There are about 230.000 establishments in the Spanish hotel, restaurant and
catering industry accounting for a turnover of about 15.6 thousand million
euros. All of them sell food to private consumers. On the other hand suppliers
and traders supply the catering trade with food and beverage products. Usually
the different players in this food distribution network trade products by means
of orders which are placed manually. This is a process which can be enhanced
through the application of computer and Internet technology.
A project lately also supported by the Spanish government is supposed to fill
this gap. This project is called “Catanet” and has been established three years
ago.
Actually the Catanet platform is used by more than 100 customers, amongst
them very important industry players like Lauren Films, Pepsi, Unilever and
Nestle. Some of them will carry out a significant part of their overall food
orders by the Catanet platform, which corresponds to a turnover volume of
many million euros.
In the former version of the Catanet platform clients had to apply a web page
based interface in order to use the Catanet services. As this approach
prohibited the full exploitation of the benefits the use of computer assistance
provides (e.g. human participation still constitutes an inevitable and crucial part
of the transaction, the interaction is completely asynchronous) an additional
level is being added to the Catanet platform eliminating these shortcomings.
During the time of this work the number of Catanet customers has grown
explosively increasing also the diversity of the customer’s computer systems.
Additionally new subprojects could be launched due to the acquisition of a
government grant. These encompassed among others new value added
services demanded by the customers like an instant messaging module and a
module for the automatic update of the local product catalog. The characteristics of the IT infrastructure of the new customers which will
carry out transactions with a serious turnover via the Catanet platform and the
necessity to integrate the new subprojects required an adaptation of the design
of the platform prototype which had been developed by this time and which is
described in this work. [...]
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation and Definition of the Project
1.1.1 Outline of the Catanet Project
1.1.2 Definition of the Main Tasks of this Work
1.2 Identification of Central Questions
1.2.1 Selection and Application of Appropriate Security Mechanisms
1.2.2 Platform Design by Following an Appropriate Software Development Process
1.2.3 Implementation Style
1.2.4 Transaction Reliability
1.2.5 System Integration
1.2.6 Real World Business Suitability: Speed and Stability
1.2.7 SOAP Communication Details
1.2.8 .NET-Java Integration
1.3 Overview of this Work
1.4 Objectives
2 Technological Background: Web Services
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Web Services Architecture: Just-In-Time Integration
2.3 Web Services Core Technologies
2.3.1 Packaging Layer: SOAP
2.3.1.1 SOAP Messages
2.3.1.2 The SOAP Data Types
2.3.1.3 RPC-style vs. Document-style SOAP
2.3.1.4 SOAP Implementations
2.3.2 Description Layer: WSDL
2.3.2.1 WSDL Files
2.3.3 Discovery Layer: UDDI
2.3.3.1 The UDDI Registry
2.3.3.2 UDDI Registry Access
2.4 Conclusion
3 Concepts
3.1 Selection of an Appropriate Development Process
3.1.1 The Waterfall Model
3.1.2 Iterative / Incremental Software Development According to Craig Larman
3.1.3 Extreme Programming
3.1.4 Summary / Conclusion
3.2 Catanet Proxy vs. Catanet API Approach
3.2.1 Criteria for Design Decision Proxy Delivery vs. API Solution
3.2.1.1 Costs
3.2.1.2 Performance
3.2.1.3 Stability
3.2.1.4 Adaptability / Extensibility
3.2.1.5 User Acceptance
3.2.1.6 Further Considerations
3.2.2 Conclusion
3.3 Technology Evaluation for Interface between Catanet Client and Customer's IT Infrastructure
3.3.1 Socket Connection
3.3.2 RMI (Remote Method Invocation)
3.3.3 CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture)
3.3.4 JNI (Java Native Interface)
3.3.5 Command Line Interface
3.3.6 Database
3.3.7 Directory Based Interaction
3.3.8 Web Service Interface
3.3.9 Conclusion
