Tài liệu Support for Information Management in Virtual Organizations doc

We also explore the frameworks of the university and discussed a case study about the different ways of providing better support for information management resulting in delivery of best

This thesis is submitted to the Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science The thesis is equivalent to 20 weeks of full time studies

B.B.Pavan Kumar Yadav pavankumaryadav@gmail.com

Personal Number # 810419-P112

Kosuri Naga Krishna Kalyan kosuri.krishnakalyan@gmail.com

Personal Number # 801122- P911

University advisor: Email: rune.gustavsson@bth.se

Department of Computer Science

Blekinge Institute of Technology

SE – 37225 Ronneby

Sweden

S PECIAL T HANKS T O

First of all we would like to thank Rune Gustavsson our supervisor at BTH for giving us the

opportunity to do this thesis work, and for the help with the insight in making of this thesis Thank you Mr Rune to provide us support in presenting our ideas clearly and for discussing with us when we got stuck there your enormous knowledge has helped us a lot

We also thank Karin Jakobsson for helping us with scheduling meetings on time with our

supervisor without which it would have been difficult for us to give this thesis a final shape in the stipulated time

We also thank the fellow students at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola for giving us the support

for forming a base of our thesis by taking their precious time in providing us the valuable feedback on the university We would like to thank all our friends in Sweden as well as in India for suggesting us through different phase of our thesis

Last but not the least we would like to thank our parents who have supported us at every stage with their blessings without them we couldn’t have made up till this position

Thank you all, without your help this thesis wouldn’t have been possible to do!

Pavan Kumar Yadav and Kosuri Naga Krishna Kalyan

A BSTRACT

Globalization and innovation are revolutionizing the higher education forcing to create new market trends Different nations have their own pattern and framework of education in delivering the educational services Educational institutions are also seeking different organizational and behavioural changes for their better future as they hunt for new financial resources, face new competition and seek greater prestige domestically and internationally The coming future will decide which universities would survive the market trends, competition and expectations of the students (Clients) The survival-of-the-fittest paradigm framework plays a prominent role in ideas of how the higher education would be delivered to the students in future with the Instruction Technology and distance education According to us the education trend has changed its phase of delivery

of services form the management point of view to student’s point of view Leading to delivery of educational service’s which would have more impact on student’s education, knowledge and experience within the institution In our thesis we try to provide some information about how to support and manage the information in Virtual Organizations We also explore the frameworks of the university and discussed a case study about the different ways of providing better support for information management resulting in delivery of best students driven services and unique facilities We would be looking at the different aspects of the university work flows and procedures and gain an insight on the student’s expectation from the organization This investigation would be helpful for the students to know what are the services they should expect from the universities and also helpful for management to know better the needs of the students and their needs and to develop a framework for proper execution of these services

Key Words … Virtual Organization (VO), Requirement Engineering, Stake holders, Work flows, Web services, Semantic web, Student centric services

S TRUCTURE OF THE D OCUMENT

In Chapter 1 we have described the basic introduction about Grid computing and Virtual

Organization Identifying and listing the process of creating a Virtual Organization A brief introduction of Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) as organization and the problem statement motivating us to come up with a thesis work

In Chapter 2 we have given a brief description about work flows also describing some of the

workflow with in the university from both student’s and management point of view

Chapter 3 describes who is a stakeholder and what his role within an organization is We

tried to list out the stakeholders for the selected workflows mentioned in chapter 2 In this chapter we have discussed the different implementing models with which the workflows are implemented and we also suggested some new technology (Web-Services and Semantic Web Applications) using which the workflows could be properly implemented for better service delivery Also we have given an approach to implement the web services in the form of a

“Remote laboratory setup” framework with which the students can do their experiments from any where in the world through internet

Chapter 4 gives the explanation about Functional and Non-Functional Requirements with

emphasis on the Non-Functional requirements which we feel is the most important aspect for developing a system We have classified the parameters of Non-Functional requirements and illustrated them in detail

