The document describes how a fictional soccer club called Dexlandia '98 utilizes a service-oriented application framework called Navajo to meet their information needs. Key members of the club like the member administrator, treasurer, secretary, and team captain are able to efficiently perform tasks like managing member data, issuing invoices, scheduling matches, and reporting scores through integrated online services. The sports federation is also able to access the centralized member database to efficiently process new applications and resolve data issues. Overall, the Navajo framework allows the independent entities that comprise the sports community to seamlessly share information needed to organize competitions.

1. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
The service oriented club
Navajo community builder in action
Authors Arjen Schoneveld, Matthijs Philip
Organization Dexels BV
Date February 2007
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2. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
Introduction
On behalf of Sportlink Services, Dexels has built a system that serves as a complete information
solution for sports federations, clubs, members and other involved parties or agents, which are part of
the information infrastructure needed to organize sports competitions. This system was developed
using Dexels service oriented application framework called “Navajo”. Application development using a
framework that focuses on providing a set of services provides many advantages like fast time to
market for a new functionality and easy federation of this functionality.
These applications can easily be extended without having to be entirely re-tested and re-deployed.
Furthermore, because service functionality and user interface are strictly separated, the services can
be reused and offered to different end user applications through a multitude of channels. Finally,
different third party applications can access the services on-line without having to install any of the
Sportlink applications. This approach enables the extension of their current application functionality
portfolio with additional services without the need for Sportlink to change anything in their applications.
From an “ information need” viewpoint, we will describe the community around a fictional soccer club
called “Dexlandia '98” form an interdependent sports community that is built entirely on top of the
Navajo web service framework. The information need differs agent by agent, e.g. the club secretary,
the member administrator, the treasurer, the playing member, the supporter, a big news paper, the
sports federation. They all have different information needs fed by the same source. In an informal
style we will tell a story of interaction between each of these agents, supported by the Navajo
framework. We will not discuss any technical matters, but notice that this case reflects actual software
being used in the field today.
The club are being missed on this behalf. In their canteen,
the club has a number of internet connected
Our club called “Dexlandia '98” is a middle-sized computers available for public use. By
club, currently supporting a respectable number implementing almost all of the services that the
of 578 members. The club's first team plays a Sportlink system provides them, Dexlandia is
significant role in the Dutch premier soccer able to spend more time to look after its core
amateur league. Due to the exposure of the first task: providing- and being part of a competitive
team, the club has many lucrative sponsorship and sport-loving community.
contracts and is being carefully watched at by the
local sports press.
The member administrator
Through voluntary cooperation of enthusiastic
Apart from being a playing member himself,
parents, solid support is provided to the
Peter is responsible for the member
organisational tasks of the club, like driving the
administration of Dexlandia. In his spare evening
younger players to matches and coaching the
hours he spends a reasonable amount of time as
many different youth teams. A number of senior
a volunteer for Dexlandia.
members offer their services to the club by
volunteering for staff functions, to run the canteen As always he first checks his email to see if any
or look after the in- and outdoor sports facilities. new members have applied via the Dexlandia
website and to see if any current members have
Especially where ICT is concerned, “Dexlandia
adhered to his request to send him a photograph
'98” is one of frontrunners in the country. It has
to be used on the now legally required players
understood the benefits of having an efficient
pass.
infrastructure and makes sure no opportunities
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3. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
When he clicks on the Sportlink Club icon on his “synchronise” again to see if the sports federation
desktop to administer changes to the member accepts his new members.
data, the software automatically checks the
Apart from W. Barentz all new members are
remote Sportlink server for application updates.
automatically accepted by the sports federation.
He is being presented a login screen that will
W. Barentz is being parked, which usually means
allow him to uniquely identify himself as a the
that this member is still an active player of a
member administrator of Dexlandia.
different club and therefore has to be manually
The first thing Peter notices are some small approved by an employee of the sports union, to
address and communication data changes by ensure no duplicate records are being inserted in
some of their members, entered through the kernel database. Peter will probably not have
Dexlandia's member portal. Since none of these to wait a few days for this approval, because
changes need corrections he approves all of recently the people at the sports federation are
them and decides to synchronise them with the pretty quick in resolving parked member issues.
sports federation central database. The next time Peter will synchronise, W. Barentz
Synchronization, instead of direct write access is will either be approved or rejected and will then
needed for approval purposes. All Peter has to be correctly administered in Dexlandia's
do is press the button “ synchronize”. Not only are membership file.
his changes sent to the sports federation, but he
also receives some remote mutations from the
sports federation in return. Apparently someone
has applied for membership of Dexlandia via the
federation and is added to Dexlandia's own
membership record.
synchronisation with the sport federation
After logging out of the Sportlink Club application,
Peter briefly checks the Dexlandia website to see
member detail screen whether or not he has been assigned as a driver
Peter himself also adds a few new members, for one of Dexlandia's teams, which doesn't seem
including a certain V. Vespucci and W. Barentz. to be the case for the coming weekend.
