Meeting

Distributed Object Workshop project definition The following is a definition of the project, written by Bob Haugen: This description was written to enable the project to focus on distributed technology, not complicated object model. However, the object model can grow to cover as many distributed technology features as the workshop wants to try to handle. Problem: Distributed Customer Order Fulfillment. The context is company-to-company procurement of a manufactured product. One company is the customer, the other company is the vendor. Each company has its own separate secure computing environment. The customer places an order with the vendor. The order is a mirror-image (or two-faced) object: whereas to the customer it is a purchase order, and to the vendor it is a customer order, from the supply chain perspective it is really one and the same order with two different views. The order consists of one line item, for a quantity of a product at a price, to be delivered at a date and time. The order goes through several states, each of which also has two views: State Vendor view Customer view Placed Customer Order Purchase Order Scheduled Scheduled Shipment Scheduled Receipt Changed Change Order Change Order Shipped Shipment Receipt Billed Invoice Invoice Paid Cash Receipt Cash Disbursement In the simplest scenario, we just handle Placed and Scheduled, which happen at the same time. In other words, the vendor promises delivery at the time requested by the customer. In the next scenario, the order gets changed. It can be changed by the vendor or the customer, in quantity, timing and product. In addition, the vendor can change the price. If these two scenarios do not hit enough features of distributed processing, then more states can be implemented, or more of the material or cash flow can be implemented. For example, the material flow can be extended to include inventory, manufacturing and transportation. The cash flow can be extended to include separate ship-to and bill-to parties and a bank electronic lock box service as an intermediary for the payments. And, of course, on and on from there.