Background

Deutsche Post AG, Germany's national postal service, was undertaking a large scale modernization program to integrate the information technology (IT) infrastructure for its multiple operating divisions and subsidiaries. Deutsche Post had decided to use a Java-based Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution because its production systems were deployed on all major enterprise platforms and a platform-independent Java solution was necessary. Their EAI solution provided services such as LDAP lookup, user management and authorization, compression, and synchronous and asynchronous communications over SOAP and MQSeries. These services were made available through abstract service provider/service consumer interfaces written and implemented in Java. Deutsche Post refers to this infrastructure for their EAI system as the Service Backbone.

Unfortunately, one important system, a customer complaint management system, was written in C++ and couldn't be readily integrated into the Service Backbone. The customer complaint management system was well established; Deutsche Post employees were familiar with it; and Deutsche Post couldn't afford to change it or abandon it. At the same time, they had to get it working with the Java-based EAI solution.

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Deutsche Post chose JunC++ion for several reasons:

• Easy-to-use C++ proxies — Because JunC++ion provides high-level, readable C++ proxies for Java classes, programmers can work quickly and efficiently with the integration code. JunC++ion's C++ proxies can do almost everything standard C++ classes can do, so Deutsche Post programmers didn't have to learn any new technologies to complete the project.

• Fast — The integrated customer complaint management system could be ready quickly because porting no longer was required and only a minimum of changes was required. In addition, fewer changes always means fewer risks to getting the updated application up and running.

• Reliable — The final JunC++ion enabled application running with the JunC++ion runtime library could be counted on to do the bulk of the Java-C++ interoperations, giving Deutsche Post one less problem to worry about.

• Supported — Because the integration solution would be running as part of the Service Backbone, it had to be supported and maintained. After evaluating JunC++ion and getting the top-notch support Codemesh offers, Deutsche Post knew they had a product that wouldn't be forgotten.

The Solution

Knowing the powerful integration capabilities of JunC++ion, Deutsche Post programmers decided to expose the EAI solution's Java interfaces. Once the interfaces were exposed, most of the custom integration work for the customer complaint management system could be written in Java. The programmers then used JunC++ion to automatically generate C++ proxies for the EAI system types and the custom Java types. Within hours, the C++ programmers used the C++ bindings to take advantage of the new EAI services and features.

Because the EAI customization was implemented in Java, new clients, in addition to the customer complaint management system, could potentially be allowed to directly take advantage of the integration package.

The customer complaint system, now a JunC++ion enabled C++ application, has been effectively integrated into Deutsche Post's Java EAI system. It was subsequently deployed to hundreds of workstations for and continues to run reliably and well.

Based on the success with Codemesh's JunC++ion product, Deutsche Post AG also became a JuggerNET licensee when .NET became a bigger part of its environment.