In Chapter 5 we have taken BTH as an example of a university and prepared a case study

which includes the different issues which we have gathered after discussing with students about the issues they have faced within the university and what improvements they expect within the university by conducting one on one sessions and also getting the feedback from

the questionnaire The feedback questionnaire is shown in Appendix-A We have then

analyzed the different feedback given by the students After analyzing have proposed a system which could be implemented for better students interaction with university Also we

have discussed about “Student Centric Services” which is the current trend utilised by most

of the renowned universities

Chapter 6 gives the conclusion of our thesis and the Future Work that could be performed

according to us

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1) Setting up the Scene ……… 9

1.2) Background ……… 10

1.2.1) what is grid computing? What is its importance? ……… 10

1.2.2) what is VO? What is the required environment for VO? 10

Chapter 1.5 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND CHALLENGES 1.5) Problem Statement……… 12

1.5.1) Motivation for thesis ……… 12

1.5.2) Challenge or Research Questions ……… 12

1.5.3) Research methodology ……… 12

1.5.4) Guidance to the readers ……… 14

1.6) Own contribution ……… 14

1.7) Other Approaches ……… 14

Chapter 2 WORK FLOWS 2.1) Introduction to Work-flows ……… 15

2.2) BTH Organisation Work-Flow Design ……… 17

2.2.1) Student Applying for Admission ……… 17

2.2.2) Service for International Students (Accommodation/Pickup Services) ……… 18

2.2.3) Student Course Registration ……… 19

Chapter 3 IMPLEMENTING SELECTED WORKFLOWS 3.1) Identification of Stake Holders ……… 21

3.1.1) who are stakeholders? ……… 21

3.1.2) what is the roles of stakeholders? ……… 21

3.2) Implementation Models ……… 24

3.2.1) Data-Base model ……… 25

3.2.2) Client-Server Model ……… 25

3.2.3) Variant of Web Services ……… 26

3.3) Remote Laboratory Framework ……… 31

3.4) Semantic Web ……… 34

Page No

Chapter 4 NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

4.1) Introduction ……… 37

4.2) Challenges of Non-Functional Requirements ……… 38

4.3) Classification of Non-Functional Requirements ……… 38

4.3.1) Performance ……… 39

4.3.2) Maintenance ……… 39

4.3.3) Portability ……… 40

4.3.4) Scalability ……… 40

4.3.5) Security and Protection ……… 41

4.3.6) Information Ownership ……… 41

4.3.7) Infrastructure ownership ……… 42

4.4) Conclusion ……… 42

Chapter 5 BTH a Case Study 5.1) BTH an organization ……… 44

5.2) Problems students facing with existing system ……… 44

5.3) Proposed Information System (Dialogue Based) ……… 46

5.4) Student Centric Services ……… 48

5.4.1) Structure of this section ……… 48

5.4.2) what do we mean by student centric services? ……… 49

5.4.3) what’s the difference with the current applied framework? … 49

5.4.4) Accelerating implementation of Student centric services? 50

5.4.5) Indicative results in achieving standard Student centric service? …… 50

5.5) Students Expectation with BTH University ……… 50

Chapter 6 Conclusion & Future Work ……… 52

References ……… 54

Appendix A – Questionnaire distributed to the BTH Students ……… 58

L IST OF F IGURES

Fig 1) Support of work flow by services……… 13

Fig 2) Student Applying for Admission……… 17

Fig 3) Student service for International Students (Accommodation/Pickup

Services)……… ……… 18

Fig 4) Student Course Registration ……… 19

Fig 5) Identification of Stake Holders ……… 22

Fig 6) Client-Service Model ……… 26

Fig 7) Fundamental participants of Web Services ……… 27

Fig 8) SOA Architecture……… 29

Fig 9) Interaction of Stakeholders with Web-Services……… 30

Fig 10) Prototype for Remote Laboratory……… 31

Fig 11) Remote Laboratory Framework……… 33

Fig 12) Classification of Non Functional Requirements……… 39

Fig 13) Classical process of getting the information (Rule Based)……… 47

Fig 14) Proposed Information System (Dialogue Based)……… 47

C HAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1) Setting up the Scene

In this thesis work we are trying to find the different means to develop an organization (especially Educational Institute) so that it would be prominent in providing the most suitable and best services for the students In turn helps itself for growing its fame and name in the international market We hope that this document would provide information for students as well as the management of the university about what are the services and what the students should expect from the university also the management should know how the services and information support should be delivered focusing on students requirements

