A trusted name in breakthrough analytical solutions – such as high performance liquid chromatography, spectrometry, thermal analyses and rheology solutions – for nearly four decades, our customer derives over two-thirds of its revenues from drug discovery, genome and proteome research, and quality control segments. The customer’s comprehensive, adaptive chromatography management system supports instrumentation control, advanced data acquisition, interactive data processing and custom report outputs.

Our customer’s chromatography data software currently supports the low cost, bench top, high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) series of a world-leading measurement company. Instrument control software mediated between the chromatography data software and HPLC modules via a multi-threaded application comprising drivers for supported modules. The customer looked to us to enhance the instrument control software such that it would sustain new modules – well plate auto sampler with thermostat; column switching valve; and multipurpose valve – in the HPLC series. English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages were to be supported. The prevailing framework needed to be modified to load digital data libraries (DLLs) at run time.

The Solution

While the architecture of the instrument control software was retained as is, the software was enhanced taking recourse to the following development platform:

	Environment: HTML, VC++, COM using MS Visual Studio 2003
	Target platform: Windows XP SP2
	Online help: Adobe RoboHelp
	Version control and bug tracking: PVCS 7.5
	Installation package: InstallShield 11.5
	Automated testing: SilkTest

A driver base class was used to derive driver classes. A new driver supported the well plate auto sampler; a CAN-slave managed column switching and multipurpose valves. A single build catered to all four languages. The online help and message center were updated in respect of the new modules.

Apart from cost arbitrage, the customer benefited from:

	Incremental feature implementations and code reviews
	Relevant source code documentation