Case Study: The New Jersey State Athletic Association's In House Data

Challenge: The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) was using custom software to manage most of their business data. This software was old, DOS based and some of the reports they relied on had stopped working correctly due to the year rolling over to 2000. They need these reports and there was no support available for the software or the proprietary Clarion 2.0(DOS) database it was based on. They decided to update the whole application to be Windows/Microsoft Access based and hired a software development firm to achieve this goal.

There was no direct way to convert the data in to any modern database file. The initial firm had the NJSIAA stop inputting or updating the data so that they could take it offsite to try and convert it. This stopped them from using the application and data that their organization depends on for it’s daily operation. After multiple failed attempts to deliver the data and six months going by, the NJSIAA was still not able to use their data.

Then the NJSIAA called Eagle Systems USA, Inc.
After explaining their predicament to us, we took a copy of their data files back to our office. Upon researching the file format for a few hours we felt confident we could build a tool to import the data into a Microsoft Access database on demand. We asked them to start inputting and updating their backlog of data in to the old database. We then created the data structure in MS Access and built the utility while they brought their data up to date. This allowed them to resume using the functional parts of the existing software.

We then targeted the specific data needed by the non-functional reports. Within one week, we had a MS Access based application that imported the specific data needed for those reports on demand and generated the reports.

The NJSIAA was once again able to use their data confidently.

We continued with the conversion of the rest of the data and the application to MS Access.
Within five months we were able to do a final import and discontinue the use of the old software completely.

Functional enhancements were then possible.