ASP to ASP.NET Migration of a shipping application for a supply chain management company

Executive Summary

Our customer is a leading supply chain management solutions company offering shipping management software. Their end-to-end shipping management solution helps their end customers to ship packages and keep track on status of shipment. It also provides enterprise level management reporting and cost analysis of the shipping needs. In the business model followed, the customer maintained tie-ups with Third party shipping companies for greater reach and flexibility in shipment services. It served as the single point contact for customers who wished to ship their packages. With the help of web services, package status information was made available to customers.

ennovate was engaged by the customer to migrate the existing shipping management software from ASP to ASP.NET. Over 240 ASP files and several DLLs were ported to .NET. ennovate also upgraded the software by adding a number of features such as email notification, web services, auto-correct, shipping invoice, package tracker, etc.  to the existing software in .NET. Eventually our customer has benefitted through the improved readability of the application on .NET and enhanced database performance.

The Customer

• Our customer provides web-based Shipping Management software that gives businesses greater control over their express, ground and supply chain distribution services helping reduce costs and re-focus precious headcount on core business issues. Our customer helps in providing a complete offering of multi-carrier express and ground shipping automation solutions and services that assist their customers in operating efficiently each and every day

The Challenge

• The existing shipping management web application ran on ASP with MS SQL Server 7 as database. In order to enhance code readability and upgrade functionality, the code was to be migrated to ASP.NET along with DLLs and Web services

The Solution

• ennovate successfully migrated the desktop shipping web application from ASP to ASP.NET. 

  Following are the highlights of our project execution:

  • Auto Correct feature developed: This ensured that the destination address entered by an user is existent
  • Approximately 250 ASP files and several support files (DLLs) ported to .NET
  • Porting of DLLs, originally developed using VB 6.0, to VC# .NET
  • Developed supporting Web services to communicate with different carriers like DHL, Airborne, FedEx, UPS etc.
  • Developed a feature that tracked status of packages and updates customers automatically
  • Integration/Verification/Testing of entire solution
  • Set up and integration of the DSS with other modules on Windows 2000
  • Introduced business rules for carrier and service usage
  • Integrated shipping costs and data with customer enterprise systems (ERP, WMS, etc)
  • Developed efficient e-mail shipping notifications
  • Simplified monthly shipping invoice for all locations and carriers
  • Test Plan generation based on functional and design specifications

The Technology

• ASP.NET, VC#.NET, Visual Studio, .NET, MS SQL server7

The Benefits

• Improved readability of the application as ASP.NET includes inbuilt MVC (Model View Controller) architecture
• Enhanced database performance