Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS, JRA Division)

Client Server Development
WinCATS

Project Description

The Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration (JRA) exists to help young offenders develop, mature, and become confident, competent, responsible adults. The Windows Client Activity Tracking System (WinCATS) was the primary business application for JRA and was used to track information related to Juvenile Offenders before, during, and following a period of incarceration.

CATS is a Web-based Activity Tracking System that required several complex components, desktop integration, and some paper-based processes and procedures. The WinCATS project was the migration and upgrade of existing Web CATS functionality into a Windows-based application. JRA wanted to facilitate a richer user experience during the setup, business processing, tasks notification, and error recovery phases of the CATS application. They also wanted a framework to quickly develop new Modules. In addition, the system was to facilitate data exchange with other related WA State Agencies such as Administrative Offices of the Courts and Washington State Patrol.

Project Deliverables and Tasks

Cayzen was responsible for establishing most of the infrastructure and development techniques used by the WinCATS team for the duration of the project. Cayzen performed comprehensive research and analysis on each potentially viable third-party tool and development approach. Recommendations and “How-To” documents provided the backbone for getting buy-off from all team members, and “Agile” development methodologies were used to achieve repeatable build processes and unit-tested components. Cayzen presented the Client with multiple technical solutions and made recommendations on how to best apply the solutions. Cayzen performed the following specific tasks and deliverables:

• Designed architecture using the Model/View/Controller pattern to host “Module” screens.
• Developed architecture for easily upgrading the application once it had been released and installed by the
  User. Initially, “Click-Once” deployment was used and followed with a custom smart-client application delivery component.
• Implemented the Services architecture to support the required Data Access, Exception Handling, Caching, and Notifications services. Cayzen also leveraged a “Chain of Responsibility” pattern to pass Module data through several processing layers including Caching, Workflow, and Data Access.
• Created configuration-based gateway architecture to de-couple Module code from back-end messaging and data retrieval systems.
• Designed the advanced “Tasks” notification system to incorporate the meta-data driven workflow into the WinCATS architecture.
• Developed the “Incident Reports” Module used for staff incident tracking within a facility.
• Produced documentation utilizing samples, Activity Diagrams, Class Diagrams, and Data Models to define how best to work with Tasks architecture.
• Developed Unit Tests to guarantee key application component functionality.