News from Intellect

Second Integration Meeting in Bremen

May 21-23, 2001

In May 2001, the project partners of INTELLECT (especially the developers) work hard together to establish the first prototype the INTELLECT project. Therefore all partners came to Bremen for the second Integration Meeting (IM), after the first one in April was not successful.

The second integration meeting this year was more successful as the first one. More functionality could be tested, some problems got solved and even more interoperability between modules was shown. It was not possible to integrate all modules, because there was no eShop-Frontend on one hand and the compatibility issue of tomcat4 regarding helpdesk on the other hand. Nevertheless, the meeting was really useful, because problems between modules were solved and more parts of the INTELLECT product have been integrated. The INTELLECT consortium can show a prototype during the review, but this prototype does not implement all defined features, yet.

The complete eShop could not been shown during this integration meeting, because the database and application server problems have not been solved in time. Current status is, that the back-end system is completely running but the front-end still does not exist with the exception of one demo page. Actually, the front end (the web pages) can talk now to the back end system. That was one of the improvements of this integration meeting. Now, OptiNet will test the system with a running database and application server. First start-up pages are available now. There has been no formal testing of the eShop. That will be completed in this days before the review starts. The administrative tool is missing, meaning that we cannot add new component and new product to the shop via this tool. But this is a customer feature for easier handling of the eShop products and will integrate in the near future. Actually, we can add new products directly in the source code.

The configurator seems to have most of the targeted functionality working. It has been tested using the administrative tools. Some method had to be added or changed during the meeting to enable the availability features of the order-processing module. The administrative tool was enhanced to enable a better view of information.

The page mirroring works on html files or html output. But it can't run on the application server as long as version 4 of tomcat is final and integrated with JBoss. There is also a conflict between xml parsers in the current implementation of tomcat4 beta implying that tomcat4 (that is needed by helpdesk) and cocoon (aka the e-Shop) can't be used together. This cannot be fixed before the review because we depend on the development of tomcat4 and its integration into jboss.

Order processing has been tested and works. The availability feature was almost completed during the meeting after the configurator supplied the desired methods and should be completed by next weekend. The forum is working but it was not called by the e-shop. But it should be a task of a few minutes to implement the forum in the shop.

The 3D applet is working, it has loaded successfully the two products that are defined in the data testing set. All the tested functionality worked. Some functionality that has been successfully tested using dummy configurator, help-desk and e-Shop could not be tested in the integrated product due to the lack of functionality in these modules. This should be fixed before the review.

The integration status is:

The interaction between configurator and the back end of the e-shop is working
The interaction between order processing and the configurator was successful after the configurator supplied new methods in its interface
The interaction between the virtual reality and the configurator was half working.
The interaction between the front end of the e-Shop and the VR module, that is the ability to launch the 3D applet from the E-Shop (provided the right parameter regarding the product and the customer) is not yet implemented.
The e-Shop is not sending events to the help-desk interface, but as the event processing in help-desk is the same as for the VR-module, the help-desk side surely is functional (and VR has proven accessibility)
The e-Shop make up orders (from an xml file) to the order processing module
The interaction between help-desk and virtual reality is half working. The events send by the VR module are well received by the help-desk module and stored in a database for later usage

For the review in Brussels some scenarios were defined and parameters were fixed. The client of the demo will be in priority Explorer 5.5 or netscape 6. The basic scenario is to show the features of the e-Shop (user-login, member registration, browsing the catalogue, opening the forum) then selection of a product to configure. This opens the VR module, where the object is loaded. Show of the VR module, rotation, zoom, then configuration. Change of some components. When the configuration is done, through the VR module, the product is added to the basket. This should reload the e-Shop. After that the customer buy the product - this launch the order processing module. Here some mails are sent for demonstration. Also manual event activation is possible. Then the administrative tool of the Configurator will shown, and the 3D module. Then the help-desk mirroring functionality will be shown outside the application server with a demo page (due to the current incompatibility between cocoon and tomcat 4).