Case Study: Service-Oriented Retail Business Information System

Abstract

The primary objective of this case study is to discuss a retail business information system illustrating an e-business integration example among a biometric attendance system, a surveillance system, and a point-of-sale system. Using a service-oriented architecture allows businesses to build on top of legacy applications or construct new applications in order to take advantage of the power of Web services. Over the past years, Web services have finally developed enough to allow such basic architectures to be built. Each of the components in the system will be designed and developed using a service-oriented architecture that clearly illustrates how such cutting-edge systems can be put together. By designing these components in such a fashion, this example will focus on applying service-oriented development and integration techniques to the retail sector. The result of this project will be an integrated system that can be used by businesses everywhere to learn how their organizations can benefit from service-oriented architecture. Also, the application of the service-oriented development and integration to systems that were previously stand-alone and heterogeneous is discussed. All previous experiences in object-oriented architectures and design methodology are naturally streamlined with the service-oriented architecture, supporting the loose coupling of software components.