The Background

Today, more than ever, business enterprises have a critical need for flexibility and scalability: strategies change, policies change, equipment specifications and prices change, relational database technology changes, all of this often accompanied by an explosive growth in the number of users a system must support.

The traditional custom page architecture creates more files and revisions for each element, dynamic pages grow without these limitations.

As OEI's approach to problem solving is object-based, and The Bay Bridge Project offers a rich environment for the purpose, we have chosen this platform for our work. One of the primary characteristics of BBP is its capability to provide applications built on a multi-tiered architecture that permits a clean separation of business logic, data , and presentation components. The most evident advantage this structure affords is the capability to make changes to any one of these components without affecting the others: business logic, for example, can be installed on any computer in the network, and later moved to another, more powerful machine as needs dictate.

Through the use of tools especially created for the purpose, OEI solutions provide critical component separation, enabling the creation of reusable business objects capable of handling business logic, while persistent business data is stored in relational databases. These tools also allow business objects to be distributed anywhere within a network, and communicate with one another transparently. The result is optimal resource utilization and the capability to change resource use as business requirements change.