Requirements

A national logistics company needed a way to receive remote sensor data on tank levels in agricultural feeding tanks. They needed to see this data graphically and see the status of orders to deliver feed or pick up excess.

• We met with the client and reviewed tank monitoring data. Some data comes in gallons, others in pressure sensor readings that would need to be calculated.
• The messages are sent over email using various forms of data encoding.

Architecture

• We chose MS SQL Server for the back end database.
• A Windows Service would retrieve emails 24/7, look up tank information and write out readings.
• We originally chose an ASP.NET website for displaying the data to users, but switched to Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 so the customer could create their own sites for each customer.

Development

• We created custom Sharepoint Webparts in VB.Net.
• The service was written in C#.

Deployment

• Sharepoint deployment and debugging is tricky. To simplify the process, we created batch scripts for deploying the web parts.

Refinements

• The customer came back to is with requirements for missing reading alerts. We also enhanced the system's ability to handle "junk" messages such as spam. They brought several new pieces of monitoring equipment on line.