German website

project term: WS 2006/2007

2 parallel project groups with 3 packages each (altogether 16 participants)

The goal was to implement a simple functionality according to the specifications given in the research field tourist information system. The focus was the implementation of a SOA with web services. The flexible and open integration of information providers as demanded by specification was not part of the project.

This project was based on a general concept for the tour scheduler functionality of a tourist information system which had been implemented at DaimlerChrysler in 1999 - 2001 with the state-of-the-art technique of that time. The general concept was handed out to the participants of this project. It is available in German only. In contrast to the former project, most interfaces of this project had to be implemented as web services.

The project was organized in three independent subprojects:

Subproject 1: Routing (Realization of tour scheduling und trip planning agent with connection to a public routing information system)

Subproject 2: Tourist GUI

Subproject 3: Touristic Content Provision (Realization of a brokering agent agent with a few (at least 2 different) content agents using different ontologies. Implementation of a simple ontology agent.)

The following applied to all subprojects:

1) The application domain for the contents referred to Hamburg only.

2) All interfaces to agents of other subprojects had to be implemented according to the general concept specification (as web services).

3) The ontology defined in the general concept had to be maintained strictly syntacticly (XML) and semantically.

For feasibility reasons, the following relaxations from the general concept were taken:

1) The interface to a mobile device (PDA) was not considered.

2) The content providers offered a very limited service: The trip planner was confined to the web service functionality of the Hamburg transportation system provided by GEOFOX. The touristic content servers were based on data bases and files edited by hand.

3) The tourist GUI had no direct connection to the ontology agent. So it could not get configured individually by the user.

4) The implementation of a value-added service by the brokering agent was not done. But the brokering agent still had to be able to mediate services offered by any content agent.

5) The ontologies were only backed by a single language (German). However, a multiple language concept had to be maintained in the interfaces.

Two different solution had been implemented by two independent project groups. In each solution, subproject 1 was implemented by two different subsolutions which could be chosen by the user.

The first project group worked with the same programming language (Java) in all subprojects and used Axis as a web service generator. The second project group worked with different programming languages for different subprojects and used proprietary interfaces. Both solutions could be demonstrated successfully. However, they were implemented on specially designed test servers only, for which reasons they cannot be demonstrated as permanent web applications.

Each solution enabled a user to choose different sights of Hamburg and let the system configurate a tour connecting all these sights in a reasonable way.

Project group 1:

Subproject 1: Benedikt Westphal, Slah Garbi (Java)
Subproject 1: Sven Urbanski, Melanie Storm (Java)
Subproject 2: Kai Burjack, Martin Stoev (Java)
Subproject 3: Patrick Kamin, Matthias Kleinschmidt (Java)

Project group 2:

Subproject 1: Martin Vollsen, Mirco Schenkel (PHP)
Subproject 1: Sebastian Schröder, Tobias Baumann (PHP)
Subproject 2: Nikolaus Stoll, Daniel Jarosch (Java)
Subproject 3: Arne Mohr, Steffen Rüther (C#)