Aussie agency turns open systems into cash; Victoria Housing authority finds payoff from choice of DBMS first, then platform - the Australian state of Victoria's Department of Planning and Housing uses the Ingres database running on Unix platforms - Global Software

Software Magazine, Feb, 1993 by Graeme Philipson

Victoria Housing authority finds payoff from choice of DBMS first, then platform

The Department of Planning and Housing (DPH) in the Australian state of Victoria is one of the largest government-owned enterprises in the country. It builds schools, hospitals, police stations, public housing units and other government-owned buildings. It also acts as landlord to the tenants of these buildings.

To support the approximately five million people of Victoria -- Australia's second largest state -- DPH employs more than 3,000 people in its 73 offices around Victoria, most of them based in the state capital of Melbourne. The enterprise boasts revenue of approximately $780 million and a property portfolio of over $900 million.

According to Paul Doherty, DPH's manager of information services, the department's evolution to open systems from a mixture of proprietary architectures was prompted by several factors. Key among them was DPH's heavy investment in a major turnkey computing project in the mid-'80s that was to provide for the company's needs until the turn of the century, he said. The system was never delivered, however, and the case ended up in the Victorian Supreme Court. The vendor, Prime Computer, Inc., settled out of court in 1987 for an amount in excess of $1 million.

"But it meant we could start from scratch," said Doherty, who was brought in as part of a new senior IT team. "We decided to look at all the options, including a Unix-based alternative, which very few people were considering back in 1987 for large, mission-critical applications," he said.

Doherty said that the presence of existing systems was a major problem. "Many people said that we should build on the base we already had and introduce more proprietary mainframes. But they were delivering only about 30% of our business need," he said. Doherty noted that there was little connectivity between the platforms from Digital Equipment Corp., Maynard, Mass.; London-based ICL Plc.; and Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa., and most of the systems were still tape-based.

"There was no concept of a corporate database. Not only did data in one system mean something quite different in another, there was also a disturbing trend toward keeping data where it could not be easily accessed," he explained. "Multiple PC systems were springing up, mainly as a result of the failure of the turnkey system, but also because it was taking more than two years to develop new corporate systems."

The new IT team decided to design a completely new system using a relational database. "We wanted to provide a system that would be seamless across the different aspects of the department's operations, would improve service to clients, cut costs and allow us to grow," he said.

EQUIPMENT TO GROW WITH

In 1988, DPH chose the Ingres database from the Ingres Division of The Ask Group, Inc., Mountain View, Calif., running on a Unix platform. At that time, Ingres and arch-rival Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., were receiving a lot of publicity in Australia. Both companies' databases were being aggressively marketed, and the push to Unix and open systems was beginning to snowball.

In 1988, Ingres was the name of the DBMS only: the vendor's name was Relational Technology. (The company later changed its name to Ingres, before being acquired by Ask in 1990). Relational Technology had done very well in Australia, matching Oracle in sales and public profile. That situation is still true today, with Ingres installed in nearly as many Unix sites in Australia as Oracle.

"Ingres gave us the portability we wanted, and it provided a good application development environment," said Doherty. "That was important to us," he said, because they wanted to completely redevelop their systems in three years.

Doherty said that the choice of operating system followed the choice of database, and that the choice of hardware followed the choice of operating system. "We needed hardware that could grow with us, and at minimum cost. That proved to be the right decision."

With a user base of 2,500, DPH's estimate of 200 concurrent users was outgrown soon after the systems started to be successfully implemented, said Doherty. "We soon had over 500 concurrent users. We made a fundamental decision to never be tied to a proprietary system again," he added.

Price was also a great motivator for DPH. The annual cost per user in DPH's mainframe environment was more than $7,000, and they were spending more than $21 million a year on mainframes and large recurrent costs, according to Doherty. "Standards became our criterion for purchasing. If a product did not comply with industry standards, we were not interested. We decided that Unix was the way to go."

In early 1988 DPH began implementing a Unix-based client/server architecture. The database was distributed geographically across a number of servers, with all client nodes able to access any server on the network. This took place across an ISDN-based TCP/IP extended local-area network (LAN), connecting all 73 offices.