Overview

The CruiseTour-CBS is a system which holds both a web application (CruiseTour) and a Windows application (CBS). The website is a read-only application with the database manipulations carried out in the Windows part, which is then synchronized to bring in the needed data to the web.
The requirement demanded a complete redesign of the system in terms of both GUI and functionality.  A major change involved was integrating new pagination types and pop-up menus in the GUI segment. Also, all the existing applications had to be transferred to a relatively new server (Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7). This is an SEO friendly site having URL rewriting and dynamic meta tags generation done properly.

Technology/Tools

• .NET 2.0 - migrated to 3.5 recently
• Ajax
• Infragistics
• SQL Server 2005
• XML, CSS, JavaScript
• Helicon URL rewriting

Key Issues

• Technical Challenges
  
  Loading of Flash content through XML containing database-related values, dynamic plotting of Google Maps within the site and synchronizing flow of images and data between the web and Windows applications were a few major challenges encountered. In addition, we had to provide separate Flash images for each web page. The SEO implementation had to be followed as per Google standards.
  
  

• UI Challenges
  
  The integrated Flash and image content had to match with almost all browsers. No query strings were permitted in the browser address bar and all pages required .html extension.
  
  

• Database Challenges
  
  The system functioned by connecting two servers situated in different locations. Implementing complex logic to include this link was a major database challenge.

Solutions

Since use of JavaScript animations resulted in a lot of issues, we had to integrate Flash. The weak sync performance observed in the response time initially was resolved easily with the help of a DB expert. Furthermore, database expertise along with integration of an efficient server greatly aided in optimizing database performance.

Final Deployment

The product was published to the production environment through IIS configurations.
Server configuration and support were also offered by PITS. . URL rewriting concept was done   exclusively by PITS with the help of custom regular expressions.

Client Requirement/Feedback

The client was always satisfied with our on-time support and deliveries. Despite a slippage in release due to unexpected issues and change request implementations, the site is smoothly running live at present.
The successful project execution helped us achieve repeat projects from this client and also new leads in varied technologies like Ruby-on-Rails.
The Cruise Tour indeed proved to be another feather on the PITS cap and a potential future product for PIT Solutions.