D 8.doc - dynoca

The information contained in this report is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by a
ny members
of the
DYNOCA

Consortium. In the event of any software or algorithms being described in this report, the
DYNOCA

Conso
rtium assumes
no responsibility for the use or inability to use any of its software or algorithms. The information is provided without any

warranty of any
kind and the
DYNOCA

Cons or t i um expr es s l y di s c l a i ms a l l i mpl i ed wa r r a nt i es, i nc l udi ng but not l i mi t e
d t o t he i mpl i ed wa r r a nt i es of
mer c ha nt a bi l i t y a nd f i t nes s f or a pa r t i c ul a r us e.



COPYRI GHT 2001 THE DYNOCA Cons or t i um

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DYNOCA
Cons or t i um. I n a ddi t i on, t o s uc h wr i t t en per mi s s i on t o c opy, a c knowl edgement of t he a ut hor s of t he doc ument a nd a l l a ppl i c a bl
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Key Action II Action Line 2.3:

Dynamic Networked Organisations

IST Project 11065


A System to Realise Dynamic Networked Organisations on
Heterogeneous Networks in the Consultancy / Agency Sector


First Prototype of the DYNOCA System


Project Acronym
:

D
YNOCA

Project Number
:

IST
-
1999
-
11065

Deliverable Reverence Number:

D8

Type of Deliverable:

P
-

Pototype

Contractual Delivery Date
:

January, 2001

Actual Delivery Date
:

July, 2001

Dissemination Level:

PP
–

Restricted to other programme participants

Workpackage Responsible:

Lutz Rabe (artundweise)

Document Author/s
:

Lutz Rabe (artundweise)

Michel Benet (ISO
-
Informatique)

Document Editor
:

Lutz Rabe (artundweise)

Document Status
:

Final

Key Words:

First Prototype, DYNOCA System, Team
Management, Coll
aboration software



D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




Executive Summary

This deliverable D8 outlines the first DYNOCA prototype. It gives an overview on the
software and component architecture as well as a presentation of the funktional modules of
the system and it’s GUI.

The work of the

task 3.2 Implementation of the first DYNOCA prototype is mainly based on
the results of WP2 and the deliverable D7 Specification of the DYNOCA System developed
in the task 3.1 of WP3.




D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




I

Table of Content


1

INTRODUCTION

................................
................................
................................
.

1

1.1

Objectives

................................
................................
................................
.......

1

1.2

Contents of Actions of Task 3.1

................................
................................
...

2

1.3

Integration of Task 3.1 in Project Coherence

................................
..............

2

2

TECHNICAL APPROACH

................................
................................
...................

4

3

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
AND COMPONENTS

................................
.............

5

3.1

Description of Clients Architecture

................................
..............................

5

3.2

Description of Sever Architecture and Component Specification
.............

6

4

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTUR
E

................................
................................
...........

7

5

GRAPHICAL USER INTER
FACE

................................
................................
.......

8

6

FUNCTIONAL SYSTEM DE
SCRIPTI
ON

................................
............................

9

6.1

Homezone

................................
................................
................................
.......

9

6.2

Team

................................
................................
................................
.............

10

6.3

Mail

................................
................................
................................
................

11

6.4

Contacts

................................
................................
................................
.......

12

6.5

Data

................................
................................
................................
...............

13

6.6

Forum

................................
................................
................................
............

15

7

CONCLUSIONS

................................
................................
................................

16

8

LITERATURE

................................
................................
................................
....

17


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




1

1

Introduction

1.1

Objectives

The DYNOCA project aims at enabling and supporting dynamic networked organisation
s in
the consultancy/agency sector carrying out media/design and consultancy projects. Typical for
this sector are temporary projects with distributed players of very different size (ranging from
large enterprises to micro enterprises and freelancers) work
ing in heterogeneous environments
(e.g. SUN or IBM workstations, PC, Apple MacIntosh). The teams, who carry out the work,
are sometimes world
-
wide distributed. Beside the cultural and lingual problems this also
means working with people living in different

time zones.

An additional feature of this kind of project team is, that the same actor could participate in
more then one project at the same time, but playing different roles for a limited period. This
has to be handled through easy membership administra
tion services. To protect the
confidential information against unauthorised third parties, security mechanisms like secure
transmission, encrypted messages and digital signatures have to be an integral part of the
DYNOCA developments.

1.1.1

Global Project Object
ives

The global objectives of the DYNOCA project are:



To enable European enterprises including SMEs to increase their competitiveness in the
global marketplace, specifically for the consultancy/agency sector.



To allow European enterprises including SMEs to

overcome constraints in working
methods and organisation imposed by distance and time and to enable them participating
in dynamic networked organisations.

