Improving Architectures for Electronic Banking Systems

Electronic banking software enables the customer to take up many kinds of banking services by internet or modem direct connection. Most of the existing products are based on monolithic software architectures that makes them hard to maintain and that are not flexible enough to be adopted to changing demands; the configuration, integration, and adaption of services is therefore a difficult task. Furthermore, many services do not scale well with the ever growing number of users, some operate already far beyound the originally planned limits. The positive as well as the negative experiences out of the activities mentioned above are therefore the basis for this project. We expect from the envisioned software architecture the following achievements and improvements over the state of the art: - Simple maintenance of banking services; e.g. updates by versions with improved user interfaces - Flexible (preferably dynamic) addition and exchange of features and services - Easy adaption to new hardware, operating system, and communication infrastructures; e.g., support of new access points such as NC-s, Net-PCs, TV-Web interface boxes, PDAs and mobile systems - Scalability (with respect to maintenance and performance) to the demands of electronic banking for at least one decade.