Introduction to TRANSFER Delivery System

What TRANSFER Does for You The TRANSFER Delivery System
1-4 109426—Introduction to TRANSFER Delivery System
What TRANSFER Does for You
TRANSFER satisfies two important data management needs: the need to manage the
flow of information in a business and the need to distribute transactions over an
extended period of time.
Managing the Flow of Information
Whether a business has one small office and a handful of employees or hundreds of sites
and several thousand employees, it must have ready access to correct information to
make decisions.
Historically, data management systems maintained bodies of information on separate
computer systems. Data management, however, entails not only keeping accurate
information but also channeling information among people and devices.
■ People need to communicate.
People must exchange information both with a database and with one another. But
people are not always available. If a business is spread over time zones, the
employees who need to communicate might not work at the same times.
■ Applications need to communicate.
Usually a computer network sustains not just one but several data management
applications. A transaction on one application often triggers a transaction in another
application; for example, acceptance of a sales order triggers a transaction to
schedule a shipment. If network software does not support communication between
different applications, people and paperwork must fill in the gaps.
A data management system that includes TRANSFER can move information among
separate applications—each dedicated to a specific business function—integrating
them into a single, comprehensive data management application. Figure 1-2 shows
an example of cooperating applications.