The Analyst

September 27, 2010

A scientific Windows application for Parshva Diesels Pvt. Ltd. developed to assess performance of Diesel Engines as per ISI standards.

The project was created in Visual Basic 6.0, and made use of several Windows APIs instead of just limiting itself to VB6’s limited capabilities.

Overview

The Analyst is a Windows application that accepts raw data gathered from observations performed on diesel engines, and generates reports based on analysis made on raw data. The previous phrase says it all that Analyst can do. The Analyst, despite being a scientific application, is light-weight on system resources. The application calculates and processes on all raw input data within seconds (up-to 6 decimal places) and generates final report, hence many human hours are saved daily from performing tedious and error-prone calculations.

Development & Technologies Used

The Analyst was developed as a part of summer project in my bachelors program. As per the college curriculum guidelines, we developed it in a team of 3 and we had to use Visual Basic 6.0 as a development environment and Oracle as Database solution back in the year 2010. Though we were limited by the programming environment that we were allowed to use, our client was hopeful that we deliver something that they can actually use, and on the other hand, we wanted to push the limits of tools we used to make sure we meet their expectations.

We used Visual Basic 6.0 for developing the core application, while Oracle to store constant tables which were to be used by application in performing calculations. Also, we made extensive use of HTML/CSS to create report layouts as it gave us greater control on layout design and wanted to avoid any third party reporting tool.