UNION TOSTADORA S.A.
GROWING AND SELLING COFFEE USING KIXTART SCRIPTS, SQL SERVER, AND ARCSERVE REPLICATION
Fundamentally, computing innovations usually make life easy for the network user, which can result in lower support costs. Ramon Villanueva, EDP manager of Union Tostadora S.A., has implemented an innovation that follows this trend. Based in Logroño, the capitol of the region of La Rioja in northern Spain, Union Tostadora produces 12,600 tons of roasted coffee each year. Villanueva is the only person supporting the network that maintains the sales, production, purchasing, and other data for this 80-person company. As a result, the network must be both reliable and easy to use.
Union Tostadora relies heavily on information in its online database, so ease of use is a key part of the company's setup. Union Tostadora stores all its data and applications on an IBM AS/400 and replicates this information to two Windows NT systems running Microsoft SQL Server that double as SNA gateways for the Windows 95 network clients. Villanueva uses Open Universal Software's Rapid Data to replicate the data to these machines. The replication permits faster access to the information, because the NT machines are faster than the AS/400 and can access the data more easily because the network doesn't have to translate requests made with Windows-based tools through the SNA server.
Villanueva has also made the data easier to access by letting network
clients use Microsoft Exchange Server to query the SQL Server databases.
Villanueva devoted one of the mailboxes on the Exchange server to the company
database. To query the database, a user sends a properly worded query to this
mailbox. Every 15 minutes, the SQL Server system checks the mailbox, runs any
queries it finds, and mails back a reply to the user who made the request. For
users unfamiliar with SQL syntax, Villanueva created 40 aliases for common
queries. For example, a user who needs sales data for January 1998 but doesn't
know SQL syntax can send an email to the SQL Server database with the phrase
SALES 980101, 980131. Calling this script activates the properly worded
SQL query based on the dates the user provides and returns the results to the
questioner. Users who know SQL syntax and want to perform nonscripted queries
can still send SQL-language queries to the database server's email address.
Users can also specify whether SQL Server should return the query results in the
body of the message or in an attached Microsoft Excel file.
In the interest of reliability, Villanueva used the KiXtart scripting tool
from the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit to maintain a
consistent environment. This tool provides a means of downloading a complex
logon script to each client, customizing the user environment with data preset
from the System Policy Editor (SPE), and setting parameters such as the amount
of disk space on the file server that each client can use. (For information
about how Villanueva uses KiXtart, see Reader to Reader, "Determine Users'
Disk Space Consumption," June 1998.) Although this logon script can't
prevent users from overusing space, it can notify users when they exceed the
preset limits.
A KiXtart script also protects the servers. Two NT 4.0 servers (a 300MHz
dual Pentium II processor with 128MB of RAM and a 166MHz dual Pentium II
processor with 96MB of RAM) support about 40 clients on the network. These
servers provide access to email and the company database and serve as a gateway
to the AS/400 serving applications to the network, so the servers are vital to
network operations. Villanueva used features of Computer Associates' ARCserve (a
backup program) to replicate information between the two servers every 4 hours
and created another KiXtart script to check the status of each server.
Villanueva has been busy during the 4 years since he started this project
with NT 3.1 and Windows 3.x workstations, and he doesn't expect it to end yet.
As he said, "Every day, I improve the logon script. For example, the latest
addition checks the Y2K-compliance for each client machine and shows a countdown
to 2000 each time a user logs on." Future plans include migrating the
servers and clients to Windows 2000 (Win2K-- formerly NT 5.0) when
it's available and fine-tuning the data warehousing system and server
replication. As a one-man technical support team, Villanueva is taking advantage
of every opportunity to reduce total cost of administration for the network.