http://www.microsoft.com/BackOffice/reading/chevron.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)By Mary Jo Foley
Chevron Canada Ltd. is implementing ambitious plans for a fully distributed client/server transaction-processing system that, by the end of this year, will handle up to half of the $250 million in transactions the company posts each year.
Everytime some used a credit card last year to pay for Chevron petroleum products, that transaction was transmitted via satellite to Chevron Canada's Information Systems headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia, which manages data processing for the unit's financial division.
The transactions are processed on an IBM mainframe, then transmitted to a mix of 486 and Pentium servers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5, and SQL Server 4.2.1. Chevron Canada is running a number of custom-built applications on NT, including its wholesale billing application, network management tools, and a decision-support system. But the trend is toward the use of more packaged applications, such as SAP America Inc.'s R/3 financial-analysis package, which Chevron Canada is just starting to implement.
"The rest of Chevron has more of a mainframe mentality. We're saying data should be distributed, whether by replication, remote stored procedures, or duplication," said Edmund Yee, network specialist for information services with Chevron Canada's network operations group.
Chevron Canada started experimenting with a client/server transaction-processing system in the early 1990s that was based on 0S/2 and SQL Server, because OS/2 was the only multitasking PC operating system available, Yee noted.
But as the processing load increased, the division found OS/2 1.3 and Microsoft SQL Server were not robust enough to handle the transaction volume.
"We hit the wall at half a gigabit with our database in terms of response time and number of users," Dan Chorney, lead database administrator with Chevron Information Services. "We were trying to use the SQL Server release and were hitting the 16-bit limit. We were juggling servers. Backups used to take more than 2 hours.
Many more organizations will be deciding whether to base distributed processing systems on either OS/2 or NT, said Peter Kastner, an analyst with Aberdeen Group, of Boston.
"For the past four to five years, for workgroups of 25 to 50 users, SQL Server running on OS/2 was the standard," Kastner said. "Now, corporate hierarchies are flattening and companies are enabling four times as many users. There is multiprocessing OS/2 out there somewhere, but NT is coming on strong."
Chevron made a complete move to Microsoft products when it decided to upgrade to SQL Server 4.2. To date, Chevron Canada has converted 33 of 36 servers to NT 3.1 and 3.5. It plans to move the last three to NT this year.
"We're really the only Chevron arm that is totally standardized on Microsoft products," Yee said. Various Chevron divisions are major users of Novell's NetWare, Unix, and Lotus Development Corp. Notes, he said.
Chevron Canada wants to keep in synch with Microsoft's upgrade path for its operating-system and database products. The next major release, SQL 95, Systems Management Server, and Windows 95 are of potential value to the division as the distributed processing system grows, Chevron Officials said.
Problem: Chevron Canada was hitting the wall with OS/2 and Microsoft SQL Server with its billing application, which posts about $250 million in receivables in a year.
Solution: Over a year ago, Chevron Canada began the move from OS/2 to NT 3.1, and now NT 3.5.
Payoff: The NT-based client/server network is proving to be faster, more stable, and capable of handling a heavier work load.
What's Next: Chevron Canada will continue to add more Microsoft products, including Windows 95, Systems Management Server, and, ultimately, Cairo.
