Microsoft's Web Solution Platform has more than 40 percent of all secure, transacted Websites and almost 60 percent of the Goldman-Sachs list of top business-to-business exchanges.

The software architecture of Contact will use an N-Tier approach that consists of multiple processing layers. The benefits of using this architecture include improved performance, code organization, and code efficiency. In this way different layers of the software process the information and then pass it on for the next layer to process.

Windows 2000 Server Operating system is known for its performance and limited downtime. It's considered acceptable if a system works 99.99 percent of the time because this represents less than one hour a year of downtime. Windows 2000 works 99.999 percent of the time - less than five minutes a year of downtime.

Contact™ takes full advantage of the latest in web-based thin-client technology to deliver the information you want at the fastest speed, with minimum network traffic, and 'no' installation hassles. An overview of this architecture is illustrated below.

A client begins their Contact session by clicking the Contact icon on their desktop. The client will then be prompted for their username and password (step 1). Once authenticated, the web server uploads the Contact web application to the web browser. The web application itself consists of a sophisticated JavaScript data rendering engine and an XML communication layer, all running within your browser, and all loaded in a few seconds (step 2).

The advantages of this approach are best illustrated by the process of viewing the calendar (step 3). Because the Contact web-application has already been loaded, only the raw calendar data itself needs to be sent to the browser, significantly reducing any delay, network traffic and communications cost. Once this data is retrieved, the rendering engine immediately displays the formatted data on screen - all without refreshing the page (step 4).

Architecture
Microsoft's Web Solution Platform(Windows DNA) is the most widely installed web-based application development and organisation platform in the world today.

Platform
Windows 2000, the latest Microsoft Server Operating system

ASP and IIS

Active Server Pages (ASP) allow for forceful page generation on the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS5). ASP's are the presentation layer that allows you to create a sophisticated and custom-made user interfaced on a browser.

COM+

COM+ is the most widely used component software model in the world and is in use on well over 150 million systems worldwide. COM+ is comprised of a mature and stable specification, which has been widely tested and adopted worldwide as a de-facto standard.

Contact uses COM+ to run our business models and to accelerate processing and presentation of XML data to and from the clients.

XML

Extensible Markup Language, or XML, is a technology which has gained in popularity due to its flexibility and ease of integration. It provides a format for describing structured data and facilitates more flexible means of communication in the new generation of web-based applications.

XML technologies allow Contact to operate as a thin-client solution, minimizing the number of page refreshes and allowing the browser to operate like a full-featured windows application. Building Contact with an XML communication model also prepares the application for integration with other systems into the future.

SQL Server 2000

SQL Server 2000 is a powerful, high-end relational database - the engine behind Contact. Currently, more web applications use SQL Server than any other enterprise level database, and it's speed and reliability rival all competition.
Contact™ uses SQL Server 2000 to store and serve data efficiently and securely.

Crystal Reports

The user-friendly interface and flexibility of format made Crystal Reports Contact's first choice world standard for making sense of critical business data.

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