Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

Marko Anzelak et al.
The system should <strong>of</strong>fer a simple, technically supported allocation <strong>of</strong> drawings to categories, or
respectively, <strong>the</strong> assignment <strong>of</strong> key words, in order to allow drawings to be re-used (Sage 2009). In
addition, all necessary documents should be linked, to present all relevant information at a glance.
This results in a more efficient search and consequently a more efficient performance. Of course, <strong>the</strong>
effectiveness <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> search depends on <strong>the</strong> quality <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> entered data.
5. Technologic Implementation <strong>of</strong> KnowCad
An evaluation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> widely used ERP systems soon revealed that none <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> commercially available
systems could combine all <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> requirements described in section 2 above. Therefore, it was
decided to develop a web application named KnowCad (Figure 5), which contains an ERP system as
well as a knowledge database. The web application KnowCad was designed from scratch, which
means that from <strong>the</strong> very start, using <strong>the</strong> well thought out solution, <strong>the</strong> implementation could be
selected in such a way that KnowCad could be integrated optimally in any system environment.
During <strong>the</strong> implementation <strong>of</strong> any web-based self-designed development such as KnowCad, a variety
<strong>of</strong> obstacles must be met. On <strong>the</strong> one hand, different technologies (database, server, etc.) are used,
on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand, it takes a lot <strong>of</strong> effort to maintain and expand self-designed developments. In order
to manage <strong>the</strong>se kinds <strong>of</strong> problems <strong>the</strong> Model-View-Controller concept (MVC-Model-Struts2) was
used as a framework for <strong>the</strong> implementation. The objective was to ensure a clear separation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
application into sub-systems with clearly delineated functionality, in order to be able to implement
subsequent functions at a later stage.
Figure 5: KnowCad development screenshot
The web application KnowCad used <strong>the</strong> Open Source framework Struts2 (Brown 2008), which is
based on J2EE technologies. The reason for using this framework can be found in <strong>the</strong> simple
implementation <strong>of</strong> dynamic web pages using <strong>the</strong> MVC paradigm. Struts2 provides good support for
<strong>the</strong> core functionality <strong>of</strong> handling forms, and <strong>of</strong>fers a range <strong>of</strong> functionality relevant to applications.
In order to ensure independence from <strong>the</strong> system environment with regard to databases, <strong>the</strong> Open
Source Persistence ORM Framework Hibernate (Kuaté 2009) was used, which is compatible with
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