Betterdot Systems is assisting Frameworks Inc. in continually developing a suite of server-side applications for a successful North American retailer. The application allows training and store evaluation data to be planned, completed and tracked. It allows key performance indicators to be measured and tracked over time. The application supports 2,000+ stores, thousands of users and 20 million+ records. The system features a descriptor-driven security model. Data is encrypted in transit and storage. Subsystems include system messaging, outbound emails, background threads, XML over HTTP web-services, client and server-side graphing as well as PDF and Excel reporting. The software stack consists of Spring, Struts, Hibernate, Velocity and EHCache running on Tomcat. The application and SQL Server 2005 database servers are collocated at Q9 Networks.

Ontario Telemedicine Network
November 2002 to Present. Ongoing...

Betterdot Systems Inc. has developed a point-to-point and multi-point telemedicine scheduler for the Ontario Telemedicine Network. A step-by-step wizard allows a telemedicine session to be scheduled. A session will pair a patient and family doctor from a remote community with a specialist from a larger hospital or clinic, over a private IP network. The system detects potential conflicts and assists the user in resolving them. A complex LDAP/XML based security subsystem provides secure and distributed maintenance across the organization. The Telehealth Service Manager application is built with Apache Struts running on Jboss on Windows Server 2000. The system uses password-based encryption (Sun JCE) to save encrypted patient information to an Oracle 8i database. The system also features a notification subsystem consisting of server-side outbound fax and email. Detailed reporting of the network activity is achieved using the Seagate Crystal Report Server, which generates real-time online reports in PDF, HTML, Word or Excel.

Broadridge
August 2005 to Present. Ongoing...

Betterdot Systems is assisting Broadridge with the development and maintenance of Java and Oracle based custom developed systems.

BiblioCommons
July 2006 to October 2007

Betterdot Systems has assisted BiblioCommons with the development of a Web-based social networking application for North American public libraries. The multi-server system is built on an open-source stack including Linux, Apache Tomcat, server-side Java and PostgreSQL. It is distributed and load-balanced for fail-over and throughput. The infrastructure consists of 3 load-balanced application servers, one thread server, one cache server and two replicated database servers. Core technologies include Solr, the Lucene and Java based XML search engine, Apache Axis for SOAP calls to partner libraries, Velocity for outbound emails and a custom-built thread pool and cache server.

Environics Research Group
June 2006 to September 2006

Betterdot Systems has assisted Environics with the architecture and development of a financial database and reporting system.

Sun Life Financial Canada
September 2003 to March 2004

Betterdot Systems has assisted Sun Life Financial Canada in developing an Apache Struts based framework. The framework consists of server side technologies allowing dynamic content to be efficiently published. It supports sponsor branding and dynamic navigation. Two of Sun Life's largest lines of business, Group Benefits and Group Retirement Services have implemented this framework. It has been load tested using 6,000 logins per hour and supports Sun Life's 800,000 registered online customers. The framework-implementing applications run on Bea Weblogic 8.1, Sun Solaris and two-way Sun Servers.

CellWand Communications for Bell Mobility
September 2003

Betterdot Systems has developed the technical specifications for a location-based, VoiceXML service. The application will allow Bell Mobility subscribers to order the first available taxi in the city they are currently in. The location of the subscriber's cell phone is determined using cell sectors and GPS, interfaced by a Bell XML service over HTTP. This service returns the latitude and longitude of the subscriber's location. The coordinates are used to query an Oracle9i spatial database. The user is then transferred to the first available taxi company in the area and a SMS message is sent to the user's phone. The interface is VoiceXML running on Audium.

Points.com for EBay
May 2003

Betterdot Systems Inc. has assisted Points.com in enhancing the performance of EBay Anything Points, a J2EE/EJB/Weblogic/Oracle/Solaris based application. Careful tuning and object caching resulted in higher throughput and lower latencies at no additional software or hardware cost.

Sun Life Financial Canada
April 2002 to September 2002

Betterdot Systems Inc. helped migrate a large J2EE application from JRun to Weblogic 6.1, built and deployed a financial calculator EJB, developed a comprehensive database library, automated the make and deployment process using Apache Ant, demonstrated the use of XSL Transformation using Apache Xalan and tested a proprietary Web Services framework.

globeandmail.com
January 2002 to February 2002

Betterdot Systems Inc. has developed a custom Java on Solaris data transformer program to download, parse, merge and publish information for over 25,000 movies on the http://globeandmail.com/tv site. The resulting movie repository consists of IMDB records (large XML file downloaded and parsed weekly), Globe and Mail articles dating back to 1974 (local file system of enhanced html files) and TV viewing times (Oracle 8i schema). Once compiled across all three data sources, the information is saved to a local XML file system and transformed into HTML for online publishing.

Canadian Tire Corporation
April 2001 to December 2001

Betterdot Systems Inc. has developed a supply chain management front-end to track and control shipments of SKUs between vendors, warehouses and stores across Canada. The application is running on Betterdot's own Xpress framework and consists of Java servlets, Enterprise Java Beans and Java Server Pages running on IBM Websphere and IBM AIX 4.3. The application consists of 20 application screens that fetch and save data in and out of a DB2 database running on a mainframe. It uses LDAP to establish the user group at login and makes extensive use of Xpress' built-in security, parameter-validation, flow-control, error-handling and messaging sub-systems.

Rogers iMedia (Rogers Cable)
December 2000 to March 2001

Betterdot Systems Inc. has assisted Rogers iMedia in architecting and developing an EJB and Oracle 8i-based "community-centric" online application running on Bea Weblogic and IBM AIX. A complex user/right/role/node security model allows secure and distributed content and user administration. The application is brandable and supports integration with partners using XML and XSLT.

Bell Globemedia Interactive
November 2000

Betterdot Systems Inc. has conducted research (CVS API) and development (Java API) on the integration of the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) into the publishing process used by journalists and web publishers at the globeandmail.com.

Wheresfrankie.com
December 1999 to October 2000

Involved since the inception of wheresfrankie.com, Betterdot Systems Inc. provided leadership in the area of system architecture and development for the Canadian startup company. Betterdot Systems Inc. developed a J2EE/Oracle 8i based alumnus and university centric community network. The server layer consisted of a custom enterprise component model (transactional and synchronized to the database) as well as a series of Java servlets/Java server pages separating business logic from behind the scenes authentication, security, session tracking and error handling. The application was developed and deployed on JRun running on Solaris. Betterdot Systems Inc. also modeled and built the application's database schema in Oracle 8i. The application is secure, brandable and makes extensive use of caching to prevent slow database IOs. It serves 23 branded database-driven pages per second.