Banking/Finance

Zuercher Kantonalbank

www.zkb.ch

Tools used: BRE (Business Request Exchange), Sniff+, Rational Rose, Team Connection, Java, C++,PL/1 Software: Java SDK, C++, IONA Orbix, MQSeries, WebSphere, Oracle, DB2 Systems: UNIX middle tier servers (BRE, core applications), IBM mainframe (core applications, BRE log server)

Description: The Zuercher Kantonalbank (ZKB) is one of the leading three banks in Switzerland. To maintain its reputation for providing efficient and accurate service, a large number of in-house developed, and purchased software applications were implemented.

Additionally, to secure the bank’s top standing with increased market pressure in the area of customer services, third party solutions for the Bank’s branches, Internet and Call Center, were purchased. An application infrastructure (BRE) was needed to integrate these purchased applications both simply and efficiently into the ZKB's heterogeneous application environment. This infrastructure had to be cost-effective, scaleable, robust, easily maintained and highly available.

The ZKB infrastructure is heterogeneous in nature. The applications are implemented across various operating systems (OS/390, UNIX and NT) and in various programming languages (PL/1, C, C++, Java).

To keep integration costs in check and given a manageable infrastructure, the services must be accessible via a standardized interface. Here industry standards such as CORBA and MQ are an ideal base.

More and more business processes are being handled with applications from third parties. ZKB required an integration platform that was going to be flexible and that allowed for fast deployment of such applications without resulting in unmanageable relationships between them.

Solution: This could be achieved through the re-use of existing application logic. As the interfaces are defined on a business process level, the back end legacy applications can be replaced in the future more easily. BRE (Business Request Exchange) Design / Construction offered a solution.

BRE offers a standardized real-time interface to existing functionality of the bank¹s core systems and facilitates the integration of such systems across multiple platforms and operating systems. BRE is the central service point for inquiry and update processes.
BRE utilizes the so-called hub and spoke principle to reduce integration complexity and eliminate unmanageable  relationships between the various system components. A client can choose between CORBA and MQ when communicating with BRE. The interface with BRE, the so-called Business Request, is defined on a business level to make the client fully independent of the internal specifics of the back end server systems. A developer of a BRE client can use the standardized, easy to use BRE interfaces to develop and deploy an end user application in a very short time.
BRE offers optimal solutions for the various integration issues:

Transport ­ BRE offers the transport of information between the various platforms and applications based on the standard products CORBA and MQ.

· Transformation ­ BRE provides a standardized object oriented interface on the client side. A format transformation is then made within BRE between the Business Request and the various interfaces of the core application systems and the request dispatched.

· Integration ­ BRE isolates a Business Request from the processes of the back end systems. One Business Request could comprise accesses to several core applications. Business Requests are designed along the Request/Reply schema. Delivery of all Business Requests to their target systems is guaranteed by the communications protocols used.

· Server Adapter ­ BRE offers adapters to various ZKB applications. A server adapter is responsible for the transformation to the server application (application specific API, IMS transaction, EHLLAPI etc.). The logical co-ordination of communication and any application specific handling with the server is made within the adapter.

· Deployment Management/Monitoring ­ BRE has a support infrastructure which monitors the various constituent components. In an error situation the responsible area is alerted automatically via the existing problem management infrastructure.

· Message Management/Monitoring ­ The BRE support infrastructure offers extensive tools for analyzing and controlling the message traffic and creating statistical reports.

· Support for multiple platforms ­ BRE had been developed in Java and allows connectivity between systems on diverse platforms using differing communications transports.

· Security ­ BRE controls access to each request at an application level. Transport over both MQ and CORBA is encrypted.

· Logging/Audit ­ All BRE traffic is logged and optionally archived, so that that system can be audited at any time.

· Version Control ­ BRE can handle multiple versions of the same Business Request in a manner transparent to the client.

· Volume/Performance ­ BRE currently processes about 15Œ000 Business Requests per day (and can, given the current configuration, process up to 300Œ000 Business Request per day) within response times considered by the user community to be good. The actual response times are governed to a large extent by the performance of the back end systems.

· Scaleability ­ BRE is designed to be fully scaleable ­several BRE instances may be started on one or many systems and each instance is multithreaded.

· Modularity - the BRE Kern is divided into various function-specific modules ­ logging, access control, format transformation, request-specific handlers etc. The design is fully object oriented.

Benefits for ZKB

Time to market
It was possible using the BRE infrastructure to implement the intranet-based front end application Cards/Cheques in four months from start of development to pilot production. Due to the independence of the BRE client interface from the core systems, the Card/Cheques developers could access their transactions and data easily without the need to understand the technical details of the back end systems, leaving themselves free to concentrate on the business aspects of the new application.

Reuse of Business Services
The services can be applied to other applications thanks to their rigorous definition with respect to bank business processes. The Call Center application ZKBcontact used existing requests and was able to do so within a very short time, giving its users access to real time data for the first time since the application was first deployed. The developers of the Call Center application needed only a half-day workshop before they were able to understand and use the BRE client interface. BRE eliminates the often long and drawn-out process of deciding on implementation specifics.

Management

·With CORBA and MQ, the component services can distributed across diverse platforms.

·The system is readily scaleable and extendible.

·Newly implemented services may be integrated easily and the effort in testing is reduced.

·Maintenance costs can be kept at a minimum due to the consistent infrastructure.

·The central BRE infrastructure results in a consolidation of distributed systems and gateways.

·One Integration Team---concentration of highly-skilled resources in one team.