Case Studies
JBoss Enterprise Application Server For Pennsylvania State Police
Business Challenge
In order to facilitate public access to criminal history records, the Pennsylvania State Police developed a resource known as PATCH – Pennsylvania Access To Criminal History. For a nominal fee, the general public can use PATCH to obtain transcripts of the Criminal History Record Information (CHRI) stored in the State Police repository. PATCH benefits the state by helping its agencies and private sector employers to easily perform background checks. Additionally, the transaction fees provide an important source of revenue for the State.
As a natural progression of the information age, the PA State Police desired to web-enable the service. In 2001, Unisys was awarded a contract to modernize the PATCH system. To enable online delivery of the service, Unisys re-engineered PATCH as a J2EE application developed on Apache Tomcat and Sybase EAServer.
Due to a lack of confidence in the application server, bug fixes and new feature roll-outs were increasingly being delayed. It became apparent that PATCH would need to be migrated to a new application server to support the current and future goals for the service. Additionally, the State Police hoped to realize cost savings by reducing its licensing and maintenance fees as a result of the shift.
Prior to the proposed migration, Chariot Solutions had previous experience supporting PATCH. Beginning in 2004, Unisys routinely engaged Chariot to assist with troubleshooting and maintenance for the application. That system familiarity, combined with its open source expertise, made Chariot the natural selection to guide the transition of the underlying PATCH technology.
Engagement
In order to introduce greater stability and control to the production environment, Chariot recommended replacing the Sybase EAServer with JBoss AS 5.1.0 application server. By deploying the Java-based application on a server built entirely in Java, consistency and reliability in the production environment was ensured. With complete confidence in the JBoss application server, the State Police can now execute updates and upgrades as needed.
JBoss maintains a ‘professional open source’ philosophy that ensures software releases that are stable, secure, and well-supported. Given its open license and rich feature set, JBoss AS has become the most widely deployed J2EE application server. The PA State Police have particularly benefited from the ability of JBoss AS to simplify administration, introduce stability to the production environment, and enhance system performance.
As JBoss AS is based on a service-oriented architecture, it centralizes access to the application. By consolidating the administration of the PATCH application, maintenance occurs in a single location, saving time and reducing the potential for error. By standardizing the build process, developers need only the ability to program in J2EE, not programming knowledge specific to the application or its processes.
PATCH has four integration points that need to be successfully managed. JBoss AS effectively coordinates communication between the application, the data repository, the third party payment processor, and the State Police Record and Identification accounting software. The streamlined process has led to improved user performance and server utilization.
With JBoss AS deployed, Chariot was able to match the performance of the current production system while requiring less computing power. The existing Unisys ES7000 server configuration consists of four 1.8 GHz processors and 8 GB of RAM on a Microsoft Windows 2003 Advanced Server operating system. After PATCH was migrated to JBoss AS, performance tests were executed on a single VMWare VM installed on a Microsoft Windows Advanced Server. Running on a single 3.0 GHz processor with 3 GB of RAM, the JBoss supported system outperformed the existing application.
While the updated version of PATCH has yet to launch, performance and load testing have demonstrated increased server utilization and greater capacity for concurrent user sessions. The shift to JBoss AS, coupled with a move to a newer version of Java and upgrades to the database, yielded significant improvements in system performance. Based on the uniformly positive results of the user acceptance testing period, the PA State Police and their IT team expect that PATCH’s public re-launch will be a clear success.
Results
- By centralizing to a JBoss application server, PATCH administrators can confidently and expeditiously administer updates and troubleshoot problems in a single location.
- Performance tests indicate that the new server configuration has the potential to operate at a performance level approximately twenty-five times that of the current production system.
- JBoss AS fosters better server utilization to deliver optimal service under even heavy traffic scenarios.
- By moving to an open source product, the PA State Police are able to eliminate multiple commercial licenses and recognize considerable cost savings.
- The efficiencies created by the new configuration will enable the PA State Police to pare its hardware requirements, further augmenting the cost savings.
