Case Study #6  Summit PE - Frac Fluid Controller

The Client required assistance in re-architecting a program used to create and manage a treatment schedule for hydraulic fracture treatments known as Frac Fluid Controller (FFC) portion of the SUMMIT application suite. SUMMIT is a set of custom applications used to sell and manage jobs for well treatment.

The client wanted to re-architect the application using the Microsoft .NET Framework and implement many enhancements throughout. The current client side architecture consists of a number of VB6 executables that run against a number of Access 97 databases. The solution delivered was a strongly typed WinForm application written in C# utilizing ADO.NET. The SUMMIT application suite is a mobile application and can be used when the user is not on a network. Jobs are updated via Client’s data replication mechanism that leverages Exchange 5.5 for moving temporary database files between application users as well as a custom data replication mechanism that file copies data between the clients and the corporate database instance (Oracle). One of the main functional goals was integration with the Client’s Proposal System which had two main components: incorporating multiple intervals into the job, and incorporating multiple flow paths into the treatment schedule. Another goal was to create consistency of the material calculations between other systems. This entailed consolidating material properties and formulas for all identified applications and creating an administrative console in a .NET shared component library and database. FFC reports were using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2003. These reports were written using managed code behind Word 2003 utilizing inter-op assemblies which enabled our managed code to interact with the Word COM-based object model. Word document templates where designed and coded to provide dynamic content based on each treatment schedule job type.