3.4 Technology Study: How to Provide a Reliable SOAP Communication between the Catanet Client and Server
3.4.1 Reliability at the Transport Level
3.4.1.1 Reliable HTTP (HTTPR)
3.4.1.2 Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP)
3.4.2 Reliability at the SOAP Protocol Level
3.4.2.1 Web Services Reliability Specification (WS-Reliability)
3.4.2.2 Web Services Reliable Messaging Protocol (WS ReliableMessaging)
3.4.3 SOAP in Connection with JMS
3.4.3.1 Main Characteristics and Advantages of JMS
3.4.3.2 JMS and Web Services
3.4.4 Electronic Business XML (ebXML)
3.4.4.1 ebXML Message Service Specification
3.4.4.2 Accessing ebXML via JAXM Clients
3.4.5 Implementing an Own Reliability Protocol
3.4.6 Summary / Conclusion
3.5 Technology Study: How to Provide a Secure SOAP Communication between the Catanet Client and Server
3.5.1 Introduction
3.5.2 Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
3.5.2.1 SSL Features
3.5.2.2 Handshake
3.5.2.3 Protocol Processing
3.5.2.4 Advantages / Disadvantages
3.5.3 XML Security
3.5.3.1 XML Signature
3.5.3.2 XML Encryption
3.5.3.3 Advantages / Disadvantages
3.5.4 Summary / Conclusion
3.6 Technology Study: Integration of .NET Client with Axis SOAP Server
3.6.1 Approach 1: Utilization of an Entirely to Java Ported .NET Framework
3.6.2 Approach 2: Compiling Java Code to MSIL
3.6.3 Approach 3: Compiling Java Source Code to .NET Languages and Vice Versa
3.6.4 Approach 4: Using a Bridge to Interlink a .NET with a Java Runtime Environment
3.6.5 Approach 5: by Using a Web Service Interface between .NET and Java
3.6.6 Summary / Conclusion
3.7 Test Strategy
3.7.1 Requirements
3.7.2 Test Process
3.7.3 Component Testing with JUnit
3.7.4 Integration Testing
3.7.4.1 Big Bang Integration
3.7.4.2 Bottom-up Integration
3.7.4.3 Top-down Integration
3.7.5 Coverage
3.7.5.1 Two Exemplary Coverage Models
3.7.5.2 Object Oriented Coverage
3.7.6 Summary / Conclusion
3.8 Summary / Conclusion
4 Realization
4.1 Software Development Process
4.1.1 Outline of Development Process
4.1.1.1 Phases
4.1.1.2 UML (Unified Modeling Language)
4.1.2 Plan and Elaborate Phase
4.1.2.1 Requirements Specification
4.1.3 Build Phase
4.1.3.1 Glossary
4.2 First Development Cycle
4.2.1 Analyze Phase
4.2.1.1 Conceptual Model
4.2.1.2 System Sequence Diagrams
4.2.1.3 Contracts
4.2.2 Design Phase
4.2.2.1 Expanded Real Use Cases
4.2.2.2 Collaboration Diagrams
4.2.2.3 Design of Class Diagrams
4.2.2.4 System Architecture – Package Building
4.2.2.5 Complete Collaboration Diagrams Reflecting the Packet Structure of the System
4.2.3 Construct Phase
4.2.4 Test Phase
4.3 Performance Measurements
4.3.1 First Series of Measurements: Analyzing the Overall Platform Performance
4.3.1.1 Realization
4.3.1.2 Results
4.3.2 Second Series of Measurements: Evaluating the Performance Only of the SOAP Based Message Transfer
4.3.2.1 Realization
4.3.2.2 Results
4.3.3 Third Series of Measurements: Evaluating the Performance of the Server Side Processing
4.3.3.1 Realization
4.3.3.2 Results
4.3.4 Further Series of Measurements: The Performance Bottleneck Has Been Identified
4.3.4.1 Results
4.4 Second Development Cycle
4.4.1 Implementation of the Retransmission in Case of Error and Directory Based System Integration
4.4.2 Expanded Real Use Case
4.5 Third Development Cycle
4.5.1 Implementation of the Order Status Update Requests
4.5.2 Acknowledge Order
4.5.2.1 Expanded Real Use Cases
4.5.2.2 Concepts / Conceptual Model
4.5.3 Shipping Confirmation
4.5.3.1 Expanded Real Use Case
4.5.3.2 Concepts / Conceptual Model
4.6 Summary / Conclusion
5 Conclusion
5.1 Summary
5.1.1 Chapter two
5.1.2 Chapter three
5.1.3 Chapter four
5.2 Future Prospects
5.3 Open Issues
6 List of References
7 Appendix
Objectives and Research Focus
This thesis investigates the integration of customer Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems into the existing Catanet B2B communication platform using Web Service technologies. The primary objective is to develop a robust, secure, and reliable communication level that allows for synchronous integration between diverse client IT infrastructures and the Catanet server, replacing manual web-based interactions with automated, system-to-system exchanges while considering real-world constraints such as firewall compatibility and performance.
