1999 Systems Engineering Capstone Conference University of Virginia

MOBILE BANKING AND LOAN PROCESSING ENVIRONMENTS

Student Capstone Team: Burce Kabatepe, Jay Koo, Kym McCammon, Manjula Perera Faculty Advisor: Peter Beling Department of Systems Engineering Client Advisors: Scott Day, Gordon Sheppard and Patrick Shaw American Management Systems, Inc. Financial Industry Group Fairfax, Virginia 22033 E-mail: gordon_sheppard@amsinc.com KEYWORDS: Client-server network, software development, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), Graphical User Interface (GUI), Database Management Systems (DBMS) ABSTRACT A loan processing application was designed and implemented on palmtop computers for mobile bankers. Two portable handheld devices (3Coms PalmPilot and Microsofts Windows CE based computer) were evaluated and feasible development methods for the lending application were investigated. The lending application is an automated system that is accessible through a graphical user interface on the palmtop computers. Loan officers can enter data through the palmtops, store the loan information locally, and submit this information to be processed at a server for a credit decision. After investigating four feasible alternatives for developing the loan processing system, two separate options were pursued simultaneously. Oracle Lite (an embedded client database designed for palmtops), was integrated into the solutions for both PalmPilots and Windows CE devices. For Palm OS devices, a user-interface was built using Satellite Forms. The forms created will be integrated with Oracle Lite once Satellite Forms 3.0 is released. A short-term solution, which involved an interface built using a programming tool called Waba and data storage through local text files, was completed for Windows CE devices. The long-term plan for the data storage involves a database developed using Oracle8 Navigator that would be kept on a desktop PC and would communicate with a client-side Oracle Lite database running on a Windows CE device.

INTRODUCTION Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), first developed in the mid 1990s, are one of the greatest advancements in mobile computing. These handheld devices are the answer to a smaller, lightweight version of the laptop with a fair amount of the functionality and applications. One of the first palm-size devices that is still around today is the PalmPilot, introduced in 1996 by US Robotics and Palm Computing, now a unit of 3Com Corp. Micorsofts Windows CE devices are the second most dominating PDA in the market coming in two different types, handhelds and palmsize PCs. PalmPilots are very similar to the Windows CE palmsize PCs, but different from Windows CE handhelds in that they use a different proprietary operating system and the Palm interface uses only a stylus for input rather than also supporting input via a keyboard. American Management Systems, an international business and information technology consulting firm, is working with the University of Virginia to develop mobile lending applications for PDAs running Palm OS and Windows CE. These applications are important for demonstrating how mobile bank officers can input customer data while away and disconnected from the office and transfer the data later to the banks back-end systems. Goals of the System The goals of the project are to: Create a lending application for automobile loans and credit card applications that will run on PDAs Have a local storage option when an Internet connection is not available Be able to run on Palm OS and Windows CE machines, which make up the majority of the PDA market share

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Mobile Banking And Loan Processing Environments At the hardware level, serial communications takes place over a cable. IR communication is based on technology that is similar to remote control devices such as TV and entertainment remote controls used in most homes today. Once connected to the receiving machine, the actual data transfer uses the same functions that are used for reading from or writing to a file. The data is simply streamed from one device to the other with the use of a cable or infrared beams. If a digital phone jack is available locally, the palmtop may be connected to the Internet by dialing into an Internet service provider or another computer connected to the Internet, called a wired dial-in connection. PalmPilots can use HotSync software and a PalmPilot modem to connect to a remote TCP/IP-based network. Windows CE uses the standard Windows Dial-Up Networking features to create a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection using TCP/IP standards. Wireless Dial-in is a packet switched network that shares a radio channel source. The cost does not depend on the connection time; rather it depends on the amount of data sent. This option only requires a wireless modem to plug into a handheld or palmtop computer. The two determining criteria for connections are mobility and future outlook. For the loan processing system, the user should be able to submit loan data while away from the office. Therefore, a wireless modem with fast service and large coverage area is recommended. Recently, Palm Computing announced the release Palm VII, available in mid-1999 that has a wireless modem built in it for proper Internet access. Windows CE handheld PCs already have wireless modems available on some of the models and future releases of the other models will include them. Thus, in the future it will not be necessary to purchase separate hardware for a wireless solution. In order to connect the devices to the server at our client's side, we considered several software solutions. Java RMI and HTTP solutions best fit the needs of the loan processing system. Java RMI is a communication method used for small-scale distributed Java Applications. HTTP is a communications protocol used for exchanging files on the World Wide Web by using a browser and a web-server. These options were chosen for feasible solutions for the following reasons: they can easily integrate with Webbased applications at the client's site, programmers can reuse the existing code from applications at the client's site, and they are already used for loan processing systems at AMS.

