dias
DIAS – Development of a cost settlement system for heating and additional costs

Client: Global market leader in consumption-dependent billing of energy and water

Duration: October 1997 – December 2003

Software: Oracle (7, 8i, 9i), SQL, PL/SQL, ERwin, Perl, DBI, SQLNavigator, HTML, XML, Delphi, Apache, mod_perl, FrontPage, SAP (SD, FI), Shell scripting (bash)

Description: The DIAS system is a large-scale application for the consumption-dependent billing of energy, water, and other kind of services. DIAS replaces the customer's old billing programs and is currently in use in several European countries. On the technical level, DIAS is built as a client/server solution; the basis is a very powerful database, which implements the largest part of the business logic. DIAS synchronizes its data with SAP and provides interfaces to the Internet and to other products of the company (PPS, MDE, MoKa, etc.).

Own tasks:
  • Design and implementation of the database server
  • Team and project management; coordination of sub-contractor firms
  • Consultancy to the customer's management
  • Administration of the development and QA databases
  • Consultancy to the customer's Computing Center regarding the production databases
  • Coordination of the documentation portal
Subprojects:
  • Design and implementation of the basis (system) layer of the database; enhancement of the Oracle built-in functionality of constraints and views
  • Creation of a sub-system for the automatic version management and synchronization of the database server
  • Design and implementation of an asynchronous standby database mechanism used with the highly available production databases
  • Coordination of the global documentation for the database server
  • Creation of the documentation web portal for the database server, using Apache2, mod_perl2, Perl, DBI, and FrontPage
  • Automatic data exchange between DIAS and SAP based on Oracle’s Advanced Queuing
  • Data preparation for reporting: database views, PerlCtrl, XML, XSL
  • Database migration from Oracle7 to Oracle8i and to Oracle9i, as well as between Unix (AIX) and Windows NT (2000)
  • Design and standardization of all sub-system interfaces to the DIAS core system
  • Design and implementation of sub-systems: rapid input of assembly maps, mobile data gathering, etc.
  • Migration of the production planning system from MS-Access to Oracle
  • Generation of the front-end interface to the database (Delphi classes), together with the necessary meta-data repository
  • Counseling the migration process from the old billing programs to DIAS
  • Design and implementation of the access control on the database server level (data) and on the client level (menus and dialogs)
  • Handling of fixes/workarounds for Oracle problems; cooperation with Oracle’s technical support
  • Installation and customizing of Oracle databases
  • SQL tuning (execution plans, optimizer hints, cbo/rbo, tkprof)
  • Advising the customer on Oracle’s object-oriented features, advanced queuing, etc.
Reference: "Dr. Botorog was involved in the core of the development and of the roll-out of the universal billing system DIAS, especially on the server side. Due to his competence and in-depth know-how, he was very successful in transforming the complex requirements of our project into a software architecture, and to implement it eventually in the database.

During several years of cooperation, he was entrusted with the management of (sub-) projects and the coordination of sub-contractor firms. He has thereby advised the internal and external staff competently and trained them in special areas.

Dr. Botorog has had our full confidence, even in mission-critical areas, such as the highly-available production databases in our computing center.

Several sub-systems rely on Dr. Botorog’s works – data migration from the old billing systems, reporting, etc. These systems would not have been implemented without this basis.

In addition, he has led the development of the server documentation [...]

Dr. Botorog acted also as DBA for the development and test databases. He has developed tools, which automate and simplify this task in central points [...].

On account of his broad knowledge, he often counseled the project management on technical and software-strategic issues. His valuable advice in meetings has often helped finding solutions in difficult situations. Because of his competence and professionalism, he became one of the most important members of the project team.

We were constantly impressed by Dr. Botorog’s reliability, flexibility and readiness. His availability – even in the evenings or during week-ends – was exemplary.

Due to his constructive cooperation and his ever reliable conduct, Dr. Botorog was highly esteemed by both internal and external staff.

We hope to work again with Dr. Botorog in future projects. Until then, we recommend him warmly for other assignments [...].

– General manager of the project with ca. 75 professionals