Chapter 5. AT&T Unisource: Cost-Optimized Routing Environment on the Borland AppServer

Released in beta form in December 1999, after four months of development, the CORE (Cost Optimized Routing Environment) project is a set of integrated tools to help deliver significant cost savings within the voice network business of AT&T Unisource.

CORE tools were integrated through a Java application called the CORE Desktop Environment (CDE). They were built around a component model that reflected both the structure and behavior of the voice network. The tools and their visual representations provided a pleasing, highly interactive user experience that offered speed of execution, consistent display, and sophisticated, extensible features. The main client, a Java application, provided advanced usage and functionality; a browser-based front end provided the advantages of a thin-client interface.

The tools used to build the solution included Borland AppServer, built on top of Visibroker 4, JBuilder Enterprise Edition, and Unified Modeling Language (UML) design tools. The technologies used in the CORE project included CORBA 2.3, XML, and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) features, such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), JDBC data access, Java Naming Directory Interface (JNDI), Java Servlets, and JavaServer Pages (JSP).