Design and develop a prototype that will serve as a basis for more involved applications

The mobile application is to be integrated into an existing loan processing system. The architecture diagram below illustrates how the mobile application will come into play with the current infrastructure.
Credit Bureau (Bureau Link)

Gateway Server

Loan Processing Server

Mobile Application on PDA

Figure 1. System Architecture Diagram As can be seen from the diagram, a user enters a loan application with a palmtop and either immediately submits the application to the gateway server for processing or stores the data temporarily on the palmtop and transfers the data to the gateway server later. The gateway server submits the loan information to the loan-processing server that has access to the credit bureau. Once a decision on an auto loan or credit card application has been made, the results of the transaction are returned back to the palmtop or the palmtop can query the back-end system for the decision at a later time PALMTOPS ENVIRONMENTS Since the applications must access servers in order to process the data, connection methods are an important decision. The three main classes of options for connecting palmtops to the Internet that suit our application are local access connections, wired dial-in and wireless dial-in. In terms of local access connections, if a desktop computer with Internet access is available locally, there are two options to connect the palmtop directly to the desktop machine and therefore to the Internet. These options are serial or infrared (IR) connections.

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1999 Systems Engineering Capstone Conference University of Virginia building Java applications for Windows CE devices especially since any CE device that has a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed on it can run Java programs. A JVM is the software that interacts with the Java compiled binary code and the microprocessor that performs the programs instructions. Two separate tools are necessary for this Java RMI/Java alternative because neither palmtop supports the other operating system. Although this constraint increases the length of development for the lending application, the team recognized that most of the code could be reusable. The fourth option involves a method of data storage using Oracle Lite and a user interface developed with any type of programming tool that is compatible with Oracle Lite. For PalmPilots, Oracle Lite 3.5 would provide a database and Satellite Forms, a form building toolkit, would provide the user interface. Currently Oracle Lite does not have a footprint for the PalmPilots; a consolidator must be utilized in order to input the data into the database. The consolidator resides on the desktop and converts the files into a readable form for the PalmPilot. For Windows CE, Oracle Lite would provide a database and a user interface could be developed using Java. In contrast to the PalmPilot case, a consolidator is not needed for Windows CE devices since the Oracle Lite database can reside on the palmtop. Criteria for Alternatives Each alternative was evaluated based on a set of criteria, with results as shown in Figures 2 and 3. The evaluation criteria were Anticipated Usability = A, Ease of Development = B, Future Outlook = C, Cost = D, Manageability = E, Flexibility = F, and Security = G. Each alternative was given a score of excellent = 1, good = 2, fair = 3, or poor = 4 for each criterion. Ranking of Alternative Solutions
Solution HTTP/ HTML Java RMI/ Java Oracle Lite 3.5 A 2 3 1 B 1 2 2 C 2 1 1 D 1 1 2 E 1 2 2 F 3 2 1 G 2 2 1

