Easy System i/Windows Integration Suits Bachrach
Founded in 1877 as a single store in Illinois, Bachrach, a privately held meanswear company, today operates more than 34 stores in major metropolitan areas across 13 states. Bachrach also sells through a nationally distributed catalog and through its e-commerce Web site, www.bachrach.com.
Different databases, pricing challenges
Offering the same discounts to all customers, whether in-store or oniline, was a challenge. Many of Bachrach's promotions are not simply a certain amount off a particular product. For example, some promotions are of the nature, “get x% off product y when you also buy products a and b.”
This presented a challenge because most of Bachrach’s business systems are System i-based, but an increasing number, including the company’s Web server and related applications, run on Windows. Moving product and pricing changes from System i to Windows servers and applying identical promotion logic on both systems was not easy.
Customer confusion
The company tried using a bulk copy process to move data, but this didn't happen in real-time. Consequently, when a customer went to the Web to make a purchase that qualified for a discount, the Web site didn’t show the discount on the checkout screen. Instead, the customer saw a note that said, in effect, “Trust us. We’ll apply the discount before we charge your credit card.”
The discount was applied as promised when the transaction was sent to the company’s System i-based order entry application. Nonetheless, some customers felt nervous about placing an order without seeing the discount applied before they finalized the transaction. Consequently, some people didn’t want to shop on Bachrach’s Web site.
Seamless data integration
RPG2SQL Integrator gives Bachrach and its Web customers the ability to take advantage, in real-time, of all of the products, prices and promotions available in its System i databases.
The product provides seamless data integration by automatically transfering product changes from the System i to the Web server where the updates are applied in real time to the SQL Server database.
RPG2SQL is also used to apply promotional pricing to purchases made through the Web. The company’s Web shopping cart application writes all of the items in the shopper’s cart to one table and it writes the order number to another table. A program constantly monitors the order table looking for a new entry. When it sees a new entry, the program uses RPG2SQL to check against the System i-based promotions application to determine if the ordered items qualify for a promotion. If so, the promotions application updates the price in the table and sends it back to the Web server via RPG2SQL.
Bottom line
RPG2SQL solved Bachrach’s product and pricing data integration problems, thus creating a more seamless and easy transaction process for customers, and an easier way to manage data for the IT staff.