At the end of the thesis the user would get to know the importance of the following:

1 Understanding Requirement Engineering

2 Understanding Technical Ramification

3 Understanding Validation

Let us first describe what the Requirement Engineering is about

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them and this leads to discovering/gathering the requirements Requirements engineering is a term used to describe all the tasks that deals with the investigation, scope and definition of a new or altered computer system It is the most important part in the business development The requirements are identified by the business analyst or the developers and then those requirements are positioned to design a solution There are set of activities in requirement engineering to produce reliable, high quality and trustworthy system

Eliciting requirements: Identify system stake holders its goals and expectations

with clearly defined system boundaries

Modelling or specifying requirements: Here focus will be on systematic

modelling of both functional and non functional requirements Functional

requirements are specified by system processing states, events (input events,

output events, process execution signals) and system data System data may include identification of data objects, data types, data sources, end-user screen displays, and meta-data, as well as construction of a data dictionary Functional requirements should also specify system data flow through system or subsystem states as controlled or synchronized by events

In contrast, Non-Functional requirements can be goals, capabilities, and

constraints that situate the functional system within some context of operation

Analyzing requirements: Identify system reasoning of the internal consistency,

completeness, or correctness of a specification

Validating requirements: Here we assess feasibility of modelled system

solution, as well as to identify realizable and improbable system requirements

Next step would be to understand the different technical requirements that should be gathered for developing a system At last how to understand the validation of the system

1.2) Background

1.2.1) what is grid computing?

Grid computing can be defined as an environment which uses the geographically distributed computers connected through internet collectively for high performance computing and resource sharing This involves computers from multiple organizations crossing organizational boundaries and enables the creation of distributed teams (called as VO- Virtual Organizations) The main goal of Grid computing is to facilitate the creation of virtual organizations, till date there is no much concentration and work done on the policies and mechanism about how the virtual organizations will operate The criteria behind the creation of virtual organizations are collaborative delivery of specific product or service These organizations are created by bringing the different aspects of services and facilities for achieving a single purpose

1.2.2) what is Virtual Organization? What is the required environment for VO?

There is no single definition for the virtual organization for example [1] it is defined as a “dynamic collection of individuals and institutions which are required to share resources to achieve certain goals” [2] Virtual Organization is the temporary network of companies, customers, suppliers or employees linked

by information and communication technologies with a purpose of delivering a service or product

First we would like to give the brief description of the virtual organization [4] A

“Virtual Organisation” is simply a group of users with similar interests and

requirements who are able to work collaboratively with other members of the group and/or share resources (data, software, CPU, storage space, etc) regardless

of geographical location The principle theory of virtual organization is some of the key aspects they are: well defined processes and performance management

to deliver the quality service

The process of creating Virtual Organisation:

• Identify common goals and objectives

• Identify customers/clients and what are we going to do for them

• Identify the flow of work from beginning to end (Process)

• What systems/IT/services will you need to service the customer without acquiring people or buildings? (Systems)

• Identify performance measurement systems to ensure that service levels and profitability are maintained? (Metrics)

• Without the addition of people and buildings, how are we going to organise the Organisation

Required Environment for virtual organisation

• Company goals that cannot be achieved without working together by a group of individuals, businesses or organisations

• Person required leadership skills to bring the group together

• A cluster coordinator -somebody who loves networking and is great at organisation and making things happen

• IT systems that allow the individuals to share ideas and information

• A budget to pay for meetings/IT infrastructure/marketing/performance measurement/team building between members etc [5]

C HAPTER 1.5 P ROBLEM S TATEMENT

A ND C HALLENGES

1.5) Problem Statement

1.5.1) Motivation leading to thesis

Usually if we look the university in the organizational perspective then we could find that university is the service provider by means of the Staff/employees usually employed by university itself to deliver the services, and students are the service consumers/seekers The main aim of the universities is to provide the better standard education with the maximum support from the staffs and administrative department easing the work of the students Today’s technology and concern for delivering proper services is moulded in to such organizations without any proper gathering of student requirements this leads to development

of a information system which is fully operational but which exists with improper work procedures and often increases the work pressure on the staff and management This pressure is indirectly mounted over the students making a negative impact on the experience of the students at the university So these drive our interest to find out how well the information management could be processed for providing a better support for a virtual organization

