alert-management
WCF service for managing crisis alerts against bookings, recording them and emailing affected Travel Counsellors.
Health score
0 to 100 across seven weighted factors; nothing is hidden. Green is 75 and above, amber 50 to 74, red below 50. How scoring works.
Facts
| Languages | csharp, sql |
| Frameworks | WCF, SimpleInjector, AutoMapper 10, RazorEngine 3 |
| Runtimes | .NET Framework 4.7.2, .NET Standard 2.0 |
| Tests / CI | some / CI in place |
| Last commit | 2026-07-24 |
| Owner | Owner unknown (mapping to be curated) |
| Domain | Bookings and fulfilment (system generated; curate in repo-owners.json to override) |
| Product area | Phenix |
| Hosted | On-prem Deployed to our own machines
|
| Releases | 2 release pipeline(s): \finance\alert-management CI; \finance\alert-management database |
| Integration | wcf, soap, rest |
| Source | Open in Azure DevOps |
Dependencies in context
Entanglement
kernel Bound into the core by 2 mechanism(s).
- Pinning dependency: mail-service
- Speaks WCF (host)
Detaches when its pinning dependencies are cut or multi-targeted (mail-service); and when its WCF surface gains a modern interface or its WCF calls move to one.
Migration playbooks
Generated from this repo's assessment data: what is feasible, what blocks it, and the steps in order. Ratings: green means actionable now, amber means sequence other work first, red means blocked, grey means not applicable.
ZDD adoption
A long roadTechnically eligible one day, but the blockers are structural: hosted WCF or SOAP contracts that cannot run two versions at once, or heavy legacy coupling. Sequence the modernisation work first. Hosts WCF or SOAP endpoints: strict serialization contracts cannot safely run two versions at once (the shared-enum trap). End-of-life runtime compounds the work.
- 1 system(s) depend on this repo; during a rolling deploy they will talk to old and new versions at once, so responses must stay compatible
- Adopt the four-stage discipline from the ZDD engineering standard: pre-deployment compatibility, deployment, feature activation behind a flag, post-release cleanup.
- Raise automated test coverage first: ZDD trades the end-of-sprint manual gate for continuous automated confidence, so the tests are the entry ticket.
- Make every change dual-version safe: backwards-compatible APIs (new major version for breaking wire changes), expand and contract for any schema change, and consumers tolerant of unknown fields.
- Audit serialized data: anything in Redis, queues or shared caches must deserialize cleanly across adjacent versions.
- Wrap behaviour changes in feature flags so code deploys dark and release becomes a business decision, not a deployment event.
- Route deployments through the Workflow Engine's automated drain, deploy, health-check, return cycle (the path proven by the first automated production run in mid-2026).
- Verify with area-scoped regression rather than the whole-platform cycle, and watch error rates after rollout with automated rollback on alert.
SQL Server exit
Blocked by a shared databasesqlserver:DataWarehouse is shared, so this system cannot change engine on its own: every sharer moves in convoy. Either agree the move with all sharers as one programme, or first split this system's data out behind an owned API, then follow the steps below.
- Inventory the schema and query surface of sqlserver:AlertManagement, sqlserver:DataWarehouse: tables, stored procedures, triggers, cross-database joins and anything else engine-specific.
- Confirm the target: PostgreSQL (relational model; keep transactions and joins, swap the engine).
- Replatform to modern .NET first (see the recommended actions): current PostgreSQL and MongoDB drivers and EF Core providers target modern .NET, and doing one risky change at a time is cheaper than doing two.
- Data access is not through an ORM, so port the SQL by hand: translate T-SQL constructs, replace stored procedures with application code or target-native equivalents, and add integration tests around the queries that matter first.
- Stand up the target alongside SQL Server, backfill with an ETL pass (pgloader or an export/import job), then dual-write or replicate until parity is proven.
- Move reads to the target, watch correctness and latency, then cut writes over and keep SQL Server read-only until confidence is earned.
- Decommission the SQL Server database and remove the connection strings and firewall paths that pointed at it.
Containerisation
Feasible after replatformingAppropriate eventually, but not from here: the legacy runtime and the hosted WCF surface both have to go first, and that work is already in this repo's recommended actions.
- .NET Framework only runs on Windows; practical (Linux) containers need modern .NET
- Hosts WCF or SOAP endpoints, which have no home on modern .NET; consumers need a modern interface first
- Replatform to modern .NET first (see the recommended actions), replacing the hosted WCF/SOAP surface with REST, gRPC or messaging so consumers can follow. Containerising then becomes routine.
- Add a Dockerfile and make the app read all configuration from environment variables and the secrets manager, never from machine-local files.
- Log to stdout and expose a health check endpoint so ECS can supervise it.
- Adopt the shared ci.yml pipeline template with the container parameters (awsRegion, containerAfterBuild, ecsTerraformRepo), which is exactly how the estate's existing AWS services deploy.
- Define the service in the Terraform repo, deploy to a non-production environment, then shift traffic and disarm the deployment-group release pipeline.
Recommended actions
Replatform alert-management to modern .NET
Runs on .NET Framework 4.7.2, .NET Standard 2.0, out of mainstream support. Blocked until stage 2 cuts: mail-service.
Impact: Unblocks 1 dependent system(s)
proposedAssessment notes
alert-management
Purpose
Manages crisis alerts: creates and tracks alerts, matches them to Phenix bookings via the DataWarehouse, records acknowledgement notes, and emails alerts to Travel Counsellors.
Tech stack
C# solution with a WCF service host (TC.AlertManagement.ServiceHost, .svc on .NET Framework 4.7.2, basicHttps/wsHttp bindings), service/contract libraries (netstandard2.0 / multi-target net462-net472), a SQL database project of Create/Change scripts, and Razor-templated email generation. SimpleInjector for DI, ADO.NET via TC.ConnectionBroker for data access.
Deployment
Included prod application with 2 releases: build pipelines alert-management CI and alert-managment database, release pipelines under \finance\. YAML builds (builds/service-build.yml, builds/database-build.yml) use shared azure-pipelines-templates and publish the ServiceContract as a NuGet package.
Dependencies
Internal (via TC NuGet packages built from estate repos): tc-connectionbroker (TC.ConnectionBroker.), tc-exceptions (TC.Exceptions.), mail-service (TC.Mail.ServiceClient). Also consumes TC.Cache packages. Reads Phenix booking data from the shared DataWarehouse. No third-party SaaS integrations found.
Data stores
sqlserver:AlertManagement (own database, schema managed in db/AlertManagementDatabase with stored procedures) and read access to the shared sqlserver:DataWarehouse for booking/TC lookups. Connections resolved at runtime through ConnectionBroker.
Integration points
Exposes a SOAP/WCF endpoint (AlertManagementServiceHost.svc); sends email through the TC mail service client; per-environment Web.config transforms for 7+ environments.
Code health
Unit test project (TC.AlertManagement.UnitTests, NSubstitute + coverlet) covers the email-sending flow but coverage looks narrow. Active development — last commit 2026-07-24. Proper README, editorconfig, versioned builds.
Modernisation risks
WCF host pinned to .NET Framework 4.7.2 (no supported WCF server story on modern .NET without CoreWCF); reliance on the shared DataWarehouse database couples it to warehouse schema; RazorEngine 3 is unmaintained. Medium priority: actively used and maintained, so a migration path to CoreWCF or REST on .NET 8+ is worth planning.