Many businesses in the Gulf region have branch offices located among different cities or areas. The nature of these businesses impose a real technical challenge when it comes to connecting these branch offices computer systems together. What makes the situation more difficult is the lack of suitable communication infra structure, or the high running cost of using available options that render them uneconomic for small and mid-size businesses.

MIRSAL is the answer to this dilemma. MIRSAL handles communication among branch offices and head office transferring ASWAQ5 changes and updates between them. MIRSAL does this task using ordinary communication means thus achieving communication between different operations while keeping running costs down, and without sacrificing ASWAQ5 efficiency.

MIRSAL has been designed from the ground-up to be ASWAQ5 replication companion. Users in branch offices use ASWAQ5 normally on a locally installed database, and without requiring any open communication link with the head office. MIRSAL, on the other hand, runs at preset intervals discovering the changes and additions users do on the database, and sending these changes over to the head office. In this way, MIRSAL achieves connectivity between branch offices and the head office while using the communication link only for a short period of time to send and receive changes.

Of course, MIRSAL achieves two way communication between branch offices and the head office. Meaning changes and additions of the head office are transferred to branch offices, as well as sending branch offices changes to the head office.
Two way replication leads to availability of company wide information at every operations point, just as if all branch offices are connected with a “true” permanent network. For instance, a sales rep in branch 1 can immediately know the available quantity of a stock item in all other branches simply by logging on his own branch database, and can indeed decide to sell an item that he doesn’t have in stock because he knows its available elsewhere in the company.

MIRSAL utilizes the latest in replication and compression technologies to achieve the shortest communication time possible. First, MIRSAL inspects the database for changes since the last transmission. These changes are pointed out and stored on the individual field level to avoid redundancy and irrelevant information. Second, These changes are compressed with a modern high compression ratio algorithm to reduce the file size as much as possible.

This approach reflects on the blazing speed of data transmission that MIRSAL achieves. For instance a typical day-worth of documents in a branch office ( about 80 documents ) will need about only 10 seconds on regular modem lines to get transferred!

A communication tool that relies on public communication networks has to expect the worst! MIRSAL does exactly that. Because public communication networks don’t guarantee the quality or availability of the service, MIRSAL incorporates robustness features to insure delivery of updates. For instance, MIRSAL checks correct delivery of its messages after transmission and receiving. In addition, MIRSAL ensures messages integrity using a modern technology called “Digital Signature”. According to that technology the sender “signs” the message with a certain code. The receiver on the other side of the link re-computes the signature to make sure the message was delivered correctly without errors of tampering.

Public communication networks are subjected to interruptions from time to time. MIRSAL can recover from these situations gracefully because once the communication link comes to life again, MIRSAL automatically sends and receives all replication jobs that should have been sent or received as if the link never got interrupted.

Since MIRSAL is dealing with highly sensitive financial data, it encrypts all messages before sending with a modern encryption algorithm. The message can be decrypted only at the receiving end. System administrators can control the encryption pass phrase.

MIRSAL doesn’t impose any restrictions on the frequency of communication. Replication may be carried out daily or weekly.. etc. Also, you may set the frequency of replication of each side separately. For instance update jobs from a branch office to head office may be carried out twice a day, while update jobs from head office to the branch is done once a day only.

More importantly, MIRSAL doesn’t impose a certain mean of communication. You may opt for direct modem connections, removable media transfer, email, or operation system specific features like directory replication services. This open approach allows for selecting the most suitable communication medium, and allows for changing the medium without many hassles.

Although MIRSAL carries out many complex operations, all internal processing takes place behind the scenes without users interference. MIRSAL hides all its complexities behind a very simple user interface with only 2 frequently used menu options conveniently labeled “send” and “receive”. When a user selects any of these options, MIRSAL starts its operations without requiring any more user interaction.

What’s even more important is that MIRSAL may be set to operate completely automatically without any user interaction at all. In that automatic mode, MIRSAL is programmed to launch on specific prescheduled times to carry out a send or receive job. Automatic operations achieve branch office connectivity without any user interaction whatsoever.