"All of the features offered by GeneXus -Web Objects, WebWrapper, HTTP objects, XML, SMTP- have been used in this project. The result, which has also been acknowledged by Ecoplan, is a pretty complex system that would have required at least twice the time for integrating all these features," said Marcos Odera Fürész, Director of Advanced Business Technologies, the company in charge of developing Ecoplan.
Ecoplan has been completely developed in GeneXus 7.5 with the Java generator, in three tiers, with SQL Server 2000, Exchange 2000 mail server, and JRun 3.0 on Windows 2000.
It has a Windows interface for administration, notification, and news administration modules. There is also a WAP interface for Ecoplan S.A's internal use, in which certain administration tasks may be performed -such as temporary user authorization- as well as queries on business indicators.
Moreover, an Ecoplan News Administration Module has been developed for using Web Services. This module is automatically connected to the Imente portal and after undergoing an authentication process, it retrieves news related to the environment and the environmental sciences in XML format. Their references are then incorporated into its database. This way, when a piece of news is queried at http://www.ecoplan.es, the Ecoplan portal queries the Imente portal about the reference found in its database. Then, the Imente portal retrieves the URL where the text, corresponding to that particular piece of news, is located. All this process is transparent for Ecoplan's portal browsers.
If there is any mistake, the News Administration Module notifies the incident through SMS and/or e-mail, depending on the seriousness involved.
Some information about the Ecoplan system
- Number of system objects: almost 650 GeneXus objects
- Number of tables: 92
- Amount of stored information: 227,000 records
Odera Fürész explained that although nowadays there is an average of 250 frequent users, the system can support twice this number. This is possible because the average time involved for each norm information request is pretty long (due to the nature of the information needed, which requires a thorough reading on the part of users).
Furthermore, Odera Fürész explained that a large portion of clients do not need to access the site in order to perform queries because the system keeps them proactively up-to-date through the alert-module. ISO-14001- certified companies, for instance, receive a weekly update with relevant information, which means that they will generate just a few daily queries.