Case Studies
Transportation Ticket Office Machine for a world leader in Automated Fare Collection solutions
The Client
A world leader in Automated Fare collection solutions.
Business Needs
Reduce cost of product development and achieve faster go-to market. Develop a smart-card based ticketing product sale and maintenance application with a rich touch-based Graphical User Interface that is highly configurable, scalable and available with multilingual support. Also the application should have the capability to update itself online.
Business / Technical Challenges
The challenge in this project was the ever-evolving requirements due to the changing perception of the functionality to be supported. Datamatics worked around this challenge by adopting iterative methodology of project execution with each iteration following the cycle of Requirement analysis, design, implementation, testing. The other challenge initially was to re-use the existing C++, CORBA components from another product in this product.
Datamatics Solution
In providing the solution the project followed the full development and maintenance life cycle right from Conceptualizing to design, implementation, testing, maintenance and support.
The solution involved the development of a GUI rich, thick front-end in C# .NET that involved the development of several reusable customized GUI elements. The customized GUI elements gave the look and feel to the Ticket Office Machine (TOM) application that was not possible with the standard .NET controls.
With this solution a patron can approach a TOM operator to acquire a long-life personalized/anonymous smart card or a disposable smart card. To personalize a smart card the TOM operator takes a picture of the patron with the camera device attached to the machine and prints it on the smart card along with his personal details with the personalization printer. A long-life personalized card is registered with the system with the patron details sent to a back-end management system.
Once a long-life smart card is issued the TOM Operator can add value (money) to the electronic T-purse of the smart card, load ticket products, automatically/manually renew products, purchase non-transit products and reverse a transaction. The patron can make payment for these transactions through his debit/credit card, cheque, voucher, T-purse (money loaded on smart card).
The solution, other than issuing a smart card, also provides services to view smart card contents, block smart card, unblock smart card, refund money on the T-purse, replace a damaged smart card and interface to a third party web application to reserve a seat, confirm/cancel/view/locate/enquire a reservation.
The solution also provides facility to perform maintenance functions like setting network parameters, close suspended shifts, browse active alarms, test connected devices to ensure their functioning, set cashbox level warning, commit operational period and send data to the management system, manage external memory device, set other device parameters etc.
The solution also generates sales reports like cash bag report, shift start report, shift summary report, cash box content report, etc. and maintenance reports such as login history report, power failure report, software version report, system report, suspended shifts report, Maintenance report etc.
The multilingual feature of the solution currently supports 3 languages namely English, German and Arabic and is flexible enough to support many more languages.
To ensure robustness the project employed tools like fxcop for code verification and validation, Nunit for unit testing and Rational Robo for automated testing.
The project also leveraged on the existing C++ CORBA components by creating adapter components using the IIOP .NET library.
Technology
Software
Windows XP
.NET Framework 2.0
IIOP .NET
C#, WinForms
FxCop, Nunit
Ncover, Rational XDE
Hardware
Card access module
Personalization printer
Receipt printer
Digital camera
EFT/POS terminal
4 port USB hub
Customer display
Cashbox tray and lid
To know more about software development and maintenance solutions for point of sale terminals, please write to business@datamatics.com.