- Architectural design of a Web Service-based integration layer for the Catanet platform.
- Comparative evaluation of system integration technologies (e.g., SOAP, RMI, CORBA, JNI) for client-server communication.
- Implementation of reliable messaging protocols and security mechanisms (SSL, XML Security) within a commercial B2B context.
- Addressing the technical challenges of .NET-to-Java cross-platform integration.
- Evaluation of software development processes and test strategies to ensure system quality and maintainability.
Excerpt from the Book
3.1 Selection of an Appropriate Development Process
For the development of the system an iterative software development process according to Larman has been utilized.
This incremental/iterative approach represents something like an intermediate between the traditional Waterfall model and the lightweight Extreme Programming. In order to be able to better classify Larman’s iterative approach these three development processes shall be outlined briefly in this chapter.
3.1.1 The Waterfall Model
The main characteristic of the Waterfall model is that each activity within the development process (architectural design, detailed design, implementation, component testing, system testing, and deployment of the system) is done exactly once for the whole set of system requirements and it is not intended to regress to a prior development step.
There are many points of the Waterfall model that have been criticized. Here are some of them:
• Problems with the software are not discovered until the system tests.
• The requirements of the system are supposed to be definitely stated prior to the system design, which is normally hard to realize as the design and implementation frequently disclose requirements. A later change of the requirements will make the development method unstable.
• Also missing system components and unexpected development needs discovered during the implementation are a problem as the return to a former development step is not taken into account by the Waterfall model.
• Another problem represents performance issues. The performance of the system cannot be tested until it is almost implemented and performance shortcomings due to an unsuitable design for example are then difficult to fix.
Summary of Chapters
1 Introduction: Provides an overview of the Catanet project, defines the main tasks and research questions regarding platform integration, and outlines the objectives of the thesis.
2 Technological Background: Web Services: Explains the fundamental principles of the Web Services paradigm, including SOAP and WSDL, which are essential for the Catanet platform communication.
3 Concepts: Serves as the theoretical core of the work, analyzing development processes, security and reliability mechanisms, and strategies for .NET-Java integration.
4 Realization: Describes the practical implementation of the Catanet platform prototype using an iterative development cycle, including performance measurements and realization details.
5 Conclusion: Summarizes the thesis findings, evaluates the future prospects of Web Services in e-business, and identifies remaining open issues.
Keywords
Web Services, B2B Platform, SOAP, .NET-Java Integration, System Integration, Software Development Process, Transaction Reliability, Security, SSL, XML Security, Performance Measurement, Catanet, Enterprise Resource Planning, Distributed Systems, Middleware
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core purpose of this diploma thesis?
The thesis focuses on designing and implementing an additional integration layer for the Catanet B2B communication platform, enabling direct, automated interaction between customer ERP systems and the platform using Web Service technologies.
What are the primary thematic areas covered?
The work covers the Web Service architecture, the selection of software development methodologies, the evaluation of integration technologies (such as JNI, RMI, and SOAP), and the implementation of security and reliability mechanisms for B2B transactions.
What is the main research objective?
The primary goal is to create a platform that meets specific accuracy, performance, reliability, and security requirements while ensuring the resulting software is maintainable, expandable, and reusable for future development.
Which scientific methods are applied in this work?
The author employs an iterative software development process based on Craig Larman’s approach (UML and pattern-based), performs thorough technology evaluations, and utilizes performance measurements and JUnit-based testing to validate the implementation.
What does the main body of the work focus on?
The main part of the work (Chapter 3) provides a theoretical evaluation of design decisions, followed by a realization chapter (Chapter 4) that details the practical application of these concepts in building the first platform release.
What key terms define this research?
Key terms include Web Services, SOAP, .NET-Java integration, transaction reliability, and system integration within a B2B context.
How does the author propose to solve the .NET-Java integration problem?
After evaluating multiple options like cross-compilation and third-party bridges, the author selects a Web Service interface, which is found to be the most cost-effective and flexible solution for the integration requirements.
Why is test strategy a significant part of this work?
Because the platform is used in a commercial B2B environment, accuracy and stability are critical. The author implements a test strategy using the JUnit framework and evaluates integration patterns (e.g., Bottom-up) to minimize faults during platform development.
- Quote paper
- Arnd Schnieders (Author), 2003, Application of web service technologies on a b2b communication platform by means of a pattern and UML based software development process, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/17570
