Internet-DBMS Strategies

From Web enabling to CyberApp: The impact of the Internet on business applications.

The Internet is in a state of transition. As businesses around the world see the potential for riding an essentially toll-free and platform-independent information highway, we are seeing a rapid change in the users and uses of the Internet.

Early corporate uses of the Internet were largely document- or message-centric. These uses included: posting home pages as online corporate advertisements, riding on the Internet backbone for managing inter-location messages or file transfers, and placing corporate information or policies and procedures as HTML pages on Web servers for access by internal and external information consumers. Basically, these uses were an extension of what the original non-business consumers and academic users of the Internet were doing.

However, businesses and software vendors soon realized that the Internet represents the ultimate client/server network. Now business is redefining the real value of the Internet as the connection between platform-independent desktop browser software andWeb-enabled applications that front end database servers. The Internet is also proving to be an ideal environment for exploiting the synergies among a whole gamut of maturing technologies such as workflow, document management, software agents, database replication, and application business objects.

If the client/server business application vendors have their way, and notwithstanding well-documented security and bandwidth concerns, the Internet is set to become the world's biggest transaction-processing system. (For more information, see Brian Black's article "OLTP on the Web" in the October Internet Systems supplement) Transactions are the lifeblood of business - whether they perform orders, payments, or information-retrieval queries. The Internet and its progeny, the firewall-protected corporate Intranet, hold great potential for adding value to and extending the reach of transaction-oriented business applications. For this reason, there is a frenzy of activity among software vendors to Web-enable their applications, whether those applications are oriented to accounting, supply chain, manufacturing, sales automation, or OLAP.

Web-Enabling Business Applications

1. Enabling the application functionality to be deployed in a more granular form as individual Internet-compatible applets or as forms within HTML pages.
2. Enabling the application to publish information in HTML formats and distribute it to Web servers for access from desktop browsers.
3. Enabling the application to interact with Internet email and file transfer protocols for transporting data files and messages.

Client/server applications that make use of middle-tier application servers, such as CODA Inc.'s CODA Financials, or workflow-architected functional architectures, such as Dun & Bradstreet Software's (soon to be acquired by Bain Capital) SmartStream, have an advantage. The application server can be easily extended to act as the client application delivery arbiter, delivering applets or HTML pages to connected Internet servers when requests originate from the Internet rather than from standard desktop clients. Applications designed around the concept of individual workflow activities instead of functional modules already have a basic functional granularity that can be leveraged for deployment in mixed Internet and non-Internet client environments.

Publishing report and query data in HTML formats or sending them as Internet email attachments is all very well and good, but applications that make use of the Internet should also offer built-in data compression and encryption capabilities for faster and more secure transfer of data. Sending the month-end financial reporting pack for a multi-entity enterprise across the Internet could be a slow, nail-biting task if compression and encryption of the report data are not performed by the sending application. Internet email output for reports or posting of reports as files to FTP Web servers can be used as the basis for new electronic report workflows, business alert and notification systems, or centralized report repositories for information disseminated and accessible enterprisewide and worldwide. When Web-enabled in these ways, business applications can use the Internet for a variety of tasks, some of which are listed in Table 2.

One effect of this Web-enabling is that more casual users can use an application that previously might have been excluded from a particular transaction workflow. For two reasons, the Internet can help extend the reach of business applications in this way. First, Internet browser software is easy to use and runs on a variety of client platforms. Second, this new Internet functionality can be deployed cheaply, without the need for a full application client license, and it can deliver a small, focused piece of functionality that is easy for the casual user to understand and use. Consequently, another effect of Web-enabling is that the pricing and licensing of business applications will have to change to reflect the functional splintering of applications and their availability to a wider range of casual users.

Extended Enterprise Intranets

• Employees can query and restructure their benefit plans, or outside applicants can access job vacancies, through Web-enabled human resource applications.
• Customers can place, track, or cancel product or service orders or receive regular order status information via email from Web-enabled sales order-entry applications.
• Suppliers can query inventory levels, monitor purchase-order changes, or receive alerts of impending orders through Web-enabled inventory or purchasing applications.
• Shareholders, analysts, and the press can access monthly, quarterly, and annual financial information through Web-enabled financial reporting and general ledger applications.
• Salespeople can remotely manage customers, opportunities, and orders by using Web-enabled accounts receivable and sales automation applications.
• Managers can be alerted to problems and opportunities through Web-enabled business notification and workflow applications that generate Internet email messages.

Web-Enabled Accounting

• Dun & Bradstreet Software is using Java to deliver an electronic requisitioning front end to its SmartStream Procurement module.
• FlexiInternational Software is using ActiveX to break down its application into functional applets that can be delivered in a "just-in-time" manner to Internet clients.
• Great Plains Software is building customizable Web page interfaces in Microsoft FrontPage to give non-accounting users access to data stored in its Dynamics C/S+ software.
• SAP America Inc. demonstrated access to its R/3 inventory module using a catalog interface developed using OneWave technology.
• Lawson Software announced a WebPage generator module that can convert Lawson screen panels into Web pages for access from Internet browsers.
• Oracle Corp. just shipped three Web applications (Web Employees, Web Suppliers, and Web Customers) for accessing its Oracle Financials, Distribution, and Human Resource applications.
• FRx Software enhanced its financial report writer FRx Enterprise to allow for output of reports in HTML or FTP formats for storage on Internet Web servers acting as report repositories.
• Deltek Systems Inc. is delivering its Electronic Timesheet product as a Java applet so that project managers and staffers can input and approve timesheets via the Internet.
• Software 2000 released a Web-enabled accounts receivable system that lets customers manage their own contact data, query their account balances, access overdue invoices, and check that cash paid has been received and applied to the correct invoices.
• Hyperion Software is in beta with a Web front end to its financial management and reporting software that gives Intranet users a "console" view of business information such as financial results, exception conditions, and other internal and external news and events.

