Ventyx

Success at a Glance

Ventyx has been developing software products for the energy industry for 38 years, and therefore has an enormous amount of existing code that must be supported. Many of Ventyx’s products contain a core engine for simulation or transaction processing. A typical engine contains over 2 million lines of code, while the graphical user interface (GUI) and I/O interfaces together can involve as much as another 1.5 million lines. Also, a number of different programming languages and development environments have been used over the years, adding complexity.

In 2000, Ventyx chose Java as its primary application development technology because of its power and versatility. Using Java, the company can develop a single code base and run it on any platform that supports Java Virtual Machines, including Sun’s Solaris Operating System, most versions of UNIX, Linux, and Windows. The core simulation engines at the heart of many Ventyx products are coded in Java. Ventyx started with J2EE, then moved to Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) in 2006. Ventyx also uses NetBeans and the rest of the Java stack extensively in its applications. Sun Java System Application Server is used in two of the company’s three large enterprise software products.

The Solaris 10 Operating System is a mainstay platform for Ventyx. The company uses Solaris 10 extensively in its development environment due to its performance and debugging capabilities. DTrace is a favorite of programmers, dramatically shortening the time it takes to pinpoint performances problems. The binary compatibility that is built into Solaris—14 years of backward binary compatibility—reduces the amount of time spent recompiling older code for newer platforms.

Java’s ability to run on multiple machines translates into flexibility in deployment. In some deployments, the entire Ventyx application runs on a Windows platform. However, for customers who need more computing power—for example, to run large simulations—Ventyx moves the simulation engine to a Sun Fire server running Solaris and keeps the Web services and other tiers on the Windows machine.

Ventyx benefits from a good working relationship with Sun’s engineering team. On several occasions, Ventyx has made suggestions for improvements to the Java Virtual Machines, backing up their recommendations with data obtained using DTrace. Ventyx also takes advantage of the extensive Java resources available on the Internet, for example, the Java weekly podcasts.

Java Studio Creator is an important development tool at Ventyx. Its programmers use Java Studio Creator to develop GUIs and for rapid prototyping. Studio Creator allows them to mock up screens quickly and show them to customers before investing a great deal of time in coding them.

With the introduction of Vista, Microsoft originally announced that it would soon discontinue support for Visual Studio, one of the other tools in use at Ventyx. While Microsoft later changed its stance and delayed their action, Ventyx decided to avoid such problems in the future by migrating Visual Studio users to Java Studio Creator. The transition from the Microsoft environment to Java Studio Creator was straightforward and fast, and required no outside training.

One of the strengths of Java Studio Creator is that it creates standard Java code that can easily be integrated and modified with other tools. Unlike other tools, Studio Creator doesn’t lock developers into using the tool for future modifications. Using Java and the Java development tools has significantly increased the reuse of existing code. For example, the development team was able to reuse a formula engine that had been created for an earlier product, saving the time it would have taken to re-create that functionality.

Most of Ventyx’s products are based on Oracle databases. Studio Creator helps shorten development time with automated features such as drag-and-drop bindings to databases.

The company’s products are extensively personalized to each customer by Ventyx business teams, for example, creating screens and reports customized to the user’s individual application. Java Studio Creator is beginning to make inroads at the customization level as well, being used by several members of the customization team.

As Ventyx moves ahead with its leading-edge software products, Java technology and tools will continue to provide value and shorten time to market.