1.1.2

Workpackage Objectives

Based on the reference models developed in WP2 the DYNOCA
-
System will be spec
ified and
implemented. This takes Internet standards such as Java Server Pages (JSP), Java Beans,
JDBC, and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) into account.

1.1.3

Task Objectives


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




2

Objective of this task is to specify precisely and in detail the DYNOCA system components
wi
th respect to the processes and requirements of the DYNOCA end users documented in the
deliverables D3 and D4. The task 3.1 considers the topics of software functionality, software
integration as well as user interface design.

1.2

Contents of Actions of Task 3
.1

One of the first actions in this task was the elaboration of required system functionalities
based on the requirements of the DYNOCA end user. The definition of the basic system
architecture and the definition of basic technologies followed this. During

this the consortium
took into account the



common usability for the DYNOCA system



availability of the technology



availability of knowledge and experiences within the consortium



degree of progressiveness



degree of standardisation

1.3

Integration of Task 3.1 in
Project Coherence

The work of Task 3.2 is mainly based on the results of task 3.1 especially the deliverable D7.
The output of task 3.2 is the key input for the system development and implementation of the
prototypes 2, which is task 3.3 of this workpackag
e.

1.3.1

Input

The basic input for the development of the DYNOCA system specification are:



The consolidated end
-
user requirements (deliverable D3) developed in task 1.3



the reference model for modular software systems supporting dynamic networked
organisations
(deliverable D5) developed in task 2.2.



The specification of the DYNOCA system as well as the end user input during the
implementation, testing and evaluation phase.

1.3.2

Outputs


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




3

The output of the task 3.2 is the functional and technical specification of the se
cond prototype
of the DYNOCA system. These specifications are manly documented within this deliverable
D11 and D13. The system specification documented in deliverable D7 will be revised and
extended with the details of this first prototype as well as the r
esults of evaluation of the first
prototype by the end user.

1.3.3

Continuing Tasks

Based on the development of task 3.2 the development and implementation of second
prototype (task 3.3) will be done.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




4

2

Technical Approach

Due to the rapid prototyping approach of
the DYNOCA project result, the result of the
workpackage 3 and specifically the task 3.2 and 3.3 will be adopted to the end users
requirements several times.

Coming from the deliverable D7, which defines the technological and functional framework,
the DYNO
CA consortium (re
-
) defined the specification of the DYNOCA system with
implementing the first prototype regarding the technological functional details.

To ensure that the system still fits the vision of the end users (parts of) the software was
presented
several times during the implementation period.

The implementation process itself was performed by artundweise and ISO
-
Informatique
followed the concurrent engineering approach. Both partners implemented particular parts of
the software within a predefined

framework.





D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




5

3

System Architecture and Components

Within this the overall architecture of the First DYNOCA Prototype and utilized components
will be described in detail.

3.1

Description of Clients Architecture

The overall system architecture follows the speci
fication defined in the D7: Specification of
the DYNOCA
-
System. Thus, the prototype system follows the client server architecture.

The following picture gives an overview of the technological component architecture
regarding clients’ computer.


Client re
quirements in detail are



a common Internet browser such as IE5.0 or Netscape 4.7 or above able to process
JavaScript and to store cookies and



the ability to receive emails. This can be realizes by the utilisation of an inhouse mail
service as well as a in
ternet based application service provider.


DYNOCA-Client
Browser (IE, Netscape)
HTML-Page
Form Elements
Static HTML
TCP/IP
Internet
Java Script

D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




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3.2

Description of Sever Architecture and Component Specification

The following Picture gives an overview of the technological server architecture and utilized
components regarding the server.


Detailed description

of the components especially the utilized version is given in the
following table.

Component

Name

Version

Remark

Database

PostgreSQL

7.0.2
-
17


Java Virtual Machine

Java Classic VM

1.3.0

J2RE, IBM build cx
130
-
20010502 JIT
enabled

Java Application
Serve
r

Resin

1.1.6


HTML Server

Apache

1.3.12
-
25



DYNOCA-Server
Internet
TCP/IP
Java Server Pages
(Resin)
HTTP
(Apache)
JAVA
(SUN JDK)
RDBMS
(PostgrSQL)
Data
Business Logic

D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




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4

Software Architecture

The DYNOCA Software should be on a high degree reusable. To ensure this and to fulfil the
requirements of usability and security defined in the objectives above developing partners
agree
d on the following software architecture framework.


