Desarrollo de las diversas opciones de refinamiento de la malla

The Logistics Mall in stage 2 extends the SaaS model supported in stage 1 by providing application integration support for applications in a CAF as well as for applications in the mall with applications outside. Integration support in a CAF is provided by the Logistics Mall Bus and by the Business Object Repository. Inte- gration of CAF internal applications with applications outside of the Logistics Mall is supported by means of the Logistics Mall Gateway. The Logistics Mall in stage 2 and 3 supports not only traditional applications but apps as well. From the Logistics Mall point of view an app executes IT-based activities as part of logistics processes. Apps can be combined to complex workflows. They can be interactive or fully automated. The functionality ranges between simple services in the sense of SOA and complex applications. Apps communicate by exchanging business objects via the Logistics Mall Bus within a CAF or via the Logistics Mall Gateway with external parties. They can also share objects within the Business Object Repository. More details on Logistics Mall Apps are given in [4].

The Logistics Mall Bus enables an asynchronous exchange of Logistics Mall Business Objects between connected applications within a CAF. The bus provides a web service interface that accepts a business object from a sending application. The bus buffers a business object and passes it to a receiving application via web service request.

The Business Object Repository stores instances of Logistics Mall Business Object types. The repository can store the objects that are used within an application but can also act as a shared data source for multiple applications. A detailed discussion of Logistics Mall Business Objects and their repository can be found in [5] (Fig.13). Fig. 12 Logistics Mall physical infrastructure (development and test environment)

The Logistics Mall in stage 3 also provides for logistics business process management from process design to process execution. The web-based Logistics Process Designer supports Logistics Mall compliant design of logistics processes by combining apps from the mall to executable workflows. These processes can then be deployed on a process engine that forms an integral part of a CAF in stage 3. For more details on process management in the Logistics Mall we refer to [6].

5.1 Logistics Mall Bus

The Logistics Mall Bus represents the internal communication infrastructure of a CAF. It provides web service interfaces for the exchange of Logistics Mall Business Objects between connected applications. Business objects are transferred as Busi- ness Object Documents according to OAGIS [7] in XML format.

The Logistics Mall Bus provides the TransferBOD webservice server that is called by an application or by to pass a business object to the bus. The bus transfers a business object into the queue of the receiving application. For each connected application the bus maintains such a queue for buffering BODs until they can be passed to the receiving application. The ReceiveBOD webservice client transfers the BODs from an application’s queue via webservice call to the application connector (see Fig.14). The bus log records all transfers so that theflow of business object can be traced if necessary.

Figure15shows the Logistics Mall in stage 2 from a technical perspective. The Logistics Mall Bus is implemented by means of the open source talend enterprise service bus [8]. For the buffering of messages Apache JMS queues are used [9].

5.2 Logistics Mall Gateway

The Logistics Mall Gateway is the interface of the Logistics Mall to the outside world. The gateway coordinates and controls the communication between appli- cations in the mall and their outside peers. Information exchange is only allowed Fig. 14 Transfer of BODs between applications in a CAF

between a product instance in a CAF and registered external parties. Partners and connections are managed in corresponding gateway directories. Each mall customer is enabled to manage communication connections between their booked applica- tions and their external partners. For the information exchange different channels can be used. Currently, web services and ftp is supported, other channels can be added when needed. As exchange format Logistics Mall Business Objects are preferred, other electronic document types can be used as well, but in combination with a converter application in the mall.

The gateway restricts the communication to authorized parties only. For the exchange of Logistics Mall Business Objects the gateway also limits the transfer to object types specified for a defined connection with a registered partner, e.g. partner A may only send purchase orders per web service to the order management system in a CAF if the partner is listed in the gateway directory and the connection is defined there accordingly. For each business object the gateway also checks its structural correctness (Fig.16).

The Logistics Mall Gateway is implemented by means of the 4D rapid appli- cation development environment [10]. The Logistics Mall runs a single gateway server and each CAF gets its own LMG console that is connected with the mall client’s part of the gateway server.