120 likes | 240 Views
Supply Chain Automation. Final Year Project. What is this project about?. The application to be modeled is that of a Retailer offering TV sets to Consumers To fulfill orders the Retailer has to manage stock levels in warehouses
E N D
Supply Chain Automation Final Year Project
What is this project about? • The application to be modeled is that of a Retailer offering TV sets to Consumers • To fulfill orders the Retailer has to manage stock levels in warehouses • When an item in stock falls below a certain threshold, the Retailer must restock the item from the relevant Manufacturer’s inventory
Is it really needed? • A recent study found that supply-chain problems cost companies between 9 and 20 percent of their value over a six-month period • Effective supply-chain software tools could save companies billions of dollars • Reliable
How we built the project? • The process was suggested to be designed in jBPM • The business process was analyzed and a flow diagram was designed on paper • The flow diagram was then implemented using the Graphical Process Designer for jBPMconfigured in Eclipse IDE • MySQL was configured as the database for jBPM • jBoss AS was configured to run the jBPM process • Dynamic Web Project was created for UI pupose
Challenges • Which version of jBPM to be used? • jBPM 4 vsjBPM 3 • jBPM4 tools are only half finished and quite buggy • The original 'brain' of JBPM has left Redhat and is now working on a competing open source API under the name of 'Activiti‘ • Apparently Redhat also already has JBPM5 in development;JBPM4.x is given up for lost for now and the focus for the tool development will be on JBPM5 • All is fine and well, but we all want is a working JBPM API that DOES have functional tools. So we stick with old JBPM 3.2.X, which has served well
Challenges (Cont.) • Configuring jBPM 3.2.x with jBoss 5.0 • Fixing jbpm-enterprise.jar • The main problem we needed to fix here is the way that the JNDI lookups are done - it tries to use the java:comp/env space, which is off-limits unfortunately • We needed to patch some source files to use the real local JNDI names to get things working • Luckily we know these JNDI names; they are defined in the jboss.xml descriptor file • Configuring jBoss Data Source file for MySQL
Challenges (Cont.) • Which database to be used? • Although MySQL was directly suggested its important to know why we need to use MySQL when default configuration with HSQL is easier than configuring another database with jBPM • HSQL vsMySQL • Hypersonic is a memory-resident test database. The fact that all data is kept in memory accounts for the speed difference.(HSQL is faster) • But would HSQL behave well in real situations?(Doubt, implies Not reliable) • MySQLis a free 'real' database in the sense that it is used in many production systems and is tested to be reliable.
Into the future • Source code hosting with SVN • The project we developed serves on a smaller scale and has a large scope of development to serve the industry • Keeping this in mind we have hosted the project on http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/supply-chain-automation/
Team • SumeerSinha (sumeersinha@gmail.com) • MayankTiwari • ShrutiPatro