SBT Corp. shipped and implemented two Web-enabled business applications that link to its Pro Series accounting software. Web Trader captures orders from a Web-based storefront and transmits them as email to the merchant's Internet email address. Polling software recognizes receipt of the email order, parses the message, and automatically generates an unapproved order in the Pro Series Sales Order module. Once the order is approved, an acknowledgment can be automatically emailed to the customer's Internet address, and other order status messages can also be generated and mailed if required. This approach reengineers a traditional paper-driven process by enabling order life cycles to be managed almost completely electronically without the need for clerical input. SBT's Web Alert is a database notification system that can generate Internet email alerts from user-defined exception triggers applied against the Pro Series accounting database tables. Both applications are shipping, and WebTrader is already being used by a new generation of Internet merchants, including New York Smoked Fish (http://www.business1.com/nysf/) and Woodmere Cameras (http://www. woodcam.com/).

Web-Enabled Document Management and OLAP

Almost all of the significant OLAP vendors on the market have announced or released Web-enabled versions of their OLAP query and reporting tools. Essentially, Web-enabled OLAP lets multidimensional databases, such as Arbor Software's Essbase, be queried from forms embedded in HTML format pages; the results of queries are then displayed as linked HTML pages. Alternatively, reports can be generated by other OLAP application users and output in HTML format to Web server report repositories for access by Internet users through standard browser software.

Both of these directions are further examples of the opening up of business systems by permitting document retrieval and decision support to take place anytime, anywhere. This is a critical next step in the maturity of business applications and an essential prerequisite for managing today's global, mobile enterprise. It's remarkable to think that, in less than a decade, we have moved from largely closed, mainframe-based business applications to anytime, anywhere business management based on the Internet.

Internet Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Significant EDI users such as General Electric have already begun the transition from private VANs, such as GE's own GEISNET, to new Web-based electronic commerce systems, such as the GE Trading Process Network. General Electric Information Systems has also partnered with Netscape Corp. to create a joint venture company called Actra Business Systems for building turnkey electronic commerce and EDI-related systems.

As the practice of extended enterprise Intranets matures, I wonder how long EDI in its traditional form will even remain relevant as a concept. After all, why generate purchase-order documents for transfer between EDI partners when an electronic inventory alert can manage the whole process automatically across the Internet? Although consumer-to-business electronic commerce is all the rage right now, it seems to me that direct business system-to-business system communication via the Internet will have a much more significant long-term impact on how business in conducted.

The CyberApp

1. Business users only "touch" applications in specific places, and few users make use of all the functionality in an application, so functionality must be deliverable in granules.
2. Business users are mobile and may be accessing applications from different environments such as desktop clients or Internet browsers, so application delivery (such as screens and logic) must be varied to suit the connecting user.
3. Business processes may include participants outside the corporation, so data security must be highly granular and much more sophisticated.
4. Business processes can be complex, extended, and involve a wide range of human and system participants, so sophisticated workflow management is required.
5. Business data must be delivered automatically, rapidly, and securely without users having to consider any of these aspects of the data delivery.
6. Business interfaces should reflect the fact that business is task-driven, message-oriented, and not at all concerned with programs or files.

Rule 3 demands far more than the typical table-based read/write security levels offered by most applications. Instead, security must govern how users interact with business objects at the method level or how applications interact with database tables at the column and column content level. This requires security management far deeper and broader in scope than is currently available.

Rule 4 demands that every application (or individual business object) contains a workflow management engine for managing and monitoring business process workflows within and across applications. Workflow and transaction monitors will essentially merge into one engine responsible for handing off and receiving workflow transactions while managing and auditing the state of those transactions. Workflow managers should also be replication-aware to provide essential store-and-forward message and data capabilities for moving data between systems or for handling irregular, remote logins from mobile users.

Rule 5 demands that business objects be capable of delivering data in a "raw" state or in a compressed and encrypted format - depending on where the request for the data originates. This decision should be made by the system and should not require user intervention. Commercially accepted business standards in both of these areas are necessary to make this happen.

Rule 6 demands a business interface to applications that is more like an inbox on steroids than the current menu- or icon-driven interfaces common to all applications. This inbox functions like the mythical dual-headed "push me/pull you" animal in the Dr. Doolittle stories. On the one hand, it acts as a launcher for managing business tasks that are "pushed down" to the user by workflow engines; it also acts as a launcher for "pulling up" business objects that the user may access. Of course, the inbox can also manage other informational, alert, and attachment messages sent as standard email. The key point is that one inbox acts as a conduit for all business object launching and message traffic across applications to provide a single business-operating console. When you look at the current leading desktop GUIs from this perspective, you realize just how far away we are from a true business operating system.

We haven't reached the CyberApp yet. But as Web-enabling business applications accelerates, it won't be long before some of today's client/server applications undergo the transformation and the first fledgling CyberApps hit the market.

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