| |
Key Issues
The planning and executing consultancy/agency (CA) projects between customer,
main contractor, sub-contractors, etc. requires extensive information exchange
between the different organisations involved (inter-organisational information
exchange). Such a scenario is given by the following figure.
Technology has developed very fast in the last two decades, but fact
is, that for information exchange unstructured media like phone and fax
are most often used. Companies, who call themselves innovative, use already
email; only a very small amount of companies start to think about inter-organisational
integration of information systems. Using only email and fax to implement
the inter-organisational interface for information exchange is not enough!
Lots of errors could occur due to media breaks, which make the re-entering
of data necessary. The need for cost effective solutions allowing enterprises
to work in temporary cooperations |
|
in distributed teams supporting
all functions for project planning and execution is evident. Up to now,
the market does not offer sufficient low-cost solutions.
Most of them are too limited in functions - or too expensive for the smaller
companies.
Emerging de-facto standards allow to implement systems meeting the requirements
of CA projects, e. g. -> XML (eXtended Markup Language) is one of the
new emerging standards. Currently documents coded in HTML can be exchanged
world-wide. But HTML focuses on Layout, documents do not have a structure.
XML as a subset of SGML allows the definition of structured document with
so called DTD (Document Type Definitions). A XML document contains information
in a structured form. Together with the DTD and XSL (eXtended Style Sheet
Language) it is possible to create different views of a XML document. ->
JAVA and JAVA Beans is an emerging standard. The beans concept allows the
realisation of reusable platform independent software components with open
interfaces written in JAVA. There are already a set of JAVA beans with the
functionality of XML-Parsers available. JiniŠ (Java Intelligent Network
Infrastructure) needs also to be considered. -> Industry standards for
RDBMs Interfaces.
|
|
Currently, several standards for
interfacing Relational Database Systems (RDBMs) to the Internet are emerging.
An interesting solution is, e. g., provided by Apple called WebObjects.
This solution has originally been developed by NEXT, but it is now available
for most common platforms. The most innovative aspects of the DYNOCA project
are:-> In difference to state-of-the-art in-house systems, the DYNOCA
system is designed for the inter-organisational information and work flow
independent from the computing environment used by the different organisations.
-> In difference to state-of-the-art groupware systems, the DYNOCA system
is supporting all necessary functions needed for executing a CA project
in a dynamic networked organisation with a distributed team. Functions include
tendering, resource planning, scheduling, controlling, workflow management,
accounting, invoicing and payments. -> The DYNOCA system is designed
for users who practice multi-project execution and who want inter-organisation
information system integration using emerging Internet standards like XML
(eXtended Markup Language), Java and Java Beans, SSL (Secure Socket Layer)
for secure transactions, Digital Signatures, Innovative Internet-RDBMs Interfaces
|
|
