Re: take23 and what we're doing - EDDS

[ja...@lawrence.net]

EDDS
----
There are few things more sure in life than death and taxes. Ok,
well I can think of one more - tax forms!

The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA - our Federal tax
collection agency - like the infamous IRS) has a collection of
approximate 10,000 forms, guides and other publications that
require management and control.

For the past 6 or 7 years these forms were managed using a
proprietary database software that was costly to maintain and
difficult to extend. As well the system was housed on aging SPARC
processors. In order to meet on going and changing business
requirements the system would need to be upgraded or replaced. It
turns out that by using mod_perl, Linux and MySQL plus some
contracting time the entire system was replaced for the cost of 1
years operation costs.

A customized document management system was created to meet the
unique business requirements of the forms management group at
CCRA. This includes document versioning and multiple document
formats for each document name. The filing and classification
methods are continuously evolving and so the addition and
decomission of some metadata fields is necessary.

New documents are created by either starting a new version of an
existing form or document or creating a new document header
record. Then each document format, PDF, MS Word, Form Flow, etc.,
is uploaded using the file upload feature and the libapreq module
to decode the uploaded files.

Since security is a concern - we cannot place access to this
document collection on the internet. Instead we must report out
files and then use rsync to move our data to a staging server. By
using Perl we have been able to change from a weekly reporting
cycle to a daily reporting cycle. As well, by using Perl we have
been able to fix some really nasty decisions that were made 6 or
7 years ago when publishing to the web was an unknown process to
most. Finally, by dumping the old software CCRA and its clients
were able to chuck out all those modems and go via the web.

Perl is practical for extracting and reporting - the turnaround
time and cost effectiveness of this project is a testimony to
that claim!

Jay Lawrence