-based graphic depictions of current calibration
  • System coordination
• Westenhaver Wizard Works (project coordinator)
  • System design

Technologies:

• Dynamic C, Java JUnit (unit testing firmware), .NET (debug console), TCP/IP

Project Goals:

• Track employee health benefit administration to satisfy executive and judicial reporting requirements

Responsibilities:

• Implement pages in the standard UP J2EE environment
• Work with client to understand reporting and information requirements

Results:

• Introduced the use of screen shots as an optimal method to elicit client requirements
• Delivered majority of application pages (others by UP IT staff)

Technologies:

• Java, Oracle, Teradata, BEA Weblogic, Hibernate, Struts, JSP, Ajax via JSON-RPC, Selenium

Also Involved:

• DOCenter (primary contractor)
  • Client liaison
  • Project management
• UP IT staff
  • Site design
  • Other pages
  • WebFocus reporting
  • System integration
  • Deployment

Certain aspects of this project are covered by confidentiality agreement.

Client: Department of Defense, Date: 11/2004—3/2005

Project Goals:

• Visualize path options as a front end to Decision Support Systems

Results:

• Delivered two prototypes
  • One based on Flash to show what a nice UI could do
  • One based on ArcGIS to demonstrate project capabilities within a high-precision enterprise GIS environment

Technologies:

• ESRI ArcGIS suite
• ESRI ArcGIS Engine
• .NET COM interop

Also Involved:

• Peter Kiewit Institute (client liaison)

Project Goals:

• Provide subscribers with web-based claims submission

Responsibilities:

• Integration of web claim processing into existing home-grown J2EE Intranet environment
• Implementation of client-defined business rules to adjudicate claim validity
• Integration with legacy claims database

Results:

• Delivered working/tested code (project contract was completed prior to production deployment)
• The initial production deployment crashed PayFlex’s entire system due to database locking conflicts between the new system’s JDBC driver and legacy fat clients
  • Exigence had highlighted this potential issue but the call by the in-house architect was to ignore it
  • Exigence later came back and worked closely with the JDBC driver vendor to reverse engineer the legacy fat client locking semantics, based on byte-level analysis of the legacy database’s flat files, and resolved the locking issues

Also Involved:

• DOCenter (primary contractor)
  • Client liaison
• PayFlex staff
  • Intranet environment architecture
  • Internet customer interface, supplied claims via REST

Technologies:

• Java, MySQL, PowerPlus (legacy database), JSP, Hibernate

Project Goals:

• Automate accounting workflow
  • Translation of time card data into equipment/job cost accounting records
  • Entry of ticket stubs into client/job accounting records

Responsibilities:

• Customize the Quick Books?-based accounting system

Results:

• Recommended an off-the-self solution after it became apparent the customizations Exigence was being asked to do would be more expensive and have less features than existing vendors’ solutions

Technologies:

• QuickBooks

Project Goals:

• Provide light-weight contract management software to small businesses

Responsibilities:

• Augment a prototype system with new features to enable commercial launch of service

Results:

• Re-architectured the system around separation of concerns
• Delivered essential baseline functionality that enabled the site to enter production

Technologies:

• ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Gentle.NET, Windows Services, NUnit, Selenium