Success Story
Luxury Link selected rapid SQL to improve
Rapid SQL
SQL code quality, reduce code volume,
and improve overall customer experience.
OrganizatiOn
Founded in 1997, Luxury Link is the world’s development demands of an online commerce
premier online luxury travel resource, featuring environment. Luxury Link selected Embarcadero
in excess of one thousand extraordinary hotels Rapid SQL to provide the IDE and additional
and resorts, cruises, tours, and villas in more than functionality they needed. Although SQL Server
sixty countries. Luxury Link offers sophisticated 2000 database included its own IDE, it did not
travelers access to an extensive range of travel meet the needs of the development team. With
options, exclusive offers, and insider tips. Rapid SQL’s rich visual context developers could
appLiCatiOn
Through a highly user friendly interface, anyone create and analyze stored procedures to extract
Online luxury travel service, can view, research, and purchase luxury travel data directly from the database in response to
providing customers access to packages from a select portfolio customer queries. By placing the data-related
more than 1000 destinations, business logic in the database and leveraging
including an extensive range stored procedures, instead of executing SQL
ChaLLenge
of travel options. code from the website, response times were
Luxury Link had experienced phenomenal greatly improved and the volume of code in
growth in terms of an extensive product offering use and requiring maintenance was significantly
tOOLS
and a loyal customer base. It was time to look at reduced. Before moving the stored procedures
Rapid SQL® how the current structure would support the next into production Embarcadero’s SQL Debugger
phase of corporate development. The company was used to isolate and fix bugs, giving the
ChaLLengeS wanted to improve the customer experience, developers insight to troubleshoot performance
• Rapid data growth support increasing site traffic, and introduce bottlenecks and improve code quality. During
additional functionality, including online
• Aging base code the development of a single stored procedure,
advertising to create a new revenue stream. the team needed the ability to revert back to a
complicated by growing The scope of these objectives necessitated a previous version at any time. By integrating with
code volume and duplication complete revision of the Luxury Link website. source control software, revisions were tightly
• Ineffective SQL queries Once the development team looked at what controlled, to closely manage who was doing
slowed performance was involved, it became clear that the new what, allowing the team to safely collaborate
requirements could not be addressed through without fear of overwriting critical code.
the outward facing aspects of the site, the
reSuLtS
entire structure was going to need a significant
• Faster query response BenefitS
overhaul from the bottom up. For Luxury Link
times improve customer to be more responsive to online requests and
richer Customer experience
experience streamline the development and maintenance
• Powerful IDE, graphical of queries, the data extraction process had to Time is of the essence for customer initiated
query builders, and be modernized. In its current format queries online searches as users insist on close to
from the site required the transfer of large
centralized code libraries instantaneous responses to their requests. The
amounts of data to and from the database. This new system, using stored procedures developed
increase developer
process was impacting performance, customer using Rapid SQL, allows for a faster response
productivity
responsiveness, and would not scale effectively. time to online queries that ensures that visitors
• Debugging tools and The volume, maintenance, and duplication of to the site are provided with the information
code profiling accelerate code were also becoming a growing concern for they requested in an efficient and expeditious
tuning tasks the team. manner. Through a highly user friendly interface,
visitors simply search for the travel product they
• Version control, integration
the SOLutiOn are looking for based on a range of parameters
with SSC systems, and
and are presented with detailed descriptions of
off-line repositories improve The development team required an integrated
the offerings that match their criteria. Luxury Link
team collaboration development environment (IDE) to re-engineer
now has a more scalable system in place that will
the data extraction process, create and
continue to satisfy their discerning clientele, with
maintain applications needed to meet the
less overhead being wasted on the maintenance
launch deadline, and manage the ongoing
of redundant code.

A Rapid SQL Success Story
increased Development productivity
rapid SQL offers powerful visual tools
The demands on the development team
for an online enterprise are high, in addition
for creating and analyzing stored
to maintaining existing applications there
are always new ones to be developed.
procedures with point-and-click ease.
Luxury Link has reduced the time spent
on maintenance, freed up resources to
be more responsive, and streamlined
the development of stored procedures.
By minimizing the volume of code on
improved Code Quality COnCLuSiOn
the website, creating a centralized library
for stored procedures, and leveraging a With a team of developers working When the new site launched the volume
powerful IDE, developers enjoy greater together there is a risk that without controls, of code in use was reduced by 80% and
ease of maintenance and can respond changes made by one developer can be over one hundred stored procedures were
faster to development demands. Rapid SQL overwritten by another, impacting the quality created to manage the data extraction
offers powerful visual tools for creating of the code. The entire library of stored process. The Luxury Link site is better
and analyzing stored procedures with procedures and user-defined functions was aligned to the corporate growth strategy,
point-and-click ease. source-controlled. Embarcadero’s Rapid offers visitors to the site a more powerful
SQL integrated with Luxury Link’s version vehicle for delivering back responses to their
effective Code tuning control software extremely easily allowing tailored searches, and allows the company
developers to store recently added to scale in terms of content and functionality.
Poorly tuned code can greatly impact the
sources on a server and not modify them The site is structured to reduce maintenance
performance of applications and ultimately
directly. By checking out the file to make requirements, minimize code redundancy,
the users’ online experience. Luxury Link
modifications and checking it back in when and leverages a rich development
is able to perform detailed response
the changes were made, code was not environment from which the end user needs
time analysis on the execution of stored
overwritten in error and the team could will be addressed with highly responsive
procedures and functions. Developers can
collaborate effectively. applications.
determine exactly what code objects and
lines of code are taking the longest to run.
Embarcadero SQL Debugger allows the
developers to review the code as it executes,
enabling them to watch database logic and
quickly identify and address the source of
errors.
Download Free Trials at www.embarcadero.com
Corporate Headquarters | Embarcadero Technologies | 100 California Street, 12th Floor | San Francisco, CA 94111 | www.embarcadero.com | sales@embarcadero.com
© 2009 Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. Embarcadero, the Embarcadero Technologies logos, and all other Embarcadero Technologies product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. LUXSQL/SS/2009/02/12