In 1984, a large company in Brazil, commissioned us to fully re-engineer their IT. The client wanted to develop all their systems interacting with a single corporate database.

The challenge was great: at that time, everyone talked about systems and corporate databases, but the reality was very different and all companies continued to use multiple “subject databases”.

Each subject database was used to support a small family of applications. Each subject database was updated with total independence from the others. As a consequence the general consistency was impossible. The companies knew this and, therefore, did not combine data from different subject databases.

In short: there was an operational computing system that operated under certain restrictive conditions, but there was no corporate computing.

The client presented us with a big challenge: a single centralized database to serve all his needs.

The client thought, with good judgment, that any information that was necessary at any time could be obtained from that corporate database.

There did not seem to be any restrictions regarding the necessary resources, but there was a deadline within one year.

The task tested our convictions, our experience, our methodologies and confronted us with a set of additional problems. All the obstacles were overcomed and the project ended successfully.

Having faced so many difficulties made us learn many things and encouraged us to continue. The question was, doing more similar projects or building our own methodology and a tool to support it? The latter was the chosen path.

We participated in several projects for different companies, while, we continued researching and, finally, we launched our first GeneXus in 1989.

Today, 34 years after that project, we come up with a set of reflections on an event that was important for our technological and business development.

We had an important contract to take a big step forward, we were a very good team, and despite many people around the world spoke or wrote a lot about corporate computing, there were no, or at least very few, successful accomplishments in the area.

We addressed the issue with great seriousness and responsibility, and what led us to face a set of problems…

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If you want to know the rest of this fascinating story, we invite you to read it on the Linkedin of Breogán Gonda.

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