1.5.2) Challenge (research question)

Our research drives us to find out what are the most important aspects of requirement engineering? Also what are the most important aspects of validation? From the context of student centric services

1.5.3) Research methodology

The thesis is an investigation research from the context of student services where we would discuss about the organization, find the generic workflows and framework within the organization and gather the requirements which are important from the student’s point of view and also analyze their feedback and understand the different aspects where the university lags and what is the best part of university Trying to explore and discover the answer of making trust worthy environment for service delivery to the students

The figure below describes the support of the workflow by means of services

As usual university has defined staff and student’ work flow While considering some unclear tasks and responsibilities for the staffs leads to the failure of the defined workflows These in-turn increases the amount of workflow that individual has to perform leading to increased pressure This pressure is directly

or indirectly levied on the students and resulting in system failure

Fig 1) Support of work flow by services

With the perpetual decline in subsidization the future of education would depend

on alternatives and non-traditional methods of delivering its products The reasons which are pressurising the most of the educational institute for the better standards and the virtualization some of them being:

9 The increase in the demand for larger infrastructures and growing number of enrolments force the educational organizations to implement distant education with the similar standards

9 Students are striving for the courses which match their schedule and circumstances thus forcing the decline in the traditional learning

Students now a day are also looking at the future prospectus, benefits of pursuing the course with in a university either on-campus or through internet learning Due to this service organizations are facing much higher competition with the rise in the non-traditional and alternative competitors, in maintaining their fame and standard of education Other factors also affect the organizations some of them are:

9 Increase market demands and growing instability of available resources

9 Market conditions are unpredictable

9 Making the services offered more flexible and creative by maintaining the standards

9 Broadening the services offered with maintaining internal organizational behaviour and academic culture

1.5.4) Guidance to the Readers

In the chapter 2 we have described about the generic workflows within the university, Later

in Chapter 3 we have selected some work flows and discovered who the stake holders for

implementing those workflows and in detailed description of the implementation models In

chapter 4 we have discussed the most important aspect of a system i.e., Non-Functional

Requirements and why they are important for any system development Chapter 5 we have

taken up a case study about Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) and we have investigated the different aspects of this university among the fellow students, trying to list out what are their expectations and what issues they have encountered Later we have proposed a system which according to us would be one of the best possible ways to gain and improve the student’s appraisal Also we have described what Student Centric Services are and listed out some of

the services which could be implemented The final Chapter 6 gives the conclusion of our

thesis

1.6) Own Contribution

Gathering all the information for performing our thesis was not an easy task as there is no literature, no references and no books available for us to refer for gathering information We have discussed among ourselves and gathered most of the information about how to provide better support for the information management within any organization We have investigated and provided a background for the platform implementation for the Student Centric Services which could be implemented in Blekinge Tekniska Högskola for producing better standard of the services and also design the proper means of delivering the services to the students

In this thesis we have also described two different systems, first we have provided the detailed framework of setting up a “Remote laboratory” for performing remote experiments Second

we have designed a workflow of a “dialogue driven approach” model which would be helpful for providing the service in a much better interaction with the students These models could

be further put in to development using some technologies described by us in this thesis

1.7) Other Approaches

There could be other approaches for our thesis, according to us if the university hires some system development professionals who can take care of gathering the requirements from the students and also from the management and plan accordingly in setting up the stake holders within the organization with clear defined policies and responsibilities keeping in mind the mission of the organization Also there are lot of new technologies using which the system

“remote laboratory and dialogue based interactive information gathering system” can be developed

C HAPTER 2 W ORK F LOWS

2.1) Introduction to Work-flows

Work flows can be defined in different ways in general workflow is the tasks through a certain work process (Or) Work flow is the graphical representation

of certain flow of a process in order to take a decision or conclude any work

Specifically to say Workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure with details of how the tasks are structured, who performs the task, what is the order

of them and their information of the synchronization Some workflows are considered in the dimension of time

In the context of information technology the workflow is a model to support the internal part of the working /process methods of the software or the documents There are many more workflow paradigms which can be distinguished for scientific or business Here they depend on the purpose for which they have been designed and implemented

