Move to jBASE Increases Application Reliability

Founded as a software development house, Drexel Management Service s provides consulting and support services to other software developers, particularly those working with MultiValue database technology. The company has designed its own TouchScreen turnkey point-of-sale application, PosXpress, for the food service industry.

First developed in the early 1980s, and "GUI-enabled" in 2001, PosXpress handles all aspects of Point-of-Sale, including credit/debit/gift card processing; Sales and Menu Analysis; back-office services; menu item control; inventory control; and recipe and cost analysis. The application is being continually enhanced, both from a performance and reliability perspective, to meet the changing needs of the fast-paced Food Industry

PosXpress users have unfortunately faced several challenges over the years. The MultiValue database had printing issues which resulted in frequent user support calls. From time to time, licenses would be inexplicably consumed. Many of the end-users were computer novices, and if the system was not shut down properly, the database would not start properly or would be corrupted. While Drexel developed workarounds for most of the issues, the situation was far from ideal and generated an unacceptable and disproportionate amount of support calls relating to database issues.

The jBASE Advantage
Drexel conducted a long, very detailed evaluation of the available alternatives and opted for jBASE for several reasons. Most importantly was the attitude that jBASE brought to the project, said Drew Conboy, Drexel's President. "Their attitude was 'what can we do to make this work for you,' " he noted. "It was very refreshing to find a customer-centric organization."

In addition to the strong relationship to the company, jBASE provided a more robust platform for the application. "We experimented with a few flavors of Pick and decided jBASE was the best option hands-down. The fact that it is tightly interwoven with the Windows operating system was a huge plus from a reliability standpoint," explained Conboy. Once an application has been moved to jBASE it then executes directly upon the base operating system. For example, users log on as Windows users and devices are managed by Windows. "Because jBASE operates at the operating system level, it is more resilient if an inexperienced user might take an inappropriate action," he said.

The Migration Experience
The migration itself did not take long. "Due to the complexity of the third-party tools we use in our application we were prepared for a lot of headaches, but jBASE has a suite of utilities that helped us to do what we needed to do and the support we received throughout the process was second to none," Conboy remarked.

jBASE offered Drexel direct access to its technical support team. "They were proactive; they would ask about our issues and our punch list," Conboy said. Since jBASE has a global support network, the window for live support was much wider than might otherwise be the case. "They just had a whole 'can do' attitude for customer service. It was the same kind of support that we give to our own customers," Conboy said.

With the technical migration complete, Drexel began rolling out the upgraded application to its customers on a controlled schedule. "We stress-tested the application at a couple of sites and the number of support calls we received went down dramatically," Conboy said.

Today, existing PosXpress clients are actively being migrated to jBASE and all new clients are installed with jBASE . "Using jBASE resolved the problems we were facing with database corruption, license issues and printing," Conboy said. "We are now looking at moving other applications to jBASE for its reliability and the features it offers."

Future
Drexel's business philosophy has always been to establish long-term relationships with both its customers and its vendors. To that end, Conboy appreciates that jBASE has a clear product roadmap and, as a subsidiary of Mpower1 International, dedicated management and the financial backing required for future development. "jBASE International is very forward thinking and has capabilities that position it well for the future," he said.

jBASE has emerged as the platform of choice for migrations and integrations of MultiValue applications with mainstream technologies, offering both Drexel and their customers a stable, robust platform now and for the future. "The fact that it is integrated with the host operating system ensures that new technologies are supported which gives us many options relating to future direction," explained Conboy.