Davies Turner sees long term future with iSeries & X-Analysis

Davies Turner was founded in 1870, to ship the belongings of Victorian adventurers to the farthest corners of the world. Even today, we remain a family owned and managed group, offering an award winning and diverse portfolio of international surface and air transport services world wide through three distinct operating businesses, with 25 offices throughout the UK, as well as in Dublin and Paris. We have approximately 700 employees and an annual turnover of approximately 150 Million Euro.

Our business is run on 2 x iSeries model 820 with the majority of applications written in RPG. They are all bespoke applications which cover transport, warehousing, logistics, world-wide-movers and financials. All IT development is done in house with a department size of 10. Our IT staff is trained in-house and most had not developed in RPG prior to working in the IT department at Davies Turner, and are below the age of 35.

We were originally introduced to Databorough through their product X-Analysis. All applications were traditionally written in RPG but there has been increasing demand to build web based applications. The RPG legacy applications span back to 15 years of development. We need to help new developers become productive in maintaining our existing applications in RPG. We also needed to modernize parts of the application and build new web based applications to meet with customer expectations and requirements. We did try other options such as ASNA but found that this was not productive enough and required substantial retraining of our staff.

X-Analysis provided us with instant documentation of the entire application. This helped us take complete control of our legacy applications, and has improved the quality of the development process through understanding and knowledge. We have also successfully deployed new development staff productively on our legacy applications in a very short time, and with confidence. The tool has also helped us think and design in a more structured and integrated way through the high-level graphical analysis and data modeling capabilities it provides. At a detail level we are able to make changes with accuracy and confidence because of the uniquely detailed cross-reference repository and impact analysis functionality.

Following the purchase of this tool we look at other products in their portfolio and went on to buy X-Web. This enabled us to develop web based systems on our iSeries without the need to cross train our RPG developers in another language.

We have been developing a number for web based projects over the past one and a half years, these include- track and trace for our surface freight clients, there are currently 50+ using this services, and a number of bespoke supply chain management systems for a few of our larger corporate clients. This has enabled us to procure new business along with adding value for existing customers.

One of the applications we have developed: The generic track and trace system, was designed with the help of our Sales and Marketing Manager, Gary Hentschel, of our Dartford based Branch and developed by Sam Lowe. They both worked very closely together to ensure that we met the requirements of the business and our large client base.

The supply chain management software is an interactive site updatable by our clients, overseas business partners, UK distribution centers and Davies Turner operational import personnel. We have three of these live, one of which is currently being trialed with Sainsbury's, each bespoke and designed specifically to meet the client’s objectives. The developer, Sam, again worked alongside the client, and Davies Turner operational import and Sales personnel.

The data for our web systems is on our iSeries, it is front ended by a web server in our DMZ. The business logic is all written in RPG with the X-Web Servlet engine providing the J2EE framework. This is run through an ISA security server running SSL 128 bit encryption, with the free Tomcat Servlet engine implemented with ISAPI filters. Security being one area that Davies Turner takes very seriously, this was put in place by the IT Infrastructure Manager Richard Castree following consultations with Databorough.

The applications were developed using Databorough application software - X-Analysis and its various modules.

It has allowed us to use the strength and reliability of the iSeries and give the business and our clients’ access to their data from our web site (www.daviesturner.com)

We are currently moving forward and developing web systems for the client base of Davies Turner Worldwide Movers and Davies Turner Air Cargo.

We are engaged in modernizing some of our traditional legacy applications into J2EE-MVC applications from RPG. Databorough’s latest module release X-Migrate extracts the business logic from the legacy RPG and produces business logic modules, and JSF’s/Servlets and JAVA I/O beans for a complete modernization into J2EE for these applications. A large portion of the refactoring is totally automated and will enable us leverage the 15 years of investment in development and maintenance. The challenge for us thereafter will be to enhance the converted JSF and Servlet based interfaces using Eclipse and IBM’s plug-ins such as WDSc. Although X-Migrate already creates Websphere J2EE projects from legacy applications, we are eagerly awaiting Databorough’s release of X-Analysis:Eclipse which will help us get into WDSc, RSE and Java development more quickly and efficiently. Two years ago our development staff were skeptical and reluctant to move onto Java development on the iSeries. Being able to produce J2EE Websphere projects from legacy applications with X-Migrate, cross-referencing JAVA and RPG together using X-Analysis:Eclipse, has completely changed this attitude. Our developers are now excited about current and future work and Davies Turner can continue to exploit its long standing investment in iSeries for many years to come.