Bertelsmann multi shop system

BertelsmannSpringer belongs to the most renowned publishing group for scientific and specialist publications world-wide. With 70 publishing houses and branches, the group is represented in 18 countries in Europe, the USA and Asia. More than 5,000 employees achieve revenues of approx. 700 million euros. The publishing houses operate throughout the entire media spectrum – from specialist magazines to books, newsletters, seminars, congresses and distance learning courses, to CD-ROMs, databases and online services.

The mission was to develop a high performance, scalable multi shop system for BertelsmannSpringer, to guarantee the operation of the online shops of the Heinrich Vogel publishing house, Buch andere Medien, Rot-Gelb-Grün and Autohaus. In addition to the typical shop functions such as browse, shopping cart, order etc. the specifications called for an intelligent address check with fuzzy logic and auto corrector, as well as a comprehensive administration front end to support product categorisation, user administration and newsletter distribution.

The key requirement lay in the integration of the company’s own ERP system to validate user data and to provide products, prices and rebates.

artnology GmbH took responsibility for the entire concept, implementation and support of the multi shop system for the operational site. In close co-operation, a high performance shop system was developed, supporting various price types and rebates for different user groups and with a configurable, intelligent address validation to avoid manual clearing.

Asynchronous and direct ERP connections were designed to use existing ERP functions such as price and rebate calculation, implemented using a specially developed proxy server to meet higher security requirements.

• Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
• abaXX Enterprise Portal
• Weblogic Application Server
• Oracle DBMS
• WWS proxy server as a connector between the AS400 materials management system and the DMZ Weblogic Application Server, implemented using EJB, JMS, RMI and AS400 data queues
• Fully automated asynchronous updating of user, product and price information using JMS, proxy server and AS400 data queues. Synchronous price calculation and order processing using RMI
• Intelligent address checking function with fuzzy logic and auto corrector
• Comprehensive administration front end for product, price and category configuration, as well as user groups and newsletter management