Learn what Autodesk and FTD are doing to move Java into the enterprise arena
On November 19, Sun Microsystems held its second Java Computing Day in Chicago. The 600 attendees, primarily corporate developers, came with high expectations. No longer satisfied with hype (or answers to simple questions such as “What is Java?” and “Why use Java?” that were offered at a similar event here in January), they wanted to know how to use Java and whether or not Java is ready for mission-critical business applications.
The event sought to address these questions in part by showcasing a few Java-based applications being used for mission-critical applications. Two such applications are the sales and customer-service systems used by Autodesk and FTD.
Autodesk “extends the enterprise”
Autodesk, maker of the popular AutoCAD computer-aided design software, recently called upon Andersen Consulting to extend its enterprise applications to its 1,000 dealers to provide more accurate information and better service to its dealers and customers.
One way of extending the enterprise was to allow dealers to take orders directly. The existing order-taking process begins with a customer calling a dealer to place an order; the dealer then fills out a fax order form. One of the pitfalls of the existing system is that the dealer doesn’t necessarily have up-to-date data, and therefore may have to guess the current product price based on the dealer’s volume, or may not have up-to-date product codes.
Once the form is faxed to Autodesk, a customer service representative picks up the faxed order and re-enters the data into two of Autodesk’s enterprise systems. This requires two sessions, one into each enterprise system, and more than 10 data-entry screens.
Autodesk needed a simple, real-time, and cost-effective solution to allow dealers to directly place an order. The application had to be intuitive and easy to maintain and distribute. When Andersen Consulting suggested Java as a solution, Autodesk was open to the idea. After 7 months of development, the pilot application was rolled out to 50 users.
Using the Java-based application, dealers can place orders, inquire about orders, check an order’s status, and view the status of an account. The dealer accesses the application over the Internet, which uses HTTP security and encryption for secure communications. What used to be an order-entry process comprised of more than 10 screens on two systems is now a two-screen front end to both systems. Because dealers have direct access to the system, the turnaround time for an order has been reduced from two days to two hours, and the process no longer requires the involvement of an Autodesk customer service representative. By using Java, Autodesk has also side-stepped the software distribution problem altogether: Every dealer has instantaneous access to the most current version of the application that resides on the Autodesk Web site. The application is proving successful enough to include an additional 450 users in January.
Java did present some challenges of its own, however, said technical architect and project manager Marc Breissinger of Andersen Consulting. The challenges dealt primarily with abstract windowing toolkit (AWT) differences between platforms, an immature Java API, and a lack of support for some of the functions supported by operating systems.
For instance, the current Java Developers Kit (JDK 1.0) does not support printing, so Andersen created a workaround: Send a message to the back end to generate an invoice, which is then copied to a Web server using FTP. When the Java client is notified that the invoice is ready, it loads the invoice into the Web browser as an HTML document, from which it can be printed. Problems such as these are being addressed in the JDK 1.1 (due in the first quarter of 1997). For more information on the JDK 1.1 design specifications, go to https://java.sun.com:80/products/JDK/1.1/docs/relnotes/features.html.
The third-party Java software market has grown considerably since Andersen started working on the Autodesk project. Andersen already has begun replacing some of the custom-built components with those provided by third-party vendors.
FTD prototypes Java application for point of sale and kiosk
Another early Java adopter is Florists Transworld Delivery, or FTD. With 60,000 members and 30 million annual inter-city wire orders, FTD is one of the world’s largest floral wire companies. Bill Phelan, Vice President of Technology, stated that FTD uses technology to gain a competitive edge in a highly competitive market. FTD’s Web site (http://www.ftd.com) that has produced 5 million of revenue this year, and is expected to grow to 00 million by the year 2000.
Phelan emphasized at the Java Day the importance of inter-florist communication as a part of the business model. In fact, 20 percent of all floral business is done with another florist. As a result, 15 million inter-florist e-mail messages travel through the FTD network. FTD was “doing e-mail before e-mail was cool,” Phelan said. However, e-mail and wire services alone no longer let FTD maintain the “leadership role.” Because florists now are competing against larger retailers, FTD needs to provide more value- added services to stay ahead of the competition, Phelan said. The challenge is to provide these services at a nominal cost. Considering that FTD also is faced with the cost of supporting its 17,000 PCs and dumb terminals, this is no easy task.