When inserting their address data Peter is
supported by an automatic asynchronous zip The treasurer
code lookup service that ensures him no invalid
Robert is the treasurer of Dexlandia. When he
addresses are being entered. He then hits
first volunteered for this position, some eight
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4. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
years ago, he had to manually keep track of all that have decided to pay on a quarterly basis.
member contributions and their payments using a The Sportlink Club system automatically
cumbersome spreadsheet. Every time Peter calculates the invoices for each of the applicable
made any changes in the member records he members, but allows Robert to manually change
had to check and modify his sheets to make sure any of them, before they have been approved.
their data was in sync. Nowadays Robert uses
For some members Robert prints the invoices, for
the same Sportlink Club application as Peter, and
others who have decided to pay electronically, he
operates on the same records, so no time is
selects the option “sent digital invoices”. For each
being wasted on synchronizing and checking
invoice an email is sent to the member containing
data.
a link to Sportlinks central payment site for
When logging in and identifying himself as a Dexlandia and an attachment of the invoice in
treasurer certain options appear, all regarding PDF format. Although Sportlink uses a central
the use of financial functions, that were not payment site, all payments go directly to the
available to his colleague Peter. clubs bank account, one of the many advantages
that the an iDEAL payment has to offer.
Robert notices that a few new members have
been added and assigns contribution profiles to Those messages that don't arrive in the members
them, based on their age and selected sports in-boxes, will be fall back to Roberts e-mail
activities. address, so he can resend them in a different
way.
In less than half an hour Robert is finished with
his administrative tasks and he is just in time to
see Dexlandia's next match on the local sports
channel.
The club secretary
The club secretary is responsible for
administering processes concerning scheduled
and finished matches. For the largest part this
means checking and assigning team schedules
and making sure that everybody knows who is
playing against whom, when and where.
At Dexlandia this role is being fulfilled by Errold.
contribution administration He just received word via a phone call that the
team of “Forland 2” would like their match against
Robert is glad that over two-thirds of his “Dexlandi a 2” to be rescheduled to 15:00 PM due
members have agreed to pay their contribution to circumstances of a few of their players. Since
electronically via iDEAL, the Dutch electronic one of the Dexlandia fields is still available and
internet payment standard. Resulting not only in since the request is submitted more than 3 days
the lowest cost per transaction, but also in the in advance, this doesn't pose a problem. Using a
least amount of work for the treasurer and the centrally provided address book by Sportlink,
smallest possible chance of error. containing all club secretaries in his district, he
Because the first quarter of the 2006-2007 quickly finds the address of Forlands' club
season has just expired, Robert decides to secretary and tells him the request for change of
prepare a new contribution run, for all members the match time is granted.
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5. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
Errold also boots the Sportlink Club. Though he Dexlandia has enabled in the Sportlink Club
cannot see any financial data, nor change any of application for him. He creates a simple schedule
the members' data, he can open an overview of in the activity module of the Sportlink Club and
all future and past matches of Dexlandia. In this hits save. He knows that the same data of this
overview which is directly loaded from the sports schedule has also been put on the Dexlandia
federation central database he locates the match website by their web master, using one of
that has to be changed and sets the correct end Sportlinks website plugins.
date.
Although it appears that nothing remarkably The team captain
happens in the split-second after hitting the save This weekend, the team of “Dexlandia 2” has just
button, Errold knows that a lot of things have won their match versus “Forland 2” with a 3 to 1
taken place. For one, within seconds the altered score. The referee had some difficulties
match time will be available both on the website regulating the match, so no less than 1 red and 3
of the sports federation and on the website of yellow cards have been drawn. Thomson is the
Dexlandia. Furthermore, email messages will be team captain of “Dexlandia 2” and is therefore
sent to all involved team players of Dexlandia responsible for administrating the match score on
and Forland and of course the referee that had Dexlandia's behalf.
