Fitch & Mather's Corporate Media Library (CML) application uses Microsoft® BackOffice® Server to make an online catalog available to F & M employees. Employees can search for titles and request them for checkout. Should an employee be negligent in returning the title, the CML application automatically generates an overdue notice.
With the addition of the Microsoft Outlook® LitCrit form, readers can now review titles of library items — books, audio/video materials, periodicals, and even software. The critiques they create are posted to a Microsoft Exchange Server public folder and are also made available to CML users on Web pages.
This new combined application not only inherits the n-tier (where n = 3) nature of the CML application, it also illustrates the merging of two originally separate applications and the storage of data in more than one type of database: Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server™.
As shown in Microsoft Products in CML/LitCrit, the BDG's CML/LitCrit scenario uses a number of the products in Microsoft BackOffice Server. The emphasis in this scenario, however, is on Exchange. In fact, the LitCrit application typifies an Exchange Server public folder application. This design provides a number of advantages, which are listed in Business Problem: Combining CML and LitCrit.
In this scenario, the CML/LitCrit application takes a step beyond Microsoft BackOffice by including Microsoft Outlook, a product in Microsoft Office, as both a delivery mechanism and a development tool. For more information, see Working with Microsoft Outlook.