Acorn Solutions Inc.

Acorn Solutions was contracted to design the multi-tier infrastructure to support this site and for the creation of the content, applications, and graphics.  All pages were generated on-the-fly with Active Server Pages (ASPs) running on a group of  NT servers with Microsoft IIS 4.0.

The data was also hosted on NT servers, with these back-end servers running ORACLE 7 databases.  Navigation through this very large data space (over 100,000 devices at 25,000 sites) was done primarily with two metaphors:  a conceptual "drill-down" through the company's organizational structure and through "search request" forms that allowed wildcarding to locate the needed data.

Results could frequently be returned as tables or somewhat fancier "reports".   Many times these formats were based upon existing paper reports or spreadsheets that had previously been mailed around the organization.

     The thematic (color-coded) maps were generated by an intermediate tier of application servers.  These servers generate web pages with embedded map graphics, using live database data to color encode the completion status of each corporate region.   Several different levels of detail could be displayed on these maps, from the national level to a single zip code. 

     This site grew to over one hundred dynamic pages. Acorn is working on a  fully operational demo of this site that is accessible from the Internet.