Challenge Overview

Detailed Requirements

NOTE

  • This is an idea generation contest, not a Conceptualization contest. Submission format instructions are listed below. You must not complete the Conceptualization Template. This contest is not rated and your reliability will not be affected.

Competition Task Overview

The customer has a large internal, thick-client, administrative application written entirely in Panther. It is a two-tier application that connects directly to an Oracle 11g Database. The Panther platform(see here) is causing the customer architectural and resource issues. There is a lot of activity on the application (they average about 8 releases per year). We would like to move this application to .NET.

In this idea generation challenge, you need to answer:

  • How do we move this application to more modern technology?
  1. Panther developers are very rare. How will we get the community to compete on contests that include Panther?
  2. We will likely be converting unused code. How will the customer assume the burden of maintaining that code going forward?
  • How to eliminate issues below?
  1. Architectural Issues. Specifically, we cannot call web services from Panther code. The recommended way that we could do that would be to write service wrappers in C and call those components from Panther. Another option is to write them in .NET and register the COM components that can be called from Panther. Either of those options make it harder to maintain and deploy to workstations.
  2. Resource Issues. While learning Panther is not a difficult task as it is C-based, it is different and there is no community around the platform. We have to accept lower productivity while new resources learn the platform on their first few assignments. And, when they are stuck, we have few options: experienced Panther staff onsite or calling the vendor.
  3. Maintainability Issues. The Panther IDE is less productive than VB3. It is an interpreted language and it does not even do a syntax check upon build. The editor does not even do syntax colouring. We really want modern IDE features that will accelerate the speed that our Software Developers can add functions to the application. The lack of community is probably something that falls under maintainability as well.

Application Statistics

· 300,000 LoC
· 500+ screens
· 600+ stored procedure calls
· 2700+ embedded PL/SQL statements

Judging Criteria

You will be judged on the quality of your ideas and how much benefit it can provide for the client. Here are criterias from most important to least: 

1. Feasibility

2. Creativity

3. Maintainability

4. Explanation of idea

5. Requirements coverage

6. Technical consideration

7. Wow factor

8. N/A User experience

Note since this is an idea generation contest, the decision of picking winners is totally up to the client. And in addition to the top 3 prizes($1200 for 1st, $600 for 2nd and $300 for 3rd). Beyond the top 3, the client may purchase any additional submissions they also like for $300 each.

What to Submit

Your submission should be primarily textual (Word Document, PDF, HTML, RTF) with a detailed description of your ideas - along with screenshots (optional) to support these ideas.

1. What technologies/solution you propose?

The more you provide technical details, the better.

2.  How your proposal solve clients'  issues or concerns?

Please explain why your idea works - The more information you can provide, the better. Please provide any relative links that assists your design of the app.

3. How to do data migration?

4. Graphics to help illustrate your ideas is welcome.

5. Explain any limitation of your solution.



Final Submission Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

Submit an archive file containing the documents that describe your idea to Online Review Tool.

REVIEW STYLE:

Final Review:

Community Review Board

Approval:

User Sign-Off

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ID: 30044072