OBIS™ Software Architecture & Technology

OBIS System Specification
System Security Measures for Data & Access
Copyright Matters

Software Architecture OBIS™ applications are built on a multi-tier client-server architecture. This provides you with a scalable platform and modular methods of accessing applications and tools.

Flexible Operating System Servers can be installed on the familiar Windows XP operating system, Windows Server machine or Linux OS. This enables you to install and deploy the whole system rapidly and cost effectively.

Open Standards OBIS™ uses open standards in its database and application servers and software programming languages. These standards were selected because of their flexibility, ease of use and availability of resources. The use of open source software makes it easy for small and medium organizations to adopt a cutting-edge technology without a sizable IT budget, and allows you to expand and customize server and application using publicly available resources.

Web (HTML) Client Platform & HTTP Communication Framework Unlike desktop applications that must be installed on individual computers, OBIS™ utilizes Intranet/Internet networks where any open source Web browser becomes a client desktop application. Data and reports are centralized while user access points can exist anywhere.

TWIST Data Integrity & Conversion There are over 100 TWIST Web Reports with useful extract data, but these data and tables are not clean and consistent. Report extracts may have different formats regarding customer names. Date fields are often not consistent with other programs such as Excel, Access or SPSS. And when TWIST report extracts are imported into Excel, SSNs are treated as numeric, not as strings as they are supposed to be, resulting in difficulties in merging, filtering and analyzing data. Different variables are in different report tables. This makes it imperative to properly merge multiple tables in order to get an overall picture. As a part of the basic package, OBIS Data Integrity & Conversion Engine (DICE) takes care of disparate variable names, string lengths, duplicates and other data problems. Its built-in processing logic converts data consistently making it sure they are ready.

When you deal with sensitive personal information on a daily basis, securing such information is a required as well as prudent practice. OBIS™ applications implement one of the strongest security measures available at several levels on top of the existing network security regime of your Intranet.

Access Control The primary tool for access control is through user account and password. New accounts can be added by HR or IT personnel. Users are required to provide a strong form of password acceptance and verification, and forced to change it in a set period of time.

Access to all pages that are visible to users are controlled individually so that back-stepping wouldn't allow access. Also, users are disconnected from the system after a set time of idleness.

Data Security for Personal Information Sensitive and personal information such as SSN is always encrypted in the database tables. This strongest data security at the database level, although it suffers some processing delay, is preferred if the database server resides outside of a secured network. If servers are installed within a secured Intranet, encrypting communication instead of database is a more efficient solution.

Secure Communication If your network is accessed by the public or if your Intranet is open to the public Internet (allowing out-of-Intranet access to applications), it is recommended to implement an encrypted communication between the server and the user. Servers can be configured to send and receive encrypted communication using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology, which is an Internet standard (when you see a lock, and access Web pages via https:// instead of http://).

OBIS™ applications are copyright registerd with the Library of Congress. Its beta development version was created in 2004; first version (marketed as Wabis) in 2005, and second version (as Cobis) in 2006. Currently version 3 is under works.

PHP versions of applications are distributed along with an accelerator that encrypts all codes. Reverse engineering of any OBIS™ codes is strictly forbidden.

Licensing Terms & Pricing
Values & Benefits of Business Intelligence Applications

» OBIS Online & Demo site

» How does OBIS™ protect sensitive personal data?

» Download Documentation & Manuals

» OBIS™ architecture & system requirements

» What is open-source software? [wikipedia]

» What kind of advantages and values can I get from OBIS™?

» Licensing terms & service pricing