The Microsoft. net Framework platform became a basis of a global information system of FTS

Situation

The existing information system for management of activity of FTS and process automation of tax administration was created more than ten years ago. During operation a system morally both became technology outdated and demanded replacement. It was necessary to develop the new centralized solution which would support simultaneous operation over 120 thousand users from all tax inspections of Russia and provided processing of tens terabyte of data, but also, could take place in a private cloud.

The general contractor on a competitive basis selected Federal State Unitary Enterprise GNIVC FTS, and for acceleration of development was decided to charge execution of separate parts of the project to several specialized companies. To provide integrity of architecture of future system and to increase efficiency of joint work, it was required to create a packet of the basic tools uniform for all dispersed team. Use of the general standardized development tools would help to facilitate integration, to accelerate process of creation of a system and to achieve the best compliance of applied subsystems to the set utilization properties.

Creation of such packet of basic tools – the specialized architectural framework considering requirements and tasks of FTS – was entrusted to the TI Systems company which already had experience of creation of a similar packet in the project of the AIS "Tax 2 Moscow" and GNIVC branch in Volga federal district.

When choosing the platform of development among possible options offers of Oracle, IBM and other vendors were considered. However, as IT infrastructure of FTS is in many respects constructed on products of Microsoft, preference was given to Microsoft. net Framework 4.0. An additional argument was that fact, as the previous information system was based on technologies of Microsoft, so, the IT specialists having knowledge of data domain of FTS already accumulated experience with this platform. These advantages would help to reduce risks and to reduce costs for development and the subsequent administration of a system. Besides, in project implementation active participation was accepted by engineers of Microsoft Consulting Services.

Solution

The combined team of developers created a specialized packet of basic tools under the name "Components of Applied Infrastructure" (CAI). As a basis the feature sets of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and other libraries which are a part of Microsoft. net Framework 4.0 and also tools from Infragistics company for creation of visual interfaces are used.

By this moment about 20 components which form a core of architecture of the created information system are a part of KPI and contain basic functions of interaction of the applied and operational systems, the communication medium between physically distributed components (the unified mechanism of client-server interaction), a user interface and access control. In particular, components implement the following mechanisms:

• uniform client application;
• unified host applications;
• access authorization mechanism;
• uniform communication layer;
• monitoring of health of a system;
• data access;
• development parallelization mechanism.

In addition in KPI the extensive functionality for creation of solutions of the class BPM (Business Process Management) as completely automatic, and with participation of users was implemented. Tools cover all cycle of business process automation — from design before their execution in a system, including monitoring and infrastructure management of execution of business processes and also the notification of users about the events requiring their attention or accomplishment of certain actions.

Now the KPI tools are used by five developer companies of an information system of FTS. Three applied subsystems created by them since 2011 are in commercial operation. In parallel, also on the basis of KPI, about ten more applied subsystems which are going to be put into trial operation by the end of 2012 are developed.

Now development of functionality of a development environment continues, and, according to plans, at the end of 2012 the new version of KPI will appear.

"The project on creation of a new information system for FTS was technically difficult and large-scale — a system should service a set of the platforms distributed through the whole country. It was necessary to provide stable functioning of a system for processing of large volumes of data and support of a great number of users. Such project, certainly, required qualitatively designed system core, than and there were as a result KPI components. These components were used also for creation of a prototype, and for stress testing of the ready-made solution — with their help it was possible to measure accurately performance measures in all subsystems that simplified localization of a problem. The part of problems managed to be solved due to modification of basic components. Thus, corrections had to be made only once, but not repeatedly in each of applied subsystems", - Fokin Denis, the CEO of TI Systems.

Participants of a project team widely used also other tools of Microsoft: Project was applied to work planning, and requirements management, was performed by assembly and testing in the environment of Team Foundation Server (TFS).

Advantages

Use for implementation of the large-scale and difficult project of the uniform standardized tools promotes increase in efficiency at all stages of a system lifecycle:

• application of KPI simplifies development processes and integration of separate subsystems, allows to distribute tasks between several teams of contractors and at the same time to save integrity of system architecture;
• the subsequent operation of the created software product becomes less labor-consuming as application of standard interfaces and mechanisms simplifies installation, administration, configuring and monitoring of the solution;
• end users work with the complete unified interface that facilitates system learning process.

Creation of a development environment is separated from creation of the applied systems therefore basic tools are developed by the system programmers having sufficient qualification for the solution of low-level tasks, and writing of applied subsystems is entrusted to those who is familiar with data domain of FTS. Such job specialization increases productivity of work of each project team member.

Thanks to the standard tested components the quality of the software product appears up to the mark, and terms of development are reduced. Besides, systems which are under construction on the basis of KPI are ready to deployment in the virtualized environment or in a cloud.

"It is remarkable that KPI is a universal solution. It is not ground under specifics of work and data domain of FTS, and implements the standard functions demanded during creation practically of any applied systems. These opportunities are especially effective when developing of the large-scale and high-loaded solutions. Therefore KPI can be applied as an independent product and to be offered other clients as the comfortable platform of development", - Denis Fokin.

"Creation of difficult software products means support of a set of the interconnected processes, and only their correct combination within lifecycle of software allows to achieve good result. Microsoft provides all necessary line of effective remedies of development, debugging, testing, diagnostics and support of products and also the organizations of collective work of dispersed teams and management of lifecycle of applications of new generation, Microsoft. — The. net Framework platform is well supported with the ready training materials, paid and free resources, communities developing ready libraries and solutions based on open source codes. The set of the ready adapted development processes, means of deployment, management and monitoring of ready-made solutions is available. All this helps developer companies to plan well business and rather precisely to predict development cost, minimizing financial risks", - Kirill Razumovsky

Partner

The TI Systems company specializes in development and maintenance of automated information systems, has wide experience in creation of the complex distributed information systems and work with large volumes of data. The company renders services of system integration and a hosting, is a certified partner of Microsoft in the directions "Software Development", "Portal Solutions and Joint Work", "Joint Communications", "Hosting", has the status Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller.