Web Services in the field of Consumer Credit

For banks, a primary goal is optimizing the reuse of the existing IT resources, aiming to turn them into competitive advantage. One of the major national banks Group, needed to expose on Internet some specific services for the tax payment, making them effectively available for other partner banks, thus other systems could exploit them as well. Such a task required a software module to be integrated into the existing technological infrastructure.

The Web Services, featured by distinctive characteristics enabling links among heterogeneous systems and guaranteeing the integration of applications, represented the core of Reply’s solution.

SOLUTION

The pre-existing architecture, made of a library of objects, calls the procedures on the mainframe. The web pages rely on the library of objects to perform the transitions.

Reply realized and integrated in its customer’s system a range of Web Services, which create a software layer able to expose on Internet some specific services the mainframe already offers for tax payment. Adding the developed components to the existing software structure, and exploiting its services by calling components already in use, there was no need to modify the software.

The new module calls the methods of the existing components relying on public standard interfaces and contemporary dialogues with many different external systems. In this way, by means of a public interface to be accessed by standard protocols, the procedures are made transitional.

When the user, browsing the pages of a partner bank’s site, accesses the functionality of tax payment, also activates the link, and the communication between the two modules follows the Web Services logic.

The user inserts data through web interfaces shown by the external portal. The presentation logic still belongs to the external portal, which maintains its own look&feel. The user does not realize that another system manages the logic of the application and the interactivity.

The total separation between presentation logics and data management logics also suits a possible further application to access services by mobile devices.

REPLY VALUE

Reply’s strong expertise in the field of banking and financial services and solutions, together with its sound experience as regards Business Process Integration, lead to the realization of a module based on components that has been integrated into the customer’s software architecture with no need to modify the system itself, and that is able to expose on Internet pre-existing functionalities making them transitional by means of Web Services.