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Business Challenge
A large governmental organization required the implementation of a purchase / management
solution that would reflect its internal buying criteria, decision-making process,
and organizational structure. The project had a very tight deadline and incomplete
requirements when Axmor subcontracted the job.
Software Solution
Axmor’s Java developers implemented a web-based marketplace
catering to purchase and selling activities of the system’s owner. The custom software
solution supports different types of bidding and auction processes that follow customer-specific
workflow mapped to the organizational structure. The application is multilingual.
Axmor’s Java developers rapidly addressed our customer’s objectives. We established
effective communication with our customer; thereby reducing the time necessary to
specify the software requirements. We adapted our production workflow to meet the
deadline. We reduced the development workload by using multiple third-party components.
The brief problematical description provided by our customer at the beginning of
the project was elaborated into a 250-page requirement-specification document. During
4 months of daily communication with our client, we constructed software requirements
virtually from scratch. Our experience in web development allowed us to offer optimal-use
models that reduced development time and enhanced system usability.
- Shortened development time
The tight deadline didn’t permit spending a lot of time for the analytical phase.
After consultation with our client, we decided to start the development in parallel
with the requirement specification. Although some consequential budget increase
was inevitable, this approach decreased the development time. Axmor’s Java developers
adapted the development process to minimize the necessary expenses.
- Reduction of development efforts and budget
Reducing the development workload helped us reduce the development time. Axmor’s
Java developers achieved this goal though utilizing third-party software components,
including security products, report generation, and UI development tools. Budget
constraints allowed only open-source components. They were critically evaluated
for being compliant with a set of criteria: functionality, flexibility, stability,
and technical compatibility – to reduce risks. This approach minimized project time
and boosted application functionality.
Open-source components form the backbone of this application. The application server
is JBoss, and the database is PostgreSQL. Axmor’s Java developers didn’t recommend
MySQL, offered by our customer, due to its inability to meet the customer’s requirements
of functionality and performance.
Critical system requirements were successfully solved:
Our customer needed a highly secure solution. Still, evaluation of the initial security
specification revealed that some of the requirements were excessive. They affected
application performance and increased development time. Axmor’s Java developers
optimized the requirements and offered to apply managerial procedures to some of
them. Program methods were covered by open source products. Information in the application
database and file storage is encrypted using "Encrypted Loopback Filesystem"
and Bouncy Castle 1.29 Java crypto library. HTTPS, SSL, JAAS are used for authorization,
authentication, and access control.
The software was designed to provide functional scalability and to allow increased
system load. All third-party components were evaluated to meet these criteria and
the software architecture was designed to allow clustering.
The application interface was fully designed in our customer’s corporate style,
and has an attractive look and feel.
During the entire project, our customer had access to the latest version of the
application and to the bug-reporting system, thus monitoring the project’s success
and conformity with their requirements. This allowed our customer to keep a constant
eye on the project, providing confidence and making it easier to report the progress
to the system’s owner.
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