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS The Capstone group came up with four feasible alternatives for the mobile lending application but one was not applicable to PalmPilots. The first option involves creating HTML forms for a Web browser where the client is the palmtop machine and the server is an external Web server. Data would be collected and transmitted from a Web page on the client machine and information would be processed on the external server. This solution was limiting in the local storage due to the limitations on Palm and CE web browsers. Currently, Palm browsers do not support Java Applets or scripts. Therefore the only way to store the applications until an Internet connection is available is to cache the pages and open numerous copies of the browser. When the connection is available the user must go to each page and submit the applications for review. Windows CE browsers do not support Java completely but it does support Jscript, Microsofts version of JavaScript, which can allow us to save user-entered text in the HTML forms. The second option utilizes an embedded server that provides communication between the AMS server and a fully implemented Java application running along with the local browser. Note that this alternative is similar to the first alternative (HTTP/HTML External Server) since the solution still involves HTML forms on a local browser as the user-interface. The major difference between this option and the first alternative is the embedded server that is installed on the palmtop itself. The purpose of the embedded server is to handle the Java application that processes the submitted data and provides local storage. At the time when research was conducted, the Java Embedded Server (JES) supported Windows CE machines, but definite information to prove that it could be used on PalmPilots was not available. The third feasible option is a Java application using Java RMI to connect to the gateway server. There is only one development toolkit available for PalmPilots in Java called Jump. Jump is a proprietary development environment developed by Greg Hewgill that allows the user to develop the application on a desktop and then converts the program to a PalmPilot (.prc) file. The toolkit is in the development stages and difficult to use. (Hewgill, 1997). In contrast to the PalmPilot case, there are several options available for

Figure 2. Performance Rating for PalmOS

Solution

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Mobile Banking And Loan Processing Environments When a customer is applying for an auto loan, the loan officer must enter information about the loan, applicant, coapplicant (if any), and financial information. For credit card loans, a loan officer must enter similar information except that the requirements for applicants financial data are slightly different. PALM OS SOLUTION The Oracle Lite solution provides a simple user interface development and relatively easy communication mechanism with the gateway server. There are three main steps required for the implementation of this solution: Building a user interface with a development tool Defining the database tables for storing the credit applications and credit decisions Replicating the Oracle Lite database with the Oracle8 database on the Credit Gateway server Integrating the user interface with the Oracle Lite database Building the User Interface Satellite Forms is a development toolkit developed by Puma Technologies and Soft Magic. This toolkit was used to develop the user interface component for the Palm Pilot. The toolkit utilizes drag and drop programming and a scripting language based in Visual Basic. The first step in developing a program is to develop the forms that make up the user interface.

HTTP/ HTML(I) HTTP/ HTML(II) Java RMI/ Java Oracle Lite 3.5

1 1 1 1

2 2 2 2

1 1 1 1

1 4 1 2

2 2 2 1

1 1 1 1

1 1 2 1

Figure 3. Performance Rating for Windows CE After presenting the four feasible alternatives, AMS and the Capstone team agreed that two separate options should be pursued simultaneously. Since the Oracle Lite solution performed the best overall, this option was to be integrated into the solutions for both PalmPilots and Windows CE devices. The solution chosen for Palm OS was Oracle Lite using Satellite Forms as the user interface. The solution chosen for Windows CE devices was Oracle Lite using a Java development tool as the user interface. FUNCTIONAL DESIGN The purpose of the functional design is to outline the use cases for the lending application and establish the system navigation flow. Applying for a new auto loan application and a new credit card application are the two use cases involved in this project. We developed a process flow chart that shows the navigation flow from the point the loan is entered through a user interface up until the point when the results of the transaction is received back on the palmtops. One of the most important functions of the loan processing system is to be able to enter the applicants data. This means that a loan officer can create a new application by adding data into the fields specified by the forms through the palmtops. The loan processing system must also provide functionality to enable the loan officer and the applicant to review the information that has been entered, checking for correctness. A loan officer may be able to go back to a previous form and update information (as long as they have not submitted the application to the gateway server yet). Once the application is entered, the loan officer must then be able to submit the information to the gateway server for processing. After a decision has been made, the loan officer must be notified of the applicants status. Use Cases

Figure 4. Screen Shot from Satellite Forms Titles, text fields, radio buttons, drop lists, edit fields, and buttons are added to the form. After all the forms are

