Sampling inspection software Elk-Fertighäuser (pre-fabricated houses)

The sampling inspection software by Elk is one example for a web application based on Java technology. It makes it easier for sampling inspectors to assemble the items for the future prefab of their customers. The application is run on front-end on a ThinClient and can be run as well from IE as from Mozilla. ThinClient connects through WaveLAN technology to the back-end of the application. This is established by Apache Tomcat, a servlet container, and an Oracle database. These components are of course interchangeable, so instead of Oracle, for example, a MySQL database could run in the background as well.

The database contains all necessary data for sampling inspection. The servlet container on the other hand is responsible for generation of the according HTML-pages. These HTML-pages are the result which the user can see in the browser.

The fundamental advantage for inspectors and customers lies in the fact that the system knows the dimension of the prefab and therefore is able to, i.e., calculate on its own the amount of tiles including clipping for a certain room. For the inspector this means considerable saving of labor, for the customer it means more comfort in building up to furnishing of the house.

The development of the web application was done in close cooperation with Elk. Several meetings to discuss design, click-flows, functionalities and technical possibilities took place. Design, layout and click-flow were designed using a prototype and refined after discussion with the customer. The prototype served in succession as basis for programming of the application. The application itself was written in Java.

In the course of the project more specific desires, such as printouts of order lists in PDF-format took form. To make this possible FOP (Formatting Objects Processor), a relatively young open source project by Apache, came into operation. For generation of a PDF-files the FOP processor uses a file consisting of FO-definitions as input. These so-called FO-definitions are part of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standard. Besides Apache's FOP the market also offers commercial products like RenderX.

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