Betterdot Systems Inc.

Retail industry
Betterdot Systems has architected and developed a suite of server-side performance evaluation and training products for the retail industry. The application's largest customer comprises of 2,500+ stores and 100,000+ learners.

The application allows training and store evaluation data to be planned, completed and tracked. Flash-video based training is backed by a national content delivery network for optimal performance and availability. The application allows key performance indicators to be measured and tracked over time across the organizational hierarchy.

The application is heavily redundant and load balanced. The system is based on a service-oriented architecture. Data is encrypted in transit and storage. Subsystems include system messaging, outbound emails, background threads, SOAP web-services, client and server-side graphing as well as PDF and Excel reporting. The software stack consists of Spring, Hibernate, Web services, Velocity, the Drools rules engine and a distributed EHCache running on Tomcat. The application and SQL Server 2005 database servers are collocated at Q9 Networks.

Ontario Telemedicine Network

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.

Environics Research Group
Betterdot Systems has architected and developed a financial data aggregator, database and reporting system.

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

BiblioCommons

Working with BiblioCommons, Betterdot Systems has architected and developed a Web 2.0 based social networking platform for North American public libraries. The system allows library patrons to consult and renew checked-out items but also rate them, create lists and discover related resources and like-minded individuals. The application allows books to be searched, placed on hold or purchased from Amazon.

The application 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.

Sun Life Financial Canada
Working with Sun Life's own IT Department, Betterdot Systems has architected and developed a UI framework for Sun Life's web properties.

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

Betterdot Systems has developed the technical specifications for a location-based, VoiceXML service. The application allows 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

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
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

Betterdot Systems Inc. has developed a data transformer program to download, parse, merge and publish information for over 25,000 movies on the globeandmail.com 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

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)

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
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

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.