Luxury Link

LuxuryLink.com Web Site Redesign

Luxury Link had experienced phenomenal growth in terms of its product offering and loyal customer base. It was time to look at how the current structure would support the next phase of corporate development. The company wanted to improve the customer experience, support increasing web site traffic, and introduce additional functionality, including online advertising. The scope of these objectives necessitated a complete revision of the Luxury Link website. Once the development team looked more closely at what was involved, it became clear that the new web site was not purely focused on the outward facing aspects of the web site and that the entire structure was going to require a significant overhaul from the bottom up.

For Luxury Link to be more responsive to online requests and streamline the development and maintenance of queries, the data extraction process had to be modernized. In its current format, queries from the site required the transfer of large amounts of data to and from the database. This process was impacting performance (responsiveness) and would not scale effectively. The volume, maintenance, and duplication of code were also becoming a growing concern. A high performing, scalable system was needed to support the company’s business objectives. The development team needed a rich environment that would allow them to create and maintain the applications key to operations and allow the team to work effectively in meeting the deadline for the launch of the new website and ongoing development demands of an online commerce environment.

Without addressing the process by which data is retrieved from the database and delivered to the customer, Luxury Link risked users becoming unhappy with response times and looking at alterative websites. From a revenue perspective, Luxury Link wanted to introduce advertising to the site and this was not possible with the current design.

Luxury Link is in the business of marketing upscale travel packages using a combination of auctions and fixed price deals. The company’s clients are three and four-star hotels, inns, private estates, cruises and tour companies. The web site allows anyone to view, research, and purchase luxury travel packages from an exclusive portfolio.

Luxury Link was able to reduce the volume of code by 80%. The solution exceeded our projected goals for saving time and money. Yes, this system is definitely mission critical to our organization.

The new system allows a faster response time to online queries, ensuring that visitors to the site are provided with the information they requested in an efficient, expeditious manner. Through a highly user friendly interface, visitors simply search for the travel product they are looking for based on a range of parameters and are presented with detailed descriptions of the offerings that match their criteria.

The chief proponent of the site redesign was Erik Kellener, Chief Technical Officer. He championed the move to a stored-procedure based library of data extraction functions. This freed programmers from using redundant code in the PHP scripts.

The only reticence to the project came from a few contract programmers who were too ingrained in the status quo to accept a change.

Luxury Link sought the services of Hanna Research (http://www.hannaresearch.com), a focus group that provided invaluable feedback on the new site. Later, the new site was "soft-launched" in parallel with the old version. This allowed a two week beta testing period wherein users were invited to compare the old and new. A survey was requested from the new users and a gift certificate was issued to each.

Writing efficient stored procedures was a big challenge and Rapid SQL’s built-in debugger proved invaluable to writing bug-free code.

No, the goals didn’t really change as the project progressed.

E-business Application Development Emphasizes efforts to develop a corporate application architecture that incorporates legacy systems, client/server systems and the Internet. The judges will evaluate how the finished application affects business processes, as well as the tools and technologies employed.

Each programmer was issued a copy of Embarcadero Technologies’ Rapid SQL and trained in its use. We quickly became addicted to Rapid SQL’s step-through and debugging features.

Integration with CVS was crucial to this process and all had to be trained in how to check out, update and commit SQL code to and from the repository.

For database development, we relied on Embarcadero’s ER/Studio to add and modify tables. Embarcadero’s Rapid SQL’s debugger was all we needed to test new SQL code.

Yes, the testing was cost-effective. We used the performance execution analysis tools in Rapid SQL to identify inefficient SQL code and for example, where indexes should be included.

We also used of Radview Software’s WebFT and Webload to robotically test the site’s functionality from a user standpoint.

Being a relatively small company, we used an informal approach to implementing new stored procedures. At the database level, all "sprocs" were tested by Paul Bringetto (our DBA) for efficiency. Rewriting sprocs to maximize efficiency was done virtually in parallel to their release. The goal was to keep procedures and functions as simple as possible.

The entire library of stored procedures and user-defined functions was source-controlled via CVS. Embarcadero’s Rapid SQL made the use of CVS extremely simple and programmers with no CVS experience picked up the process very quickly.

(N/A)

There were no major technical challenges.

Although SQL Server 2000 database included its own IDE, it did not meet the needs of the development team. Luxury Link selected Embarcadero Rapid SQL to provide the team with the development environment and functionality required. With Rapid SQL’s rich visual context developers could create and analyze stored procedures to extract data directly from the database in response to customer queries.

Rapid SQL offers powerful visual tools for creating and analyzing stored procedures with point-and-click ease. By minimizing the volume of code on the website, creating a centralized library for stored procedures, and leveraging a powerful IDE, developers enjoy a greater ease of maintenance and can respond faster to development demands.

Poorly tuned code can greatly impact the performance of applications and ultimately the users’ experience. Luxury Link is able to perform detailed response time analysis on the execution of stored procedures and functions. By benchmarking the execution of stored procedures they can determine exactly what code objects and lines of code are taking the longest to run. Rapid SQL allows the developer to step through code as it executes, enabling them to watch database logic and quickly identify and address the source of errors. Embarcadero SQL Debugger removes the guesswork from troubleshooting database code logic errors and inefficiencies by stepping through code as it executes for the identification of the source of errors.

Before moving the stored procedures into production, Embarcadero’s SQL Debugger was used to isolate and fix bugs, giving the developers insight to troubleshoot performance bottlenecks and improve code quality. During the development of a single stored procedure, the team needed to have the ability to revert back to a previous version at any time. By integrating with CVS, revisions were tightly controlled and managed, allowing the team to safely collaborate without fear of overwriting critical code.

With a team of developers there is a risk that without controls, changes made by one developer are overwritten by another, impacting the quality of the code. By integrating with CVS Source Control System, Rapid SQL allowed developers to store recently added sources on a server and not to modify them directly. By checking out the file to make modifications and checking it back in when the changes are made code was not overwritten in error and the team could collaborate effectively.

(12 people)

We focused primarily on web site designers with a strong background in PHP. Our internal DBA and CTO oversaw the deployment of new SQL code.

Most developers were skilled in writing complex SQL queries. Minor training was required for integration of SQL with the PHP/Smarty templating engine.

One year from initial design to launch. Major milestones were rigidly scheduled and all were met.

Management got more than what they asked for: A robust, efficient web site that runs relatively bug free and that requires only two people to maintain on a daily basis. Public users of the site love the new look and speed of page loads.