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1999 Systems Engineering Capstone Conference University of Virginia complete, they are linked together by Back and Continue buttons. When the user selects either of these buttons the program jumps to the next form. Logic is added to each form by running a script on the user command, such as when a button is pressed to advance to the next form. When the Continue button is pressed on a form a script is run. The program has intelligence, in that it will react differently to different data inputs. There are variables that allow this intelligence. They represent the requested product and the loan type. The product can either be auto or credit so that the program will know which form to advance to for each application. The loan type has a value of joint or single to determine whether or not the program advances to the co-applicant forms. Database tables are created the same way as forms. They have rows and columns and are set up very similar to spreadsheets. A table was made for drop down list values, application identification numbers, logins and application data. The application data table was left blank because the program will write to this table after the user enters the information. Data Replication between Oracle Lite and Oracle8 There are two main connectivity methods available for the replication: connection-based and filebased. The connection-based method uses Oracles proprietary communication software called Oracle Net8 to connect the Oracle Lite database to the Oracle8 server. Oracle Net8 allows bi-directional data replication between the two servers over a live network, either LAN (Local Area Network) or dial-up networks. (Oracle, 1998) The file-based method uses a regular file-transfer method to transmit data between the Oracle Lite database and the Oracle8 database. It uses HTTP as the communication protocol. The Oracle Web Application Server allows data replication between the Oracle Lite database and the Oracle8 database over the Internet. The web application server can reside on the same system as the Oracle8 server. Once the Internet connection is established, any authorized users can perform the data replication without having to start a separate connectivity session. (Oracle, 1998) Before the actual creation of the Oracle8 database on the gateway server, it was necessary to build a test database on a desktop PC to ensure that the Oracle data replication worked correctly. Using the test database server, we were able to detect problems that may arise in the real data replication between the PalmPilot and the gateway server. Integration between User Interface and Oracle Lite Data synchronization between the Satellite Forms tables on PalmPilots and the Oracle Lite tables can be achieved by local or remote HotSync technology from 3Com. The PalmPilot consolidator converts the Satellite Forms data into PalmPilot data, and inserts them into the appropriate columns in the Oracle Lite database. WINDOWS CE SOLUTION For Windows CE devices, a short-term solution using a Java development tool for the interface and data storage in local text files was proposed. The long-term plan for the data storage involves a database developed using Oracle8 Navigator that would be kept on a desktop PC and will communicate with a client-side Oracle Lite database that runs on the Windows CE device. Java could not be used as a development tool for Windows CE devices because there are no stand-alone Java Virtual Machines that could be installed on these machines so that a pure Java application can run on them. Lawsuits between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are continuing and Microsoft has not yet made a firm decision with its plan to support Java for Windows CE operating systems. Therefore, we developed a prototype in Waba, a package that includes a programming language, a virtual machine, a class file format and a set of foundation classes that are subsets of the class file and bytecode format supported by Java. The Waba prototype consists of a form that allows loan officers to enter data, save data to a local text file on the handheld, and submit data to a server in the form of key-value pairs. The prototype needs to be expanded to include all the forms according to the use-cases described in Functional Design section. (Wabasoft, 1999) The following form (Figure 5), created for the shortterm solution using Waba, has four basic controls: labels, text fields, drop-down lists, and buttons. The labels tell the user the appropriate names of the fields. The text fields provide space for the user to enter data. The drop-down list allows the user to view available options available for an applicants suffix (junior, senior, first, second, third, and fourth). There are three buttons on the Waba prototype:

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Mobile Banking And Loan Processing Environments Close, Save, and Submit. The Close button simply exits the application. The Save button allows the user to save the entered data to a text file on the handheld. The Submit button allows the user to send the loan data to a server. Messages appear on the form to tell the user if the data was sent successfully or not. user along with a help index that explains how to use the program and answer common questions. According to the Oracle website, Oracle Lite 4.0 will be available in the near future. This will allow the Oracle Lite database to reside on the PalmPilot itself rather than on a desktop PC, and thus it will eliminate the need for the PalmPilot Consolidator. Users will be able to achieve a direct data replication. WindowsCE For Windows CE devices, a short-term solution involving a Waba-based interface and data storage in local text files was completed. A database using Oracle8 Navigator was developed for the long-term solution. This database is kept on a desktop PC and will eventually communicate with a client-side Oracle Lite database that runs on the Windows CE device. Although the lending application developed for Windows CE devices is a working prototype, it still needs work in order to be fully functional. Since a stand-alone Java VM is still unavailable for these handhelds, we recommend that the Waba solution be explored further. Waba seems to provide a sound VM and since ten beta releases are expected before the final 1.0 release, a prototype developed in Waba is guaranteed to be very reliable. In terms of future Windows CE work, the first step is to add functionality to the current Waba form so that a loan officer can retrieve data that was entered earlier and be able to submit it to the server. Next, validation and security capabilities to the Waba prototype are needed. Additional forms should not be added to the prototype until every aspect is working properly in the current form. The next major step is to integrate Oracle Lite into the Waba solution. This task involves correctly installing an Oracle Lite database on the handheld and then communicating with an Oracle server on a desktop computer. Thorough testing is required to assure that the lending application integrates with the AMS server properly and is robust, reliable, and secure. The Windows CE prototype will be complete when a loan officer can enter data through the interface on the handheld and use a wireless connection to submit the data to Credit Gateway. The handhelds should then receive back an answer based on a decision made by credit bureaus.

