Morgan Corporation is the nation's foremost truck body manufacturer. Founded in 1952 in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, Morgan is the country's largest producer of Class 3 to 7 dry freight and refrigerated truck bodies and is the market share leader. Tavilo Incorporated, a provider of realtime business intelligence and performance management software solutions for the manufacturing industry, worked with Morgan to roll out an enterprise-wide information portal based on data residing on an IBM System i. They used HiT Software's Ritmo .NET data provider to access corporate data.

Ritmo's Qualifications

Ritmo for is a Windows .NET 100-percent-managed data provider for System i SQL access. Ritmo accepts application SQL commands via ADO.NET or directly via its object properties and methods. It then communicates with the DB2 server to access, retrieve, and update data for optimal performance. Leveraging the native IBM Optimized Database Server protocol, Ritmo communicates with native operating system programs and does not require any additional DB2 server software.

It supports full SQL functionality (including stored procedures, multiple result sets, bulk inserts, and connecting pooling) as well as data compression. The included Ritmo Toolbox integrates with Visual Studio .NET and allows easy data-source definition and diagnostics. Additionally, powerful trace and debugging tools help troubleshoot and optimize application performance. A Developer Edition adds powerful design tools including designers and wizards that generate code, a command editor, and a data-connections explorer as well as a navigation window for working with System i databases and database objects (database explorer).

Michael Gilbert, president of Tavilo Incorporated, worked closely with Morgan's project-management team to identify requirements, develop an implementation plan, and deliver the solution. Dean Heffentrager, project leader at Morgan Corporation, was responsible for the Morgan Information Gateway (MIG) project and worked closely with Tavilo to assure a timely and successful implementation.

Morgan Corporation's Goals

Morgan Corporation had been facing an enterprise-wide issue of how to provide access to critical information. Each department had its own set of data needs, and the goal was to create an application that met data needs across the enterprise. Tavilo worked with Morgan to provide a MIG-branded website. The MIG is the enterprise information portal that allows all Morgan employees to view information that is critical to the performance of their daily business activities. Specifically, Morgan wanted to offer:

• Access to company forms, documents, and other general information for use by all Morgan employees
• The ability for sales staff members to search for order, quoting, and pricing information
• Access to Key Performance Indicator-based dashboards in highly graphical format for executives and operations managers
• The ability to drill down in order to view the underlying detail information behind a chart or report
• Hyperlinked information for easy navigation

The Morgan-Tavilo-Ritmo Solution

With sophisticated data-retrieval technology, an advanced analytical engine, highly visual graphics, manufacturing industry experience, and HiT Software's Ritmo, Morgan is now able to use the power of Tavilo's business-intelligence solutions to significantly improve its manufacturing performance, compete more effectively, and provide better service to customers. With .NET 2.0 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Tavilo built an application using Tavilo Gateway 2.0 and HiT Software's Ritmo to access enterprise data residing on an IBM System i V5R3M0.

Tavilo based its System i connectivity tool selection on three essential factors: architecture, speed, and price. Tavilo needed a pure .NET product to integrate with Gateway. Trying to work with a Microsoft COM-based product would have been problematic in the company's chosen architecture. With Ritmo, Tavilo did not need to worry about System i-specific data-conversion issues, connectivity issues, or SQL issues.

Tavilo's Gilbert notes, "It worked right out of the box and was simple for us to OEM." The company also needed the best possible performance between the System i and a Windows server — extremely fast read-only access to System i data stored in DB2. The success of Tavilo's final solution for Morgan depended on displaying information to users in the quickest possible manner. "I have yet to find faster middleware for the System i," says Gilbert. Finally, Tavilo wanted a competitively priced tool. Ritmo fit the bill.

Gilbert reports that Ritmo has been an easy product to implement, particularly because the object model is similar to other .NET data providers. Tavilo has had very little need for technical support from HiT. The company has found that the product typically works as designed and that problems are easily solved with a simple data source configuration change.

For more information about HiT Software, Inc., go to www.hitsw.com. For more information about Tavilo Incorporated, go to www.tavilo.com.