Pentana Technical Specifications

The Pentana Audit Work System (PAWS) application is developed using the Microsoft development platform. The client application is installed on desktop/laptop computers and connects to a shared Microsoft SQL Server database. SQL Server 2000/5 Desktop Engine (MSDE) can be optionally installed on client PCs to facilitate offsite working without any requirement of network/internet connectivity. For smaller clients, where a full SQL Server platform is not available, the entire system can be implemented using SQL Server Express/MSDE editions.

The PAWS Web modules are developed in a combination of Visual Basic .NET and C# .NET and will run on Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS).

System Requirements

The following figures indicate typical system requirements. Depending on the amount of data tracked within the application, actual requirements can significantly differ. System requirements are split into three main sections (Client PCs, Database Server and Web Server) since these elements are normally separated in a typical production environment.

Client PC Minimum Requirements

Operating System

Windows XP Professional
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows Vista

Hardware

1 GHz Processor – Recommend 2GHZ
256 megabytes (MB) of RAM – Recommend 1 GB
200 megabytes (MB) of available hard disk space – Recommend 20GB

Local Database Server Requirements (Only required if using local checkout feature)

In addition to the PAWS application software install, if the users need to work offline from the central server then they will need to have MS SQL Server Desktop Edition ('MSDE') or SQL Server Express installed onto their local PCs. External work paper attachments (e.g. in MS Excel, Word, etc) are stored outside of the database and will need to be considered when estimating the local hard disk space requirement.

Minimum requirements for SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE)

600 MHz Processor – recommend 2GHZ
240 megabytes (MB) of available hard disk space – Recommend 10 GB
256 megabytes (MB) of RAM – recommend 1 GB

Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) is not be supported on Microsoft Vista.

Minimum requirements for SQL Server 2005 Express Edition

2 GHz recommended
10GB of available hard disk space
Recommended: 1GB of RAM

The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (or higher) is a Prerequisite for SQL Server Express.

Database Server Requirements

NOTE: Server requirements are affected by factors such as volume of data and the number of concurrent users. The figures below indicate the minimum recommended specification for a PAWS implementation containing 1,000 audits and 20 concurrent users.

Operating System
Microsoft Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 Standard Edition
Windows 2000 Professional (limited to 10 concurrent connections)
Windows XP Professional (limited to 10 concurrent connections)

Hardware
2 GHz Processor
1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM – recommend 4GB for larger implementations
6 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space – recommend > 100GB for large applications

Database Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2005/8 Standard Edition
Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup & Express Editions.

Web Server Requirements
Microsoft IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003 & Windows XP Professional x64 Edition)
Microsoft IIS 5.1 (Windows XP Professional)

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 & ASP.NET AJAX 1.0

Architecture Diagram

A Conventional PAWS (and Retain) implementation

PAWS (and Retain) implemented within a Citrix Environment