Equipment Dealer Lauds Attunity for Speedy DB2/400 Replication

Published: December 1, 2009

by Alex Woodie

Atlantic Detroit Diesel Allison (Atlantic DDA), a distributor of heavy equipment in the Northeast, has benefited from the use of Attunity data collection and replication software, which captures changes made to a DB2/400 database and forwards them to an Oracle-based system. According to the customer, revenues in the service department have doubled as the result of the improvements in application response times.

From its headquarters outside of New York City, Atlantic DDA sells and services a full line of Detroit Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, and MTU engines, as well as Allison transmissions. The company operates eight locations, employs more than 200 technicians, and maintains more than $15 million in replacement parts and inventory as it services trucks, busses, tractors, and generators in the NYC metro region.

While the company knows how to keep heavy equipment running smoothly, it wasn't entirely happy with how its customer service applications were running. Specifically, the company did not feel that it was providing information to customers fast enough. This included work-completion estimates and passing information over the Web.

Atlantic DDA needed to change how the information flowed in its service department. The company didn't want to rip and replace whole applications, including its core System i-based customer service app and an Oracle-based Service Repair Order System developed and installed by Fadel Partners. Instead, it needed a way to streamline how the information flowed between the i5/OS customer service system and the Oracle repair order system, and that meant faster DB2/400 access.

According to Attunity, Atlantic DDA looked at a variety of solutions, but eventually settled on its Operation Data Replication (ODR) offering, which offers change data capture (CDC) functionality for DB2/400.

Attunity says its ODR is unique because it employs log-based CDC capabilities that monitor the DB2/400 database journals and captures only the changes made to the required tables. By using CDC technology and offloading the changes as soon as they are captured, the vendor says, it's able to minimize the impact to DB2/400, while still providing real-time data feeds from DB2/400 into Atlantic DDA's Oracle-based repair order system and the Web.

Attunity's DB2/400 capabilities exceeded the expectations of Atlantic DDA IT director Will Ortiz. "During the proof of concept process, we were very impressed with the Attunity ODR solution's 'stress test' results, which included throughput measurements handling thousands of tables and over a terabyte of data with ease," Ortiz says in a press release. "This level of performance combined with the expert advice and service we received from Attunity throughout the three-month trial process exceeded our expectations."

After installing the Attunity ODR solution in the heavy equipment service department, Atlantic DDA's order processing times decreased from about 20 minutes to about three minutes, and its revenues doubled, Ortiz says. The company is now looking to introduce Attunity's software to the parts, generator, and marine departments.

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