Companies depend on documenting the working hours of their employees. The goal of this diploma is the design and the implementation of a usable time management system. The Client- Server based system is supposed to be used over an Intranet or the internet.

This system provides lots of information to evaluate. It is clearly structured, so any employee is able to record his own working hours. Hours are related to projects, which are organised in a tree structure to enable fine partition. A project itself contains different activities, which can only be done by certain employees. Each employee as well as each activity have a base, which can be set retroactively at anytime. The vacation days and the overtime are updated by the system as well.

The design is built on a Three Tier Model. The lowest layer is a Relational Database on which the server, implemented as a servlet, is built, which itself processes Java- Client requests. The client can be used either as an Applet or a Standalone Application. Because the applications can also be run on the internet, a secure authentification is important as well as the distribution of the user rights. Both is implemented in this system.

I was able to implement the framework of this complex application. The functionality of the database as well as the entire communication with the client is ensured. On the other hand I underestimated the expenditure to implement a user friendly graphic interface, so that the Client doesn't show the entire functionality.

More and more insurances bring their services on the internet, in order to get closer to the customer. Clients should be able to calculate cost estimations of insurance policies and conclude contracts at home. To make these services accessible from the internet, large insurance databases must become connectable from the web. This kind of solutions is the domain of SoftCon AG. They have developed a product called ProductEngine, that provides the functionalities, which are necessary for insurance-calculations.

In this project a model of an internetclient for the ProductEngine was planed, realized and tested. The model had to be implemented in two different technologies, for SoftCon to evaluate the two solutions.

The focus was on the HTML-based Insuranceclient, allowing the calculation of car insurance policies. This internetclient has been realized in the Java-Servlet technology. The user interface has been designed in HTML. The Servlet was written in Java and developed in a object oriented approach. It controls the operational sequence, builds up dynamically the HTML user interface, manages the HTTP sessions and binds the ProductEngine. The connection to the C++ written ProdcutEngine is based on CORBA.

In order to evaluate the two different solutions, a Java Applet client with exactly the same functionalities has been realized, with only a slight difference in the appearance of the user interface, but with certain changes in the core of the program.

Up to now announcements of upcoming stops in public transport are made up of recorded sequences of words or the driver directly speaks the announcements. The first version is inflexible when modifications arise and the second diverts the driver unnecessarily.

The aim of this diploma project is to work out a concept concerning how the above-mentioned problems can be solved with the use of an existing speech synthesis. In addition, predicates about the naturalness of the synthesised speech, the necessary bandwidth for transmission and the requirements of the vehicle?s computer should be made.

On the basis of a demo programme, the feasability of the use of speech synthesis in public transport is demonstrated. The demo consists of the two main parts: head office and vehicle. In the head office, routes are created and edited and announcements are written. Routes and announcements are transmitted via a socket connection that simulates the connection between head office and vehicle. Each entered text can be synthesised immediately, in order to check the pronunciation. If the synthesis does not create the desired result, an alternative text can be input which will generate the correct speech. This feature is meant as bypass until the synthesis system is adapted. The vehicle is simulated by the presentation of a route. The vehicle announces the upcoming stops and outputs announcements sent by the head office.

The utilised SVOX speech synthesis, which is one of the best for German, produces very reasonable results for normal texts. But with names, particular Swiss names, that often do not follow the standard German pronunciations, the synthesis faces its limitations.

The narrow-band connection between the head office and the vehicle causes no problem, since only text is transmitted.

Thanks to GPS (Global Positioning System) it is possible to determine the position of vehicles exactly. The company Häni-Prolectron AG (HPW), developing traffic control systems for local public transport, uses this technology and supplies the vehicles of the public transport services with GPS receivers. Because there is not much use in displaying such precise data on schematic network plans, HPW offered this diploma thesis.

The system analyses the GPS position indications of the vehicles of the "Braunschweiger Verkehrs AG" and visualises them on a city map using a GIS (Geographical Information System).

With this application the traffic controller can survey the traffic situation of the public transport network, since all circulating vehicles are shown at their exact position. According to the timetable deviation, the vehicles are coloured differently. The traffic controller might also search for vehicles or stops, these are then shown in their surrounding environment. Additionally vehicles can be pursued and information about vehicles and stops can be obtained.

The client/server application was completely developed in Java. The system uses MapXtreme Java Edition. In order to achieve an intranet respectively internet suitable solution, the client was implemented as a Java applet. On the server runs a Player, which writes the GