Leading Energy Company Integrates Its Terminal
Management Systems with SAP Using Allora

Reviewer
 
Bill Friesenhahn, Sr. Software Engineer

Background
 
San Diego-based General Atomics Electronic Systems, Inc. (GA-ESI) is the worldwide leader in providing automated distribution, inventory control and transaction processing systems to bulk product storage facilities that handle petroleum, chemical and agricultural products. GA-ESI Terminal Automation Products (TAP) systems manage approximately $100 billion worth of products annually. TAPs are turnkey solutions that include software, process control hardware and complete electrical and mechanical installation services. Allora was purchased by GA-ESI to easily exchange data from and to TMS3000 (TAP solution) with any other petroleum software platform. The TMS3000 Terminal Management System is an integrated bulk distribution solution for petroleum, fertilizer, and chemical companies. It provides management of tank farm automation, product movement, driver access and security, inventory control, dispatching and the generation of manifests. The system integrates and controls loading racks and associated equipment, pumps, valves, motors, weigh scales, meters, card readers, data entry terminals, remote connections, printers and additization equipment. In addition to the core functionality, the system also provides features designed to automate truck, railcar, ship and barge, and pipeline receipt/shipment.

Platforms
 
Both Allora and DB2 UDB were running on Windows 2000.

Problem Solved
 
One of GA-ESI customer's is based in Greece, Europe, and uses multiple SAP applications to manage its back-office functions at their tank farm in Athens. At this site, TMS3000 allowed them to centralize their data-entry to several terminals. They had to integrate and facilitate hand-shaking between TMS3000 and SAP to feed order data about the petroleum loaded in trucks, truck drivers, card information and transactions that occurred. More specifically, SAP data is imported into TMS3000, where it is processed, then results are sent to SAP. One of the challenges was that all the data was in Greek using a different alphabet and even the database field names were in Greek.

Selection Criteria
 
First, HiT Software has been a known and reputable vendor for General Atomics since 2001. The decision had already been made to use XML, so it was natural to use Allora to interface TMS3000 DB2 database with XML. Also, the transformation middleware product had to support Greek characters and be called from our GA-ESI C++ program.

Product Functionality
 
The SAP package creates iDOC text files, which are then converted into XML documents. Using the Allora Mapper, we mapped each document type with our TMS3000 database. At no point was programming necessary during the mapping process. The Allora Mapper XML Structure, Table Properties and Relations tabs addressed all our mapping complexity. I was able to support Greek characters by specifying the right encoding within the Allora Mapper. Once the maps had been built, the transformation would get triggered from a C++ program I created. As I am not a Java developer, I preferred calling the transformation using a shell command rather than Java API method calls. The two-way communication between the servers has been working extremely well since the integration went live in December 2004.

Strengths
 
Allora is able to support any XML document, so the SAP iDOC format was easy to map with Allora. I liked the fact that no programming was necessary and that Allora could support Greek characters. Allora has many features, and I have still not used all of them. For example, I preferred to create a database view and map it to XML with Allora instead of using the options to create predicates.

Weaknesses
 
I don't know if there is one in particular. I struggled a little bit at first to understand the combine options to group XML child elements. In addition, I would like to be able to add new XML elements or attributes using the Mapper rather than using an XML editor or notepad. For this reason, changing and updating the schema was time-consuming and an integrated simple XML editor would be a nice feature.

Vendor Support
 
HiT Software technical support is far better than most companies I know. It is always positive to get accurate responses that solve our technical problem in a timely way. We know we can rely on HiT Software for any question.

Documentation
 
Like most companies, I imagine, we did not take the time to use it except for the encoding options. It is a good sign because it means that the combination of the ease-of-use of your product and your technical support makes the documentation not really necessary. I also appreciated the web demo, which gave me a good overview of all the features of Allora in just 20 minutes.

HiT Software, Inc. can be reached at: www.hitsw.com