According to us the workflow for the educational service perspective can be defined as a process which has to be adopted and regularly updated by the university management or the students with which the needs and requirements

of the students can be met for their better performance and reducing the work load from the university management and staff

The main concern here would be to accumulate the expectations of the students

in the form of feedback and then to monitor them and create a system which could deliver efficiently and effectively the service

Our aim was to take the feedback of the registered students of the university about their experience of the process through which they have gone through and share their experience and expectations in order to create a better frame work by trying to find out flaws (if any) in the current approach of university towards student and vice versa

Below we have mentioned the different scenarios of the work flows of some processes carried out by the university:

1) Student Applying for Admission 2) Student requesting for Information 3) Student service for International Students (Accommodation / Pickup Services)

4) Student course registration process 5) Student Examination registration process 6) Final Award of Degree process

2.2) BTH Organisation Work-Flow Design

2.2.1) Student Applying for Admission

student

fills up the application form

submits the application with transcripts

receives the automated application reference number

B TH DA TA B A S E

Admission Department receives the Application form

Approve / Reject?

Approve Reject

B TH DA TA BA S E

Result sent to Admission department

course coordinator receives application

to student

Post the Admission letter And university Information to

Student Enter the student in the Admission Data base

2.2.2) Student service for International Students (Accommodation / Pickup Services)

student

BTH NEW STUDENTS DATABASE

BTH DATABASE

Set reminder depending on the Importance of the request

Request answered

Request is processed and answered

are maintained and monitored for the better performance

of student service and the system

2.2.3)

S T U D E N T C O U R S E R E G IS T R AT IO N

student

S tudent is rec eived and

enrolled in to univers ity

S tudent have to

s elec t the individual

c ours es ac c ording

to his c hoic e

C ours e details are updated

in the univers ity databas e

S tudent s elec ts the

c ours es

BT H C O U R S E R E G IS T R AT IO N

S Y S T E M

C ours e res pons ible and

s tudents get the regis tration

details

s tudent gets the m ail

w ith the c ours e details (s c hedule,m aterial,A s s ignm ents )

P rofes s or tak es the res pons ibility

to c hec k the s tudents approac h tow ards s tudies and learning

D etails and s tudents perform anc e are doc um ented and updated in c entralized databas e

This page is Intentionally Left Blank

C HAPTER 3 I MPLEMENTING

3.1) Identification of Stake Holders

3.1.1) who are stakeholders?

There are lot of definition about a stake holder some of them are:

A stake holder could be any one a person, a group, a business unit, an institution, or organization that has a share or an interest in a particular sector or system or set of activities

A stake holder could be any one with a common interest for a public / private sector organization for getting maximum benefits and achieve a goal

For an educational institution like BTH we find that there are some of the stake holders who are working altogether to gain the maximum benefits and also achieve the mission of the university

6 Responsible person ( the supreme head)

We could say that a stake holder is a person, or department or organization who has an interest in a process in the form of an obligation or having a benefit or service

3.1.2) what is the roles of stakeholders?

The stakeholders have responsibilities which lies in the participation and commitment to a process which involves learning and listening to the other groups This participation implies responsibility not to the individual process of the organization with which the stakeholder is concerned about but also for the whole So the stake holder participation implies taking up the responsibility to work effectively, to participate in the decision process, to create a common vision and to act towards achieving it for the common good

4) (Students administrator, provides all student service information and support)

5) (Administration dept, information regarding student’s admission) 6) (Students Expedition, answers student queries)

7) (International coordinator, information to the new students) 8) (Students union, takes care of students basic requirements for studies) 9) (Examination dept, provides the examination information and results)

INFORMATION SYSTEM

RESPONSIBLE HEAD

SYSTEM MAINTAINER

SYSTEM OWNER

Maintainer:

For such a big organizational system there would be maintenance department in order to check and maintain the proper functionality of the infrastructure and the different facilities provided by the system

We believe for all information which is to be provided should be maintained and delivered in a safe and secure channel/process and has to be delivered to the right person on request in order to maintain the transparency within the system

All the above information providers require the information and resource maintainers who would maintain the information and deliver to them There could be an either option of also being the information maintainer and also the information provider

