German website

project terms: 2009, 2011

software projects in the master's course

participants 1. version: Christoph Forster, Thomas Kresalek
participant version 2.0: Felix-Alexander Döppers

It was intended to implement a prototype for demonstration of the basic functionality of the long-term software project Tourist Information System conducted in the research activities for scheduling and logistics.

The basic functionality comprises of the selection of locations to be visited in a category tree. The locations to be selected were to be provided by predefined web locations and were to be extended by definitions of the user. The user had to be enabled to select the order of the locations to be visited, but an automatic computation of the order had also to be implemented. The route between different locations had to be computed automatically considering road navigation as well as public transportation.  For version 2.0, an automatic tour optimiser and the consideration of visiting constraints had to be integrated.

The user interface had to be a web browser, the connection to web providers had to be implemented via web services.

Each project phase had to be started with the elaboration of exact requirement specifications which is provided on the German website.

A prototype satisfying the full functionality specified above had been implemented and may be tested here. The windows comply to agreed standards which are not satisfied by all browsers (e.g. older versions of InternetExplorer). Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are working perfect.

The effort provided exceeded the load defined by the official ECTS points more than twice: The resulting prototype ist worth more than 1500 working hours.

The prototype was installed at a server of FH Wedel and operated there permanently. If connection fails for a longer period (more than a day), please notify me.

The content providers connected by web services are Qype and TravelFeedBack for locations and Panoramio for pictures which is used for the environment of each location selected. Further the Geofox system provided by HBT is used for Hamburg public transportation infos, and GoogleMaps is used for road navigation. All information sources are available for a much larger range in principle, but for scalability reasons they were restricted to Greater Hamburg by geo-coordinates.

The software provides a backbone defining an own category tree to which the categories of Qype and TravelFeedBack are mapped automatically. This is why the implementors are not in charge of wrong allocations of POIs to categories: This is due to the allocations of the content providers. The same holds for the content descriptions and the route computations.

In addition to the tasks of the requirements specification an extended environmental service was provided powered by Panoramio. This enables even the automatic integration of pictures to user-defined locations if there is a name match.

With version 2.0, there is also an automatic tour configurator that considers visiting constraints.

If you are interested: There is plenty of opportunities to improve this prototype. The kernel may also be used to install it for other cities. The switch to different languages should also be integrated very easily.