Application of web service technologies on a b2b communication platform by means of a pattern and UML based software development process

Diploma Thesis from the year 2003 in the subject Computer Science - Software, grade: 1,0 (A), Technical University of Berlin (Computer Science (Open Communication Systems)), language: English, abstract: There are about 230.000 establishments in the Spanish hotel, restaurant andcatering industry accounting for a turnover of about 15.6 thousand millioneuros. All of them sell food to private consumers. On the other hand suppliersand traders supply the catering trade with food and beverage products. Usuallythe different players in this food distribution network trade products by meansof orders which are placed manually. This is a process which can be enhancedthrough the application of computer and Internet technology. A project lately also supported by the Spanish government is supposed to fillthis gap. This project is called Catanet and has been established three yearsago. Actually the Catanet platform is used by more than 100 customers, amongstthem very important industry players like Lauren Films, Pepsi, Unilever andNestle. Some of them will carry out a significant part of their overall foodorders by the Catanet platform, which corresponds to a turnover volume ofmany million euros. In the former version of the Catanet platform clients had to apply a web pagebased interface in order to use the Catanet services. As this approachprohibited the full exploitation of the benefits the use of computer assistanceprovides (e.g. human participation still constitutes an inevitable and crucial partof the transaction, the interaction is completely asynchronous) an additionallevel is being added to the Catanet platform eliminating these shortcomings. During the time of this work the number of Catanet customers has grownexplosively increasing also the diversity of the customer s computer systems. Additionally new subprojects could be launched due to the acquisition of agovernment grant. These encompassed among others new value addedservices demanded by the customers like an instant messaging module and amodule for the automatic update of the local product catalog. The characteristics of the IT infrastructure of the new customers which willcarry out transactions with a serious turnover via the Catanet platform and thenecessity to integrate the new subprojects required an adaptation of the designof the platform prototype which had been developed by this time and which isdescribed in this work. [...]