Being a technically aggressive company, FTD is interested in Java because the company sees it as a technology that can lower costs, increase the number of value-added services provided, and enhance flexibility. For example, at Java Computing Day FTD showed a prototype of a sales application written entirely in Java running on a Sun Microsystems JavaStation. The live demo showed a sales workflow, from data entry using pick lists to the “ding” of the cash register and printing of a receipt.
FTD also showed a demo of a kiosk where customers can view and purchase in-store products and specials. FTD expects this to be especially popular among males, who tend to be more reserved when at a florist. The kiosk, written in HTML and Java, is just one example of FTD providing a cost-effective value-added service using Java and Web technology.
The floral industry is a highly seasonal one. Florists must hire temporary help during holidays to fill the surge in orders. Florists must make temps productive as soon as possible, and also provide data-entry terminals for them to use. One way to make temporary hires more productive is to use pre-defined “scripts” for selling products or specials. When the holiday is over, new scripts can be downloaded for the next holiday. In this scenario, JavaStations provide flexibility. During key holidays where 75-80 percent of orders are by phone, florists can use the “kiosk” JavaStations as “heads-down data-entry” terminals. When the holiday season is over, the JavaStations are returned to their “kiosk” duties.
FTD asked Open Business Systems (OBS), a consulting organization specializing in networking and Internet technologies, to create the sales and kiosk prototypes. Mike Durbin, president of OBS, led the project from concept to prototype in five weeks. Currently the prototype is self-contained with a RAM-based database for demos like the one shown at Java Computing Day. Before the prototype goes into pilot, it will be transformed into a full three-tier application. The first tier will be a graphical interface based on the sales prototype. OBS expects to use RMI to communicate to the application server, and JDBC to connect to the database.
Jeff Kucin, a key developer on the Java-based prototype, was impressed by Java as both a platform and a language. “Java provides a more natural means of OOP when compared to C++,” he said. In particular, Kucin was impressed with the simplicity of the language. “The developer doesn’t have to worry about pointers or … memory leaks, and threads are also much easier to work with.”
Kucin also found the AWT to be a more natural extension to the language when compared with other GUI toolkits for other programming languages. The developer does not have to worry as much about interoperability because … “Java simplifies tasks of both design and implementation of [a GUI],” Kucin said. “One can concentrate more on the actual look and feel, with little or no regard as to where the interface/application will run. The AWT also provides a great base from which you can create custom widgets.”
The AWT did create some problems for the development team, however. One problem dealt with widget focus when pressing the tab key. Under Windows 95, the tab focus did not change at all, and on other platforms the tab order was inconsistent. The unfortunate solution was to hard-code the tab order. Another problem dealt with keyboard mapping across platforms. For example, some specialized keys on certain platforms do not generate keyboard events. On the other hand, some platforms generated a carriage return when the Enter key was pressed; others generated a carriage return and a line feed. These problems were solved with workarounds, and perhaps will be fixed in JDK 1.1.
After looking at various Java integrated development environments (IDEs) on the market, OBS chose Sun’s Java Workshop. OBS was most impressed with the Visual Java GUI builder when compared with other tools. Developers found that it provided a good component set and liked the fact that it used layouts instead of X and Y coordinates for component placement. On the downside, incorporating their own components into the GUI builder required writing shadow classes. Shadow classes are used to conform custom widgets to Java Workshop’s event and layout model. In Design Pattern terminology, shadow classes implement the Adapter pattern.] However, JavaBeans will solve this problem when it is released early next year by defining a standard interface for incorporating components into Java GUI builders.
The FTD prototype is expected to be production tested before Mother’s Day with a rollout planned in late 1997 or early 1998, contingent upon user approval.
Conclusion
Java Computing Day in Chicago showed that Java is beginning to work its way into corporations, from niche departmental programs to mission- critical business applications. This was evident not only from the presentations but from speaking with developers in various industries, from manufacturing to financial. However, most of those applications are still in the early stages. Java developers are awaiting JDK 1.1 for both bug fixes and additional functionality. Just as important to them is JavaBeans, the Java component object model. Beta versions of both the JDK 1.1 and the Beans Development Kit 1.0 were posted to JavaSoft’s Web site in early December. When the release versions of JDK 1.1 and JavaBeans are available, expect to see more sophisticated and robust Java-based applications appear on the market.