Figure 5. Screen Shot of Waba Prototype In terms of the long-term solution, the forms were created using Visual Cafe by dragging and dropping controls onto a form and editing the properties. The database was created in a flat file format using Oracle8 Navigator. Flat files, consist of single files with rows (records) and columns (fields) of data that resemble a two-dimensional spreadsheet. They are often used for data management projects where data processing and retrieval are the primary concerns of the developers. For the loan processing system, a database with one large table and one unique identifier for each loan application was created to reduce the processing time involved with a credit decision. RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS PalmOS For PalmOS devices, the user-interface component was built using Satellite Forms. The forms created will be integrated with Oracle Lite once Satellite Forms 3.0 is released. The current version of Satellite Forms is not compatible with Oracle Lite. The new version is overdue and should permit the forms to easily integrate with the database. (Cooper & Lee, 1999) A future recommendation on the user interface is to utilize additional data validation for the user inputs. A more robust program would check for correct input values from the user. Bitmaps and more user-friendly graphics could be added to the application to guide the

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1999 Systems Engineering Capstone Conference University of Virginia In addition, further integration work is necessary with the Credit Gateway to ensure that data transferred from the handheld devices integrates smoothly with the Credit Gateway server and back-end loan processing engine. CONCLUSIONS The Capstone group developed a mobile lending application for personal digital assistants to allow loan officers to complete efficient financial transactions. Results indicate that the Oracle Lite Satellite Forms solution for PalmPilots is more robust than the Windows CE prototype since the former consisted of the most complete user-interface. However, the Windows CE prototype is a solid stepping stone for future work. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful for technical help and guidance provided by Brian Cunningham, Venkat Chalasani, Patrick Hannon, and Tim Smith. REFERENCES Cooper, Lee & Shepherd, Neil. (1999). Create Palmbased Enterprise Application with Oracle Lite v3.5. (Seminar slides) Hewgill, Greg. (1997). Jump - Java User Module for PalmPilot. [online document] Available at http://www.hewgill.com Oracle, Corp. (1998). Oracle Lite Replication Guide, Release 3.5. Wabasoft Inc. (1999). Wabasoft Product Overview. [online document] Available at http://www.wabasoft.com BIOGRAPHIES Burce Kabatepe is a fourth-year Systems Engineering major with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Istanbul, Turkey. He researched the hardware options for communication methods, built the User Interface using Visual Caf forms for the Credit Card Application part of the project, worked on the communication and submission of the data collected using the Waba solution. Mr. Kabatepe will be working for Bellcore as an associate consultant in New Jersey upon graduation. Jay Koo is a fourth-year Systems Engineering major concentrating in computer information systems from Fairfax, Virginia. In the project, he was mainly responsible for designing and implementing the Oracle Lite solution for PalmPilots. Upon graduation, he will be working for Oracle Corp. as an associate consultant. Kym McCammon is a fourth year Systems Engineering major with a Management Information Systems concentration from Syracuse, New York. Her principal contribution to the project was in creating the user-interface prototype for the PalmOS application in Satellite Forms. She has accepted a position with American Management Systems and will start in the Fairfax office in July. Manjula Perera is a fourth year Systems Engineering major with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Reston, Virginia. He researched development methods for the lending application, developed the Waba prototype in terms of capturing and saving user-entered data, and worked on Visual Caf forms for the Auto Loan Application part of the project. He will be working for Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Fairfax as an IT consultant.

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Mobile Banking And Loan Processing Environments

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