JSP
Java
HTML
Presentation
Dispatcher
Application specific Modules
Application neutral Modules
RDBMS
Other Protocols
Interface / User
Request
Session

D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




8

5

Graphical User Interface

Basically the GUI of the DYNOCA should reduce the complexity of the system by keeping
simultaneous the range of functionality. The requirements to the Graphical User Interface
(GUI) were defined in the D7: Specification of the DYNOCA
-
System. The definition of the
GUI requirements is covering both, the common user interface of the clients as well as the
specific interfaces for the system administrator and the user interfaces on t
he server. Common
requirements for the user interface were:



easy and intuitive usability



reduction of client requests (and network traffic)



presentation of data in HTML



optimisation for the display resolution of 800*600


More than this, the DYNOCA system G
UI should support aspects derived from
commercialisation point of view. Thus, the GUI should be easily adapt
-

and customisable.
Based on this, standard elements (such as navigation tabs) are presented by library modules
and presentation attributes (such as

font definitions and screen colours) are defined in separate
style sheets.





D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

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6

Functional System Description

The functional concept of the DYNOCA system is based on following assumption.



Users have the need to organize information individual



Users have the

need to share information within a team



Users are participating within several teams at the time



Some kind of information needs to be pushed to the user others need to be pulled by
the user


With respect to this the DYNOCA system is divided into the user
specific and individual area
named Homezone and several team
-
oriented modules were data is generated, stored or
modified. Data such as contacts, mails or files are team specific means not accessible by other
system users than the team members.

The user is
always logged in a team, at least in his own after entering the system. Changing
the team can be done manually by selecting a team from a list of available teams or by the
selection of an object of the Homezone stored in another team than the current.

6.1

Home
zone

The following picture gives an impression of the homezone GUI.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




10


The Homezone is the individual area for the system user. The complete data structure is user
centric and not accessible from others. Basically the Homezone is just representing data. The

data itself is stored in the utilized modules of the several teams the user is participating.

Basic functionality of the Homezone is to inform the user about changes in the data within
one of the teams he is participating. This can be a new mail, an upda
ted contact form or an
new entry in a specific forum.

The selection of an element stored in another team than the current forces changing the team
and entering the detail
-
view within the specific module.

6.2

Team

The following picture gives an impression of th
e team area.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

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11


Within the team module the user is able to view the settings of the several teams he is joining.
The administrator of the team is able to change the settings. Basic settings are:



Name of the team



Description of the team



Picture of the team /

Logo



Members of the team



Status of the team member (currently ogged in or not)


Administrators are also able to



invite new users or to delete the access of existing user to the team and to



delete the team account

6.3

Mail


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




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The following picture gives an impre
ssion of the mail module.


Within the mail
-
module user is able to search for existing team mails (send and received) or to
create new mails. Based on the concept teams possess their individual mail address. Thus,
every user possesses his individual mail a
ddress.


6.4

Contacts

The following picture gives an impression of the contact module.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




13


Within the contact module users and teams are able to set up individual contact information to
persons or companies. The contact module is integrated to mail means users a
re able to select
recipients from the contact module.

6.5

Data

The following picture gives an impression of the data module.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




14


The data module enables the user to structure data in any way. Data can be from the following
type



File: File that can be uploaded to

the server



Text, date, number, boolean: Entry of the User



FTP: Complete (sub
-
) directory of any FTP
-
server



SQL: SQL
-
query to a database



WWW: Link to any web page



Link: Link to another entry in the data structure


Objects in the data module are organized s
uch as objects in other module. Thus, users are able
to administrate data under a team specific root node.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

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6.6

Forum

The following picture gives an impression of the forum module.


The forum module enables the user to communicate in a topic and team oriented
way. Each
user is able to create a threat were team users are able to write information in. A forum thread
can be send to the own or to another users Homezone to track the development of the thread.



D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




16

7

Conclusions

This report outlines the modules setting up
the overall DYNOCA system. Due to the
specification, no specific requirements are needed for the clients. The user interface is coded
using HTML with minor exceptions for the data module (Java Scrip). Normal widely
distributed web browsers with enabled Jav
a, JavaScript and Cookies are sufficient for
accessing the system.

Therefore, implementation work focused on the server software. The implemented modules
are specified in detail in this document. The basic technologies are Internet standards like
HTTP, Jav
a Server Pages (JSP), Java Servlets, and Enterprise JavaBeans and session
management. Data storage is done in relational database systems.

The development of the second prototype
–

based on the former specifications of the
deliverable 7 and the experiences

made with the implementation of the first prototype
–

started
and is progressing well. Therefore, an incremental improvement an adaptation to real end
-
user
needs can be realised.


D 8: First DYNOCA Prototype

IST 1999 Project Number 11065




17

8

Literature

DYNOCA Consortium: Annex 1 Description of Work, Preparation Date:
7 October 1999.

DYNOCA Deliverable D3: Consolidated DYNOCA End
-
User Requirements. July 2000.

DYNOCA Deliverable D5: Reference Model for Modular Software Systems for Support.
September 2000.

DYNOCA Deliverable D7: DYNOCA System Specification. September 2000
.