We believe that the course responsible is the head of the particular program say

“Masters in technology” or “masters in Engineering” They have to gather, organize, maintain, implement and deliver the information to every student and administration dept regarding the course structure

The course structure is designed in such a way that the students gets the maximum knowledge by learning the subjects, this is decided by the head of the university (Rector/Dean) along with the course responsible we are not going to concentrate on how they decide and how they go for structuring the course The prime responsibility of the maintainer is to maintain the proper information

in a proper channel No wrong information or pseudo information should be available for the concerned of the data

Some of the lists of maintainers are:

1) (Course coordinator, maintains the course information on website) 2) (Program responsible, maintains the program schedule, slides and related info )

3) (Computer administration dept, maintains the student lab info) 4) (Librarian, maintains and updates the library catalogue ) 5) (Students administration dept, maintains the students course record) 6) (Examination dept, maintains the exam data and results information)

We as a student have found that in the course website IDENET we get lot of information regarding the courses which have already been scheduled before a year or two

So the concerned person who has inserted the course information or any valid information has to keep that information for a particular valid period of time Say until the course results have been finalized and been published So the very next thing for the responsible is to remove all the information provided at the site till the next time when the course is offered

The owner ship of a particular work or process is very much important for better results Every person who is uploading or updating the website information or any other information has to make sure that the information provided in the information sheets or data base are updated and correct, ultimately achieving best performance

Responsible Head:

The head of the university is the responsible head of the system which is implemented and is also one of the stake holders because he/she is concerned about the development of the organization let it be a company or any public or private sector organization

All the management decisions which are taken are approved by head of the institution Without his/her concern no decision can be taken or altered He is the supreme body of the system

3.2) Implementation Models

Implementing the services for the students can be classified in to three models they are (1) Database model (2) Client-Server model and (3) Variant of Web Services which are further classified in to (i) Web-Services (ii) Semantic Web One of the major aspect what we as a students look in for in a university is the use of information resources and also getting the valuable information at the right time in a right precision

The most common means of gathering information is through the fellow students, friends, course responsible, student’s information desk, students’ administration, course home pages and also the program responsible

Though most of the resources through which the students gather information are unofficial Most official process of getting the information is the course website

We would like to have the website in such a way that the students get the updated information right at their finger tips

Technology:

Implementing these services would drive the interest for the best of the current technology in the market with better user driven approach for their ease of use Some of the implementation models used is mentioned above These services developed should be information transparent, (i.e hiding the internal working process) and should be able to handle multiple requests or events

3.2.1) Data-Base model

First basic model could be either to develop a static website and then put in all the information in that but the technology and the market demands much more than that The most general model could be thought about is the Data-Base model where the developer develops the service by inserting all the information

in a database and then uploads/retrieves the information from the database when ever required This seems to be much more static rather than dynamic

A database model is a theory or specification describing how a database is

structured and used Common models include

• Hierarchical model

• Network model

• Relational model [6] The Hierarchical Model, in which record types are linked in a treelike structure (e.g., employee records might be grouped under a record describing the departments in which employees work)

The Network Model, in which arbitrary linkages of record types may be created (e.g., employee records might be linked on one hand to employees' departments and on the other hand to their supervisors—that is, other employees)

The Relational Model, is one in which all data are represented in simple tabular form, with relations like one-to-one, one-to-many etc

3.2.2) Client-Server Model

It’s very easy to say that “The client-server is the relation ship between two or more computers in which one program, the client makes the request to another program, the server which fulfils the request.” Its very general description, to implement the services in a client server model requires much more work than it seems to be, creating a client/server architecture which is scalable, robust, maintainable and effective system has proven to be a frustrating task for different large and medium scale organizations worldwide

• Before building a client-server system is a clear prospective of the requirements of the organization and the people, precise understanding of the system and its requirements, working knowledge of the abstract

architectures to define the structure for effective client-server systems, using the services model to design and verify the architecture

• Having the in-depth analysis of the working strategies and proper

understanding of using the proven strategies along with the basic guidelines

for designing the scalable, fault-tolerant distributed system for providing better data integrity and security

The simple example of the client server model is the World Wide Web (WWW)

If a user wants to check his bank statement online first his system acts like a client and it sends the request to the bank server which authenticates and gives a secure connection to the user so that he can do the bank transaction online

Fig 6) Client-Service Model

3.2.3) Variant of Web Services

Information can be defined as “It is a term with many meanings depending on

context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus.”

