InsureMust - Architecture of the Insurance Engine

1. Client Layer
It is the presentation layer where in which the user interface for the client is built.
Insurance Client is a Java Application. Insurance Client basically consists of Form, FormData and the Data Model. The Insurance Client sends a request to the servlet using HTTP protocol via the Data Model. FormData is serialised and sent to the servlet, which in-turn deserialises the same and fetches the status associated with the FormData. This process is reversible, i.e., the servlet can also change the status of the FormData and send it to the client by serialization. The Client in-turn deserialises the data and uses the status of the object to built user interface.

2. Application Logic Layer

Application logic for Insurance Engine is built using servlet and EJB. Insurance Servlet receives the request sent by the client and segregates this based on the type of the request. A request may be for fetching information, storing information or deleting information. The Servlet will call respective EJB using JNDI.

The Client will send the request to the servlet, then servlet will invoke the appropriate bean using the Handler class. The Bean that is invoked by the servlet will execute the request. The main function of the bean includes Inserting the records, Updating the records, Fetching the records and Deleting the records from the Persistant storage. We are making use of the bean managed entity beans for this purpose. The container will take care of the transactions. Insurance Engine uses Weblogic 6.1 as the application server. This server acts as a container for Web and EJB.

3. Data Layer
Insurance engine uses MS-SQLServer database for persistence storage. Insurancedb is the relational database representing data layer.

Benefits of EJBs
Insurance Engine's EJBs encapsulate business logic and data access of Insurance system. EJBs are reusable components which are very much suitable for distributed enterprise like Insurance Industry. Following benefits of EJBs are optimally used in Insurance Engine.

1. Clean separation of business logic and presentation logic
2. System is faster and more reliable
3. Portability is easier
4. Rapid application development

Benefits of Weblogic server
Insurance Engine optimally uses web logic's container services. Following services are used by Insurance Engine.

1. Life cycle management
2. Transaction support
3. Persistence
4. Clustering support
5. Security
6. Resource pooling

1. Life cycle Management
WebLogic Server's EJB container, like all J2EE-complaint EJB container, provides full lifecycle management for the beans we deploy. Insurance Engine's EJBs makes use of container life cycle services.

2. Transaction Support
Insurance Engine EJB's operate in a transactional environment supported by container. It makes use of Container-managed transactions as transaction demarcation.

3. Persistence
WebLogic Server's EJB container provides persistence services for stateful session beans and entity beans. Insurance engine makes use of Bean-managed persistence (BMP), where the developer writes code to maintain synchronization.

4. Clustering support
WebLogic Server provides full clustering support for EJB's. This allows us to deploy EJBs in an environment that requires high scalability and availability.

5. Security
WebLogic server provides security services to access methods of EJBs. Users, roles and security role assignments can be represented in the deployment descriptor supported by WebLogic server.

6. Resource pooling
Weblogic server provides resource pooling support for EJBs and database connectivity.