The Problem
Aramco had a desktop application using older technology that would only allow it to run on a single desktop computer within the office. This became an enormous inconvenience for the company as only one employee could access the application on a single computer at a given time. Since Aramco has offices in Texas, Washington, D.C. and Saudi Arabia, the challenge for them was allowing multiple employees to have access to the data in the application at anytime, from anywhere in the world.
The Solution
Mindgrub provided the information architecture, design, and programming of a new system geared to manage their contacts and events by offering a robust, custom-built contacts management system. We recognized that the most efficient way to provide this level of access was to design a web application that connected to a centralized database but also focused on a rich interactive experience.
From the start, it was apparent that Adobe Flex offered the best experience for both developers and users alike by offering two major advantages to our initiative:
- Single runtime environment
- Robust, rich widgets and components
Additionally, since Flex applications run in Adobe's Flash Player, they look and behave the same across all browsers and operating systems supporting Flash Player.
The Results
The Aramco Contact and Events Management System (CEMS) is a multi-tier application utilizing a MySQL database and PHP back-end to provide the four essential database functionalities to the front-end: Create, Read, Update, and Delete contacts and events. The front-end and back-end can be located in different physical and network locations, or they can coexist on the same machine with excellent performance characteristics in both cases. It is this flexibility that makes web-based applications so powerful by allowing users to enjoy the same responsive, robust, and rich experience they would with a typical desktop application.
