Mediasurface is UK's competitor to Vignette Corporation's Vignette content server. Founded in 1996 with the vision that enterprise content management would be a pre-requisite for e-business success, Mediasurface has its headquarters in the United Kingdom and operates throughout Europe and the United States. Mediasurface has sold its software and related services to drive over 150 customer websites in Europe and the United States, across a broad range of industries.
When it came to expert technical analysis and problem solving advice to assess the scope of developing an NT port of Mediasurface Content Management System they turned to CDP for the solution. The NT port was supposed to use SQL Server as the backend as opposed to Oracle.
The deliverable was concise documentation to aid seamless development. The challenge was to analyse the different technologies, discuss the functionality each offered, compare the various facets, impact and estimation of time and effort involved, and to provide documented solution whereby the existing product code undergoes minimal changes.
The issues involved were:
Migrate Oracle database objects to MSSQL Server 7.0 (Triggers, Tables, Packages)
Transform the existing code so that it uses SQLServer JDBC thin driver.
Transform the existing code so that it uses perl database connectivity using DBD driver for SQLServer.
To change the existing system so that it uses Microsoft search engine as opposed to Oracle's Intermedia.
Integrated product installation of MSSql Server.
CDP was also asked to assess the scope of delivering the content using JSP, Beans and Servlets.
CDP has an expert understanding of the technologies involved and delivered a detailed technical report of all the obstacles and methods of resolving the challenges.
Based on CDP's expert technical analysis, solutions to the complex problems and strategic advice, Mediasurface were able to make the strategic decision.
The application is currently delivered on Sun Solaris/Unix, the backend is Oracle8i.
It is a fully configurable product and can be administered through a Java client.
The existing system uses Oracle's Intermedia for all search operations.
The content is delivered through Apache web server using PERL.
