Customer Solution Case Study
/ Law Enforcement Application Provides Officers with Rich Functions and Data
“The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 provided us with everything we needed to develop this very large and complex solution. The result far exceeded any of our expectations.”
Al Perez, Chief Software Architect, Total Computer
Total Computer wanted to create a single commercial law enforcement application with complete local and national real-time data sharing across disparate database sources. The company wanted to provideboth mobile and offline functionality across a variety of devices. Its developers used an array of Microsoft technologies to develop Total Enforcement—which runs on various client systemsand also in the Windows Azure cloud—to connect law enforcement officers with critical information from diverse sources in real time using any device. With Microsoft software and services, Total Computer developed the system quickly, providing numerous functions on a flexible, powerful platform.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published March 2010
Business Needs
Al Perez no longer wears a shield, but he’s still driven to keep our communities safe. The former police officer is now the Chief Software Architect at Total Computer in Melville, New York, where he designs software that keeps law enforcement in the loop—online or offline.
Perez is a man of varied interests, a technology geek who also has a vision of how law enforcement could run more efficiently. He combined these two interests by cofounding a company that brings high technology to all facets of law enforcement. He’s also a musician and amateur photographer who enjoys cooking, good friends, motor sports, and winemaking. He began developing software programs in the late 1980s, dabbling with Dbase II, FoxPro, and FoxPro for Windows. One of his first projects was a membership management application for the New York State Fraternal Order of Police.
Today Perez works with cutting-edge platforms and solutions, including running his Total Enforcement application on Windows Azure, where he says, “The sky is the limit. It is indeed a breath of fresh air in the world of application development and public safety solutions.”
As a police officer during the 1980s, Perez says he could clearly see a need for technology across the board. Having had a corporate background prior to being in law enforcement, he says, “I saw a stark lack of efficiency and best practices in how law enforcement generally operated.”
Perez wanted to create a single, commercial, off-the-shelf application that performed a variety of key functions, including address validation, geocoding, pin mapping, and interfacing with the National Crime Information Center. He also wanted an instant and comprehensive system search function, case management capabilities, computer-aided dispatch, real-time data sharing among agencies, mobile connectivity, and offline functionality.
Solution
The solution that Perez and his team of developers created, Total Enforcement, accomplishes all of these goals in an application with a small installationsize and a real-time server detection system. The application currently runs on the infrastructureused by the client police agency—Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise data management software. But Total Computerhas transitionedTotal Enforcement to run in the Windows Azure cloud, to offer another option.
“Total Enforcement isthe most efficient and feature-rich application of its kind for this industry,” Perez says. “The mobile functionality is unlike anything available today, and the street is where police work usually happens.”
Benefits
Total Computer used Microsoft software and services toeasily develop a solution with rich functionality on a flexible, powerful platform.
Development Ease
Perez says his team was amazed at the ease of developing with the latest technologies of the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. They were able to transfer their existing skills, knowledge, and experience when new versions of the .NET Framework arrived, so they didn’t miss a beat.
Rich Functionality
Total Enforcement is completely mobile—new records can be created even with no network connection. Features include everything from scanning bar codes on driver’s licenses for e-ticketing to cross-departmental case management. Furthermore, Total Enforcement is an entirely paperless solution. All of this functionality is provided by a single software solution in the.NET Framework 3.5, whichcan be configured for any type of environment.
“The mapping integration to Bing maps is very cool,” says Perez. “The way locations are defined, pin-mapped, validated, and found in user-defined polygons is fascinating.”
Flexible, Powerful Platform
The .NET Framework 3.5 is highly interoperable, and Perez says, “With Windows Communication Foundation, the .NET Framework 3.5connects to everything—period. Because weemployed a Component-based Scalable Logical Architecture, the CSLA.NET framework,we could create business classes. This meant that we could use an inheritance model, and so we could develop extremely quickly—and achieve a very stable, portable, and scalable solution.” The business classes were reusable across rich client and Web applications.
“The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 provided us with everything we needed to develop this very large and complex solution,” Perez says. “The result far exceeded any of our expectations.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published March 2010