been assigned to the match. Those players that
have opted for the SMS service will receive an After the match, he walks into the canteen and
additional notification on their mobile phone takes place behind one of the computers. One of
because the match change concerns a match the bookmarks points to Sportlinks match result
that is being played in the current week. service. Using Dexlandia's pin code and the
unique match number, that Thomson copied
Luckily, Errold doesn't manually have to do from his weekly schedule on his cellphone, he
anything to notify involved parties any more, enters the match result on the website; checks if
which seriously cut back the time he has to all his players are correctly displayed; adds one
spent each week volunteering as the club of them, the new player V. Vespucci, that wasn't
secretary. Because he has more spare time now, on the list because players are loaded one week
he also agreed to plan the schedules of parents in advance because the union sends printouts to
that volunteered to drive teams to their playing the referees. He logs off to join his friends in
grounds. drinking a well-deserved beer only a few minutes
later.
After both the referee and the team of “Fo rland 2”
have entered the same match result data, the
score and updated standings will automatically
appear on the sports federation website and the
website of Dexlandia. In case of a discrepancy
someone of the sports federation will have to
mediate.
The referee
Ronald has been a federation referee for over 10
years. Because he takes his job very seriously,
match overview he prepared thoroughly for the match between
Forland and Dexlandia. Although the players of
This is another option the administrator of
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6. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
today's match were a bit rowdy, Ronald thinks he Via the automatic approval of the member
did a good job disciplining the match and made administrator, he also gets a personal login for
no judgemental errors. the Dexlandia member portal. This portal allows,
amongst other things, to search for club
A few minutes after Thomson left, Ronald also
members, edit his own address and
enters the canteen to take place behind one of
communication data, and registration for
the computers. Apart from entering the score and
Sportlink SMS services.
checking both teams member administrations
based on the players passes he had seen, Because it seems convenient, he subscribes to
Ronald is also able to enter the one red card and the “ma tch changes” service for the “Dexlandia 2”
three yellow cards. team, which will warn him by SMS of any match
schedule changes occurring for matches within
The yellow cards will only be registered as a
the current week.
record in the union's database and have no
further workflow attached to them, but for the red After closing the portal, Victor notices he received
card Ronald has to fill in and email an additional an email from the treasurer of Dexlandia. The
report. There will also be a fee involved for the email contains an overview of a digital invoice
player, which will at first be fined to the club. He detailing his quarterly contribution fee and a link
prefers doing this at home, for which the to Dexlandia's payment site.
automatic reminder per email when assigning a
Only a member for 1 day and already they're
red card will make sure he doesn't forget this.
charging him! Victor decides to wait a few days
before paying when his cellphone beeps. The
The member start time of the match against Forland 2 next
As described before Victor Vespucci has applied Saturday has been moved from 14:00 to 15:00
for membership of Dexlandia via their website at PM.
the beginning of the week. Little over a day later
he gets an approval from the member The supporter
administrator, which is good news, because he
was already scheduled by his friends to play in
the second team against Forland this Saturday.
club site
Janice is a dedicated supporter of the first team
of Dexlandia, who tries to attend all of their
matches in person. Unfortunately she is not
member portal always able to do so, for which reason she has
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7. The service oriented club - Navajo community builder in action
subscribed to Sportlinks match result service, After hitting the save button, the member is
concerning matches of “Dexlandia 1” . flagged to be synchronised back to the club as
soon as the member administrator hits the
She is able to subscribe to this service, both via
synchronise button again.
the federations website as well as via the website
of Dexlandia. Enrico still has a busy day ahead, scheduling
new competitions, preparing matches,
The sports federation administering relations, running reports etc. Only
a few of the many additional functions the
Enrico is freshly hired employee of the central Sportlink federation system has to offer.
sports federation. One of his tasks is to check
incorrectly added or changed club members.
Since he always does a diligent job, he manages
Finally
to start of with a clean list each day. Although the scenarios as depicted above are
fictional, this is an accurate description of a
This morning he sees, amongst others that one
combination of possibilities already operational in
of the newly inserted members of the club called
a number of sports federations in the
“Dexlandi a '98” has been parked. He opens the
Netherlands. The main reason for each of the
member “ W. Barentz” after which the system tells
federations not all having the entire spectrum of
him, that this member is still an active player for
services combined into a single sports
another club, and therefore is already known in
community, can only be attributed to the fact that
the sports federations database. Since the
thes ports federations involved are not
member W. Barentz has applied for indoor
organizationally ready for some automated
soccer at Dexlandia and appears to be playing
processes.
outdoor soccer in one of Dexlandia's
neighbouring clubs, Enrico can safely approve
the membership and transfer its unique member
identifier.
the federation application
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