Physician Associates (www.pahealth.com) is a network of more than 800 independent physicians in private practice in the greater San Gabriel Valley in California. As an Independent Physicians' Association (IPA), this group of doctors in private practice has joined together to provide primary care physicians, specialists, and other medical services (i.e., hospital, laboratory, and radiology services) to its nearby communities. As an IPA, Physician Associates acts as an intermediary between health plans and providers. The association has deployed a Web-based medical-management application for physician referral using HiT Software’s DBMoto to replicate critical data in realtime from its core IT system based on IBM System i platforms with DB2 databases.

HiT Software's DBMoto provides realtime data replication, transformation, migration, and synchronization for IBM DB2 UDB (including System i5/AS400 and zOS), Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase ASE, SQL Anywhere, MySQL, Informix, Cloudscape, Ingres, PostgreSQL, Access, Gupta SQLBase, Firebird, and Solid. In Refresh mode, DBMoto reads data, applies administrator-defined mapping rules, and writes the results on the target database. In Mirroring mode, DBMoto performs a realtime incremental replication based on transaction logs. In Synchronization mode, DBMoto provides a way for source and target databases to be synchronized. DBMoto's Enterprise Manager offers a graphical point-and-click interface that makes it easy to drill down into databases, tables, and columns to understand data elements. DBMoto offers unlimited control over data replication and transformation using scripting technology.

The Physician Associates' medical-management solution was built in-house using ColdFusion. The group members needed the application to access DB2 data on its System i, so developers first tried to connect from the ColdFusion application directly to System i via ODBC. However, in this particular case, the solution did not perform well enough. Some physicians still used dial-up connections, and it was critical to give them fast access to the data. Microsoft SQL Server performed according to the group's requirements even over relatively slow lines. The development team members then evaluated DBMoto, which allowed them to replicate System i data to SQL Server in realtime to provide high performance, improved data security, and non-disruptive access to the data. Replicating data to SQL Server using DBMoto replication software gave the team more control over the data without interfering with the System i production system. Additionally, this solution came at a lower cost than other replication tools for the System i.

The Physician Associates' IT team was already a HiT Software customer due to its purchase and implementation of HiT ODBC Server/400 to access data on IBM’s System i using the Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) protocol. Based on this experience with HiT Software, Physician Associates turned to DBMoto for its replication needs.

Ken Trinh, systems administrator for Physician Associates, reports, "I installed DBMoto, followed the wizards, and set up my connection strings to our iSeries using the HiT Software middleware. DBMoto created a replica of the iSeries DB2 database on Microsoft SQL Server. The implementation process was very straightforward." He adds, "I had no prior experience with DBMoto, but I got it to work on my first attempt….DBMoto was well worth our investment. There are other data-replication tools available, but they are more complicated to set up and much more expensive. For the size of our company, DBMoto works very well. With DBMoto, we can leverage Microsoft SQL Server Web components, still relying on our core IBM iSeries system."

Physician Associates is using the same table structure for both source and target tables, replicating three flat files from the System i to SQL Server. The source database consists of a few million rows, so a full refresh or snapshot replication takes a few hours. If the iSeries data structure is changed in any way, Physician Associates simply performs a full refresh replication. Otherwise, the application performs realtime incremental replication (mirroring) so that transactions are replicated from the System i to SQL Server with minimal delay. Trinh sees this application as a true realtime solution and is planning to use DBMoto's bi-directional mirroring capability (synchronization) to update the group's System i with changes submitted by users via their Web applications.

For Physician Associates, DBMoto's ease of use was a significant advantage. DBMoto cut development costs and time by providing a graphical mapping environment that can be used by anyone with basic RDB knowledge. With minimal database permissions, team members who do not have a strong database or programming background can manage replications. The support of the technical staff at HiT Software further influenced Physician Associates' decision to purchase and use HiT Software's DBMoto replication product.

DBMoto has significantly cut costs related to integration between multiple relational database environments. Development efforts for a custom replication solution would have required expert knowledge of SQL along with specific knowledge of the RDBMS, in this case DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. A custom solution is typically not portable between databases. Instead, DBMoto can be used with any major RDBMS and can be applied to multiple integration projects.