Tag: PCL

Logical Locking Software

In 2015, EmpireCLS needed a way to alleviate the physical locking issues that they were facing when users edited a reservation. The legacy Linux system was using a physical database lock that would stay active when a user attempted to edit a reservation, this lock would remain in effect until the user explicitly released it or their process was killed by an admin. Because killing the process became the normal procedure the user that had the lock would lose any in process edits. This problem directly impacted daily operations, automated booking feeds, and the IT staff.

We built a cross platform logical locking framework that would enforce the same edit semantics that the EmpireCLS staff had grown accustomed to but would allow supervisors to release locks without the need of killing a process and losing the in process changes for a user.

This implementation required both a Linux and Windows code base so we used C# / Mono to create the cross platform libraries.

Technologies… C#, C, Linux, asp.net, Mono

Chauffeur App 2.0

In 2013, EmpireCLS needed to revamp their mobile chauffeur application because the Windows Mobile 6 platform was to be deprecated. Windows Phone 8 was the platform of choice for this application that supported their 400+ mobile workforce.

A large amount of client code was re-used from the original mobile app, along with the entire back end.

Highlights…

  • Chauffeurs could notify central dispatch that they were awake and ready for work. Before this feature dispatchers would call chauffeurs on the phone to validate that they were ready and would make their first pickup of the day. This saved thousands of man-hours a year.
  • Was done using cross platform development patterns to allow other mobile platforms to be implemented. The goal of using Xamarin to create an IOS an Android app was taken into consideration way up front to cut down on overall cost of bringing up these 2 platforms at a later date.

Technologies… Windows Phone 8, c#, WCF, PCL