Products

This consists of four parts:

1. An open, standards based integration platform, sitting between the presentation and domain layers (“The Core”),
2. Flexible logic (“Logic”) that manages the marshalling of messages through The Core,
3. Plugins to The Core that provide Context, Business Intelligence (BI), etc.,
4. Mobile adaption layer.

Basic Architecture

The Integration Platform uses the following patterns

• Queues – each of the components talks to other components through a queue. Messages find their ways onto the Queues through a Message Bus. The queues handle control messages.
• Service / Daemon – we use a background service to monitor the queues and create a Session Manager per user.
• The Session Managers are processes / threads that can be distributed across hardware. Although this hardware can be physical machines, it will probably be virtual machines.
• A State Engine to choreograph the services. This Logic is implemented to processes SCXML. Here is what Qt say about their implementation:
  • Bullet-proof business logic
  • Decoupling application flow from graphics/data/engine, and
  • Dealing with complex asynchronous systems.
• Optional Plugins – Context Engine. This Context Engine is the real value in this project, being unique and patentable. It uses
  • Physical and Temporal Location
  • The user’s Diary
  • The user’s Contacts
• The Context Engine will use our unique and (provisionally) patented data model.
• The Context Engine’s job is to arbitrate on valid state transitions, given the data that has context.
• Context relates to information in the real world (e.g. Location and Time) and in their social network (e.g. Contacts).
• We also assume the existence of a web server (IIS or Apache) and server side logic (.aspx, .jsp, .php ...).

The Core runs on Windows / IIS /C# or [Centos | Ubuntu ] / Apache /C++.

We have a few out of the box reference implementations such as for mail, social networks, barcodes.

Timeline

Unfortunately beta versions of this product are only available to selected customers. Should you wish to participate please contact us.
The engagement model is

• Monthly support R10 000 for 12 months - that gives you telephonic and email support, patches and upgrades
• Integration support is typically R450 ph per developer, in periods not less than one month. This includes implementing a monitoring and reporting system
• You get the source code, subject to terms
• We can consult as to future strategies and reference data

Our plans therefore are:

• The Core will be released in mid January 2009.
• The Logic module will be released soon after that.
• The Context Engine will be available as a pre compiled binary at this time too.