It has become the most important and valuable criteria for major business organizations and many other industries Businesses rely on technology to utilize the various types of information they depend on

But there exists a true common problem, which is connecting the two different systems together As various departments in an organization they want

to share data but in a large organization the data formats are different which turn makes the sharing of data difficult and time-consuming and this different formats or platforms can complicate the things while developing the new interface

in-Although the true value comes from connecting these systems together, for this kind of technology the web services offers a totally different approach to the enterprises for integration and development It provides the standard method for the software to interact From a business perspective web-services are about re-enabling technology to connect, change, and adapt like other aspects of business They are built on the industry standards by providing the means for software to interoperate across programming languages, platforms and operating systems They provide a structured way to format data

Using the web-services developers can develop set of the standard interfaces which can be added or implemented to the new or existing system using the simple Object Access Protocol and describe how to use the data using the WSDL (Web Services Description Language) By using these web services each department can access their data without any custom programming on application-by-application basis Using web services Description Language WSDL business organizations can connect to partners and clients using the same services which are used internally

Web services business model

One of the examples of a business model is the worlds leading web search company “Google” It provides a public search engine that contains the index of more than 3 billion web pages The business model which supports this search engine is advertising Users can access the service for free in exchange of viewing a few ads and Google collects the revenues from the business that place the ads Google provides a web service interface to the public search engine it is called the “Google Web APIs” which can be used to query the Google search engine from the applications itself This will return the structured data that can

be processed by the requesting application

Implementing the Web Services Applications

[12] There are three fundamental participants in fully deployed web service architecture They are service registry, service provider and service requester

Service Registry

Fig 7) Fundamental participants of Web Services

The service provider implements a service and publishes that service for use The service registry discovers the services dynamically based on specific criteria and ultimately invoked by a service requester [12]

Before beginning to develop or implement a web services the developer has to decide if a Web service implementation benefits your business process

When to perform the task?

Implementing web services applications is an easy way to integrate application systems together within or outside the organization infrastructure Else the

Service Provider

Service Requester

Find Publish

Bind

individual (different) systems would function as a standalone system without any internal coordination For example, the student’s information database is a standalone application, but you want the Medical Aid application to be able to access the student’s data Here we can create a web service for the student’s database and then enable the medical aid application as Web service client Now the medical aid application can access the student’s information

By implementing a web service these two applications can share the information

an efficient way The use of web services enables the option of adding new

application can be classified as follows:

• Plan to use web services

ices

s

OA) “A major focus of web services is to make functional building blocks

OA (Service Oriented rchitecture)

er: creates the web service ervice Broker: It is responsible for making the access information of the

potential clients It’s also called as

rovider to invoke one of its web services

in

innovative functions/ideas later on to the existing applications to address new opportunities and challenges

Steps for using the web service

• Migrating the existing web services if available (optional)

• Develop web services

• Configure the web services

• Assemble the web serv

• Deploy the web services

• Secure the web services

• Troubleshoot web service

T e Web services approach i(S

accessible over standard internet protocols (IP) that are independent from platforms and programming languages” These services can be new

applications or deployed on the existing legacy system

There are one or more roles for the building blocks of S

Service requestor: The client locates entries in the broker registry and then

binds the service p

Fig 8) SOA Architecture

Many standards organizations and industry groups have undertaken development of web services specifications and implementation resources Some of the available resources are formalized protocols and standards, architecture models, roadmaps, infrastructure blueprints, guidelines for application development, and implementation models, etc

[10] Some of them are as follows:

1 JSSL Web Service Reference Architecture (WSRA)

2 OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) TC

3 Semantic Web Services Initiative (SWSI)

4 W3C Web Services Architecture Activity and Working Group

5 Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) [10]

6 Applications developed using XML,

7 Applications developed using Java / J2EE environment

8 Using Microsoft Net frameworks

9 Using Web Sphere Server Application development

Fig 9) Interaction of Stakeholders with Web-Services