This online web application is huge and belongs to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)! It has been running for the past 5 years and as of late, has had major upgrades and features added. This latest release has been built using Sybase's application server (EAServer) release 5.2 and its premier development tool PowerBuilder release 10.2.1. It is also backed up with Sybase's database engine ASE version 12.0! 

Race Car DANKA in front of the PBDJ - PowerBuilder Developer's Journal Booth as the TechWave 2006 Expo Hall Gets Ready for the delegates in the morning!

The system is extremely active and during peak campaigns - scientists, private community / individuals, universities, students, etc are vying for research grant monies. The system handles 3,000 to 5,000 users per hour and can peak upwards of 10,000 users per hour (or 500,000 web sessions per hour) with a resulting 1,000,000 database hits per hour as well! You would think that this would cripple the response of any online application, but extreme System testing has shown that the average response time (under heavy duress) is still 1-2 seconds with an upper maximum of 12-14 seconds (during PDF generation/conversion - more about that later).

The application consists of  118 PowerBuilder libraires totaling more than 1,000 components that handle: all web page creation (menus, toolbars, etc), all data content, DB access, e-mail, PDF conversion, PDF generation, File uploading, Web session management, Data caching, HTML and JavaScript generation, etc. Quite an accomplishment for an IDE that most people think is only for client-server applications! The front-end work is controlled via JSP based web pages (also built through PB) and deployed to EAServer. The IIs web server is used for on-line help, but all data screens are using the Sybase IIs redirector "plug-in" feature to redirect all HTTP traffic to the EAServers that hosts all the JSP web pages. The system is comprised four (4) EAServers and load balances using "round-robin" techniques for performance distribution and fail-over (the same for the document servers). All database through-put is managed by one ASE server with fail-over through large RAID devices!

PDF generation is done completely through "External" DataWindows that receive ASE data and then call the "Amyuni" print driver or use the GhostScript interface to deliver any report or form as a PDF. The PDF passed back to the browser user via the JSP web pages as BLOB's from the PB NVUO's. Documents that are uploaded to the system are all tracked and managed by PB components and stored in an "image" data type within the ASE DBMS. Conversion of DAR, DOC, TXT, etc attachments (letters, forms, various miscellaneous information, etc) are done using a "document server" called AdLib. Once the attachment is converted to a PDF, the PB components are inflormed using the EAServer "Message Service" feature and then inserted into the ASE database tables.

The application is very complex and involves more than 100 web screens. Data is passed back and forth between the JSP and PB realm using standard ResultSet(s). However, new development is utilizing PB's newer Web DataWindow feature to directly publish and capture data content. The database design is also very complex (due to the extensive amount of "business rules" being used for the data capture). All database design and modification is done using Sybase's PowerDesigner  version 11 product. Database and SQL tuning is assisted by the SQLProgrammer and Quest Central third party products.

The new system is currently in its "pilot" stage and will be live in production for August the 8th, 2006. In the mean time, the "pilot" system is open to the general public. So you can take a "test drive" of the application, apply for a research grant ( hey, you might even get one <lol>!). To tour the online application (called eSubmission), click here!  Once there, select the "Pilot Registration" link at the bottom of the web page to create an account and then away you go! If you return to the application once you have an account, just choose "Pilot Login". Please note that the application is multi-lingual and can dynamically switch back and forth between English and French (a Canadian Federal Government standard). It also has been tested using the MS-Windows based Opera, FireFox, NetScape and IE  web browsers and the MacIntosh Safari web browser. The system now gathers browser signature information for  "uasge" reporting and stored this in ASE. An InfoMaker application was built to report browser uasge to management. A new feature also checks for an unspported or out-of-date web browser and redirects the application user to have their browser software updated.

A newer version will be released on September 8th, 2006 and will include XML data exchange with the Province of Quebec's grant submission system. This part of the application will be utilizing the XML dataWindow feature exclusively. This version will also see the conversion of the entire web fornt end to Unicode to match the PB 10.2.1 UNicode environment. Later this fall, EAServer will be upgraded to version 5.3, ASE to version 15 and PowerDesigner is currently being upgraded to 12.1. The new EAServer and ASE will be running on Windows 2003 server (currently W2000).