SKYVA International
2000 – 2002 SKYVA Solution Environment (SSE)
IDE for creating model-based enterprise applications
After finishing the web integrator project in 2000 I joined the SSE development team. The SSE is an application, which enables the user to model business processes and to generate / compose enterprise applications based on this model. Development on the SSE began in 1997. In 2000 the shortcomings of the product became clear and a re-implementation, based on SKYVA's own UML virtual machine, was necessary. My responsibilities included:
• Domain Model Design and Implementation
• Tool Development (Mapping tools, Web tools)
• Look & Feel Design
• Various Frameworks (Commands, Actions, LAF)
• Configuration (via XML files)
• Deployment (*.war, *.ear files)
Project size: 20 developers, 5000 Java classes and 1 million lines of code.
Figure 1: SKYVA Solution Environment
Figure 2: Example Workbench (State Modeling)
2000 Web
Integrator
Tool for modeling web applications
The vision of my employer was that "the business process is the application," meaning that solutions can be derived or generated from the company's processes. Based on this vision the requirement arose that web applications, too, should be modeled. I was assigned with the task to implement a tool that would fulfill this requirement. The result is a tool called the "Web Integrator."
Web Integrator creates (or imports) special HTML pages that feature a *.sky suffix. These pages contain SKYVA proprietary tags for embedded widgets.
<skyvawidget name="MyTable" type="table">
A partial page logic model gets created for each page that is parsed. The user can now use the tool to complete the model with input parameters, page and form beans, conditional statements, and jumps to the next page. At runtime specialized servlets return the *.sky pages to web browsers and trigger the appropriate server-side functionality when the end user makes a selection or clicks on a button. These servlets use the model of each page to determine its dynamic content and its behavior.
The Web Integrator deploys applications via the WAR file standard, which allows them to be run on any web server that is compatible with the Java Servlet API. Initially the tool was written as a standalone application. Later on it was integrated into the SSE.
The Apache open source project "Struts" is a comparable technology, although it focuses more on the logic that gets executed when the user submits a form, while the Web Integrator also allows to model how dynamic page content gets created.
Figure 3: Web Integrator running inside the SSE
1999 – 2000 Sonopress /
Bertelsmann AG
Manufacturing planning and execution system
Sonopress is a major CD manufacturer in North Carolina and belongs to the German Bertelsmann AG. SKYVA developed a planning and execution system for their CD manufacturing sites in the US and in Europe. For this project I worked closely with our scheduling team in order to implement a sophisticated Gantt chart user interface.
1999 Gantt Chart Customizer
Tool for customizing user interfaces for scheduling agents
Various projects at SKYVA required the use of a Gantt chart user interface. Each project, however, had its own special way of displaying information about orders and resources. In order to save time and development resources, I developed the Gantt Chart Customizer. The Customizer not only enabled its user to specify a large number of visualization features (colors, diagram types, timeline attributes) but also to define queries to the backend.