ING Insurance Central Europe “ICE project”

The “Vision for Growth” program includes developing and deploying an integrated solution for ING Insurance for all of Europe and Russia. The ILIS/ESB project is part of this program and delivers a TIBCO software-based service layer.

A small team of two was assigned to develop integrations and configure the Enterprise Service Bus. The TIBCO software had to be installed on three separate Linux servers in a DEV/TEST/ACC/PROD environment. The project team decided that installation and configuration  of every environment by hand would take too much time and an automated installation procedure was needed. Another challenge was that the required server hardware was not available on time.

Mr Ritter came up with the following solution:

• use RPM as a fully automated  installation solution.
• using a virtual server environment as a temporary replacement for the missing hardware

Mr Ritter  installed a virtualization product called VirtualBox on his laptop that allows to run a virtual Linux server. This product allows him to simulate the deployment environment and  saved the project lot of time.

Mr Ritter was responsible for installation, configuration and testing:

• Installation and configuration
  • Configuration of TIBCO BusinessWorks software
  • Designing and developing an automatic installation method based on Redhat Package Manager (RPM) on Linux servers
  • Designing and developing a scripted service deployment method
  • Organizing security (role-based, PKI Certificates)
  • Implemented SELinux security policies
  • Setting up a logging framework for functional errors
• Testing
  • Generate test data with Benerator this excelent free and open source tool enabled us to generate test data with real Polisch names
    

    Testdata generator

  • Functional and performance testing of web services  (SoapUI), developed java scripts
• Documentation of installation, configuration and deployment procedures

Fortis Bank Nederland Global Markets “Equity Brokerage”

Fidessa Trading

Because of the separation of Fortis new computer systems had to be developed in a short period of time. The Equity Brokerage project involved integrating a new trading system front-end hosted by Fidessa in England with the back office of Fortis in the Netherlands.

Mr Ritter designed and implementated the middleware based on an IBM WebSphere MessageBroker processing  SWIFT FIN messages. He also designed and build a Java based Fidessa Gateway application to communicate with the Fidessa host using a propriertary Fidessa protocol. All incoming trades had to be transformed into MQSeries XML messages. This gateway was designed and build in two weeks, the project was completed within the expected time period.

Interpolis Pensioenen “Infobus”

Interpolis Pensioenen has started a 5 year 100M programme for improving and aligning business processes with its vision. Part of this programme is the BIP project that focuses on computer system integration. The IPP Infobus is a service oriented middleware solution based on XML and MQSeries message oriented middleware.

Mr Ritter was responsible for design and implementation of the IPP Infobus that supports Oracle, Siebel and COOL:2E applications on UNIX, Windows 2000 and IBM AS400. This resulted in the following deliverables:

1. Design document (requirements, design principles, infrastructure design)
2. Interpolis Bericht Formaat (a Company wide standard message format)
3. Adapter framework

After an intensive study Mr Riter decided that off the shelf middleware adapters could not meet the customers demands. A custom build Java adapter was built to connected all these applications to the MQSeries middleware. Customer employees were trained and tools were installed to enable remote support. Java was chosen for its ability to run on all required platforms and the availability of useful Open Source Software (xml parsers, logging, remote maintenance). As proof of concept of the IPP Infobus services on a AS400 where exposed by the adapter.