THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

TABC (The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) had hundreds of legacy reports developed for the mainframe MVS environment over many decades, and used by management and also outside regulatory and legislative oversight bodies. 

THE RFD DIFFERENCE

Since April of 2004, RFD has been striving to enhance a COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) licensing product at the TABC. RFD was charged with the task of establishing a data mart and providing enhanced data analysis, reporting, and delivery. We were also requested to bring TABC staff  “on site” mentoring for .NET and database skills while moving from the legacy Model 204 licensing  system to a modern system with a relational data base.

Once RFD stepped in, the data (now in relational databases) had to be mined and comparable reports produced. Meeting this difficult technology re-engineering challenge head-on, RFD began by analyzing the database schema (hundreds of highly-normalized tables), developing stored procedures in SQL Server 2000's TRANSACT-SQL, and designing and producing reports using Crystal Reports Professional V10.

Using an intranet browser-based delivery system RFD developed with .NET—called Crystal View—reports are now delivered without a client workstation footprint or cost. This has been huge success. This suite of integrated, technically-aggressive solutions has allowed TABC to preserve their critical reporting functionality while successfully adopting new database and reporting technologies.

NOW AND THE FUTURE

TABC has approximately a dozen employees dedicated to the project on a full-time basis and many others dedicated part-time and the RFD Software team has dedicated full-time resources as well. Since the licensing project was successfully completed, TABC has requested that RFD remain on site as Time and Material consultants to continue mentoring and modernization in additional areas.