Microsoft .NET Case Study
DataArt has developed an Open Investor Relationship Management System for a New York-based asset management firm. The system provides classic CRM functions as well as features specific to the operations of a financial services company.
The following functional areas are supported by the system:
- Contact management
- Investment tracking
- Fund performance management
- Front-office research support
- Investor reporting
The system is entirely web-based, built on Microsoft's .NET technology platform. It is implemented in classic 3-tier architecture, providing good support for scalability and maintainability. SQL Server 2000 is used as the data storage layer, which communicates with the Data Management and Business Logic layers through ADO.NET.  The data Management and Business Logic layers are organized as a set of Class Libraries written in C#, operating under the control of Application Server (IIS+.NET Framework). The top level, the User Interface, is based on the Microsoft IE 6.0/HTML/JavaScript platform to combine mobility gained through fully web-based interface with the advanced controls and user interaction methods provided by the IE 6.0 environment. Communication between the User Interface and Application Server is organized in two ways:
- Standard HTTP form-based data exchange is based on request-response roundtrips
- A Web Services-based protocol, utilizing IE's Web Services scenarios (.HTC behavior script). This options eliminates extra roundtrips to the server and thus intensifies the user experience The system maintains Web Services-based interfaces with a number of external systems, including the corporate website and the Microsoft Exchange server.
The .NET framework has brought a number of important technological benefits to the solution:
- Web Server Controls are used to increase reusability of the code
- Built-in support for caching is utilized extensively to minimize system response times and optimize load
- The .NET-based system proves to be exceptionally reliable and robust. Throughout a series of intensive tests, the number of system failures, memory leaks and the like appeared to be drastically less than in systems built on older platforms. Within this system, only 'safe' code is used, which has become possible only in the .NET environment
- .NET's control over Impersonation allows the system to utilize different approaches for secure access rights control. For example, application-level access rights are used for normal user operations, while object-based restrictions, previously only typical for thick client architectures, are used for system administration tasks.
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