Introducing information system architectures workshop
16th June 2009 - During weekend of 6th to 7th June 2009 a workshop on Introducing information system architectures took place at Hotel Hřebečníky. The goal of the workshop was to complete the seminar project of students in their 2nd year of studies.
Students were divided into 4 teams and their task was to implement an offer / technological solution for an information system for Blue Travel s.r.o. agency, which demands a system that will support their business and enable the company to survive the current economic crisis.
The teams had to do everything starting with the initial analysis through architecture design to price valuation. The whole project was managed in Unicorn Universe and ongoing results were monitored by the sponsors. At the end of the project there was a presentation of the solution and a demonstration of the prototype. Technologies used relied on knowledge from related subjects - Development in Java EE and Development in ASP.
The HERMES system is shown in the next picture:
As already noted, there were four teams. Although the original idea was that the teams with the same technology could cooperate together, eventually it resulted in a battle not only between Java and dotNet, but also between the teams themselves.
Let's see how the whole workshop went.
The first day, a day of intensive work
Outside it was raining and so the Unicorn College students under the ISA seminars could work in peace on their seminar projects and didn't regret not being outside 
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Despite the weather there was a very cheerful mood.
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Some teams took on their task as a practice for extreme programming, immediately after their arrival they occupied the rooms and built a software-house, which cooperated with real commercial software producers.
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Many proposals for solving given problems were made. Active discussion among the architects next to whiteboards with all the diagrams shows that the right design was a key point for success.
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Pricing for the final solutions was very carefully considered with millions flying through the air, even counting on fingers, until it eventually the best price appeared, much to the satisfaction of the customer .
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Everything was under the managerial supervision of Honza Šibil who regularly checked the progress using Unicorn ES. And even deployment of a new version of this amazing system did not stop us! From the morning we checked the course of this deployment and so Unicorn College students were among the first to use version 5.4.0.
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Analysis of a domain model: "I hope it meets the customer's requirements ..."
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During the day the staff at Hrebečníky cared for us very well. After lunch there was an afternoon snack in the form of a cake from the land lady. As soon as the students saw there was something on the table, they ate everything and nothing was left for the university supervisors 
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At 18:00 documentations for the projects was ready to be handed in to the evaluation committee. Finally, the order of presentations for the second day was alloted. Some teams went for fun, others decided not to leave anything to chance and in the context of extreme programming methodology to leave the tuning of their prototype for the next day - Day D.
The evaluation committee now faced a challenge - it was necessary to pass through all the documents, evaluate them and prepare questions for presentation on Day D. Although some comments and suggestions caused a little fun, we finally made it to our beds, exhausted, after midnight with heads full of diagrams, calculations, solutions, recommendations and issues.
The second day, "Day D"
After breakfast all teams fought for their assessment of up to 100 points, the winning project could receive a small premium.
At 09:00 the first team started their presentation. The team chose a very modern approach to solving problems, using GigaSpaces technology and set the whole solution as a very robust system operating within the Amazon EC2 cloud infrastructure that provides good solutions to the system and even the price evaluation was very interesting.
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However, this team lost some points, mainly because of the quality and confusing nature of their documentation and underestimation of the presentation of the prototype. Finally, this team ended up in third place.
At 9:45 the second team started their presentation. The presentation was given with a strongly technological spirit. We were shown all the details of the architecture for the offered solutions, including details of hardware as well as pricing calculated down to the last penny.
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According to internal information this team reconsidered their solution during Saturday and created the entire result during Saturday - which was very challenging but not impossible. However, in comparison with other teams it had impact on the quality of output and thus ultimately received 4th place in the evaluation.
At 10:30 we saw the first solution on MS dotNET. This team gave maximum concentration, their professionally done presentation caught the customers eye and was enticing for the sample prototype of searching flights. This team did not try to use just some breaking technological solutions, they tried to provide the customer with maximum possibilities within the framework.
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The presentation was clear and the documentation was submitted with a quality a class higher than the previous teams. Finally, we gave this team 2nd place.
And as it is said, the best for last: At 11:15 the last team started their presentation, again using dotNET.
It was an accounting system via branches of a travel agency. This team, which was already mentioned in Saturdays narrative, built a small software house in the back-room of the hotel with a very agile approach, intensive work and regular consultations with the customer to finally reach a solution that the other teams certainly had to recognize as the best.
It was an accounting system via branches of a travel agency. This team, which was already mentioned in Saturdays narrative, built a small software house in the back-room of the hotel with a very agile approach, intensive work and regular consultations with the customer to finally reach a solution that the other teams certainly had to recognize as the best.
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This team was awarded the maximum number of points and, as promised, a small premium. They were also awarded with applause and congratulations for a job well-done!
Conclusion
As always, it was shown that ongoing and mainly high-quality work is rewarded - gaining enough points from the semester project makes it easier to get some excellent evaluations. On the contrary, a relatively small number of points from the project has made, for some others, a very difficult life and places much greater demands on the number of points in the theoretical exam.
Anyway, we consider this weekend a very successful one, all the teams met the basic requirements, some of the teams won their lessons for further work and we were only persuaded by others that they can solve problems with a professional approach, even though it was only a school exercise.
We wish all participants success in their tests and exams, but particularly in practical application ...
Finally, we would also like to thank the team at hotel Hřebečníky, for their care with a smile and for providing us with support for our creative activity.
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© Unicorn College 2010
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