Growing an Enterprise with Corba

1
Growing an Enterprise with Corba

• Presented by Ann Gover

2
Express Scripts

• Express scripts is the largest independent
  pharmacy benefits management (PBM) services firm
  in the united states
• They offer services that include
• PBM consultative services
• pharmacy network management
• mailing services
• formulary and disease management
• medical and drug data analysis services

3
Computing / Network Environment

• Due to recent acquisitions, the company size has
  doubled
• These acquisitions have also led to a diverse
  computing environment that includes multiple
  platforms, operating systems, programming
  languages and software

4
Problems

• Express Scripts is service based and must be able
  to respond with accurate and timely data for
  customer service activities
• Legacy systems could not be disrupted
• Many of the systems were created in house and
  can not be converted due to cost and loss of
  service time
• Systems are transaction intensive and claims may
  result in multiple transactions covering multiple
  subsystems.

5
Goals / Solution

• Goals
• Creation of new website
• Creation of state-of-the-art customer service
  center that does not disrupt legacy system
  operation
• Solution
• use CORBA via PeerLogics DAIS broker
• this is a middleware solution that provides
  multiplatform support
• CORBA is also becoming defacto standard for
  prescription drug industry

6
Corba Features

• Allows use of multiple languages for both front
  and back ends
• Corba allows applications to communicate with one
  another regardless of application design or
  location.
• Consists of Interface Definition Language (IDL)
  and an Application Programming Interfaces (API)
  within an Object Request Broker (ORB)

7
How Does Corba Work?

• ORB establishes the client-server relationship
  between objects
• Client invokes method on server, ORB intercepts
  the call, locates the object that can implement
  the request, passes the required object
  parameters, invokes the method and then returns
  the results to the client.

8
How Does It Work? (Continued)

• Through the ORB, client is unaware of object
  location, programming languages or OSs used or
  system aspects that are not a part of the object.
• To allow ORB to work with the various systems,
  developers model the legacy code using the same
  Interface Definition Language for creating a new
  object and then create a wrapper code to
  translate between the bus and legacy interfaces

9
ORB Specifics
10
Conclusion

• Express Scripts is running claims processing
  application with CORBA middleware messaging
  engine with low overhead and 1 - 2 second
  response time
• Has not been tested with high volume traffic yet.
• Will continue to extend the applications
  supported by CORBA to support future
• a. Call Center Claims eligibility applications
• b. Reuse business logic and interfaces
• c. Java Servlet for online eligibility queries
• More Corba Information
• http//www.omg.org