1、Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Case Study HATS and SOA,2,Business Challenge,Company Vision The largest and oldest health plan provider in the state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF) is a company focused primarily on the health industry, delivering value through an array of meanin
2、gful choices. Cost of system maintenanceError-prone system resulted in decreased productivity for Customer Service RepresentativesError-prone system required the BCBSF Development and Maintenance team to frequently service software and to build additional applications to re-establish back end sessio
3、nsSoftware renewal costs highEach software upgrade required deployment at each of 3000 clients,3,Previous Solution,IBM zSeries mainframe IMS transactions,Attachmate Extra! terminal emulator,HLLAPIScreen scraping,Sybase, Inc.s PowerBuilder client application,HLLAPI (High Level Language Application Pr
4、ogramming Interface)An API widely used to build interfaces to IBM 3270-based applications by reading the display data, i.e., screen scraping,3000 clients installed12,000-18,000 active sessions,TM,TM,4,Technical Challenges,HLLAPI is a rigid, screen scraping API that can be difficult to develop and ma
5、intainRequired intricate code to deal with the location of fields on the display screenAttachmate emulator with macros failed frequently The implementation allowed the user to navigate to any screen, then select an action that resulted in running a macro. The macro would fail if not on a valid scree
6、n to run the macro. Sometimes brought down IMS Attachmate failed too frequently on Microsoft Windows XP Required Hyper-Threading Technology turned off to reduce errorsBCBSF wanted to keep their client application UI to preserve their investment in that part of the previous solution In production for
7、 2 years with 3000 employees trained on client application,TM,TM,TM,5,Alternatives Considered,Considered IBM Personal Communications Did not offer significant benefits above Attachmate emulatorConsidered HATS transformationWould have required a new client UI and inadequately preserved BCBSFs investm
8、ent and training in the client UIConsidered Web ServicesHad some knowledge of Web Services but without using SOAPWould allow BCBSF to keep their existing client UI but remove dependency on Attachmate emulatorA winner!,TM,TM,6,New solution,IBM zSeries mainframe IMS transactions,HATS Web Services on W
9、S Application ServerTwo IBM AIX servers (load balancing & failover),SOAP,Sybase, Inc.s PowerBuilder client application,3270 datastream,7,Key Technical Benefits,Web Services provides a modular, reusable architecture to represent BCBSFs core business functions A simple and straightforward process to d
10、esign, develop, test, and deploy Web Services using IBM HATS, IBM RAD, and BCBSFs existing client software Determine which business processes become Web Services by examining client application UI and corresponding HLLAPI application logic Create a macro for each business process by recording the na
11、vigation paths through multiple 3270 host screens using HATS Create Web Services wrapper files for each business process using HATS Complete WSI-compliant Web Service creation by generating WSDL using IBM RAD for WebSphere Import WSDL into PowerBuilder to generate client application Reuse of PowerBu
12、ilder client application BCBSFs core business functions are enabled for use in any Service Oriented Architecture solution Can be integrated with IBM SOA Foundations products, such as IBM WebSphere Business Process Server, IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, IBM WebSphere Portal, and others, as wel
13、l as any vendor software that can utilize standard Web Services,8,Business Integration Reference Architecture,Using HATS, BCBSFs core host business functions are now ready to be integrated in a Service Oriented Architecture in a timeframe appropriate for their business model,9,Key Technical Benefits
14、,HATS Web Services relies on screen scraping but offers significant advantages over a typical screen scraper technology, such as HLLAPIBCBSF did not use HATS transformation, so they could not take advantage of HATS rules-based architecture which allows many transformations to work even when the host
15、 application is changed (e.g., host fields are added)HATS Web Services remains a significant improvement over HLLAPI for BCBSF by offering wizards to create macros stored as xml BCBSF used HATS wizards to record macros initially BCBSF estimates an application development effort that takes week of HL
16、LAPI coding could be accomplished in day using the HATS UI BCBSF modified the macro xml file directly after initial macro recording HATS is easier to maintain by simply editing the xml file than changing the HLLAPI application code,10,Key Business Benefits,Cost SavingsFewer developers required to ma
17、intain HATS solution Easier to maintain and more robustEmulator removed from system Saved approximately 3000 Attachmate software license renewalsPreserved BCBSFs investment in training personnel on the existing client UI applicationArchitecture is basis for future solutionsThe extensible architectur
18、e of HATS Web services has been so successful, BCBSF is using Web Services as a design and implementation standard for future application solutions,TM,11,Deployment Experience The Good,Proof of Concept by ISSW included 1-day demonstration of using HATS and RAD to build macro, create Integration Obje
19、ct and Web Service, create client application, and testISSW team conducted a 4-day workshop on HATS, followed with expert consulting advice on how to implement the solution Created advanced macros with conditional and error paths and used Integration Object chaining Included an architecture review O
20、n-going recommendations throughout 6 month deployment period Advice on IBM WAS capacity planning and performance tuning to enable WAS to efficiently run on IBM AIX serverBCBSFs personnel required to implement solution 3 developers 5 testers 1 project managerFor BSBSF, the process of creating and mai
21、ntaining Web Services has been simple and is a “huge” improvement over the HLLAPI application code HATS solution in production for 2 years as of June 2006 and running smoothly,12,Deployment Experience The Bad,Two main areas caused production errors Unexpected code dependencies in host applicationPro
22、blem: Host application did not work consistently based on which codes were entered. For example, one screen automatically changed an input field to a display field based on codes entered, causing the keyboard to lock.BCBSFs Recommendation: Understand your host application. Read documentation if you
23、have it. Did not generalize error conditions in macro processingProblem: Continually coding to each error conditionBCBSFs Solution: 99% of errors are input errors; so for any error message, send it back to the client for user interactionBulk of production errors solved in first 6 months of deploymen
24、t,13,A Success Story,Future plans at BCBSF are shaped by HATS deployment experienceAdditional HATS Web Services for Six Sigma projects Integrate business logic with HATS Web Services to extend function of Pricing Tool Implement a portal solution for the Inquiry Control System to be integrated with H
25、ATS Web Services Expand to a Service Oriented Architecture with an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) implementation based on WebSphere MQ technology,HATS Web ServicesProven cost savings Easy to create and maintainA leading edge solution for integrating host-based applications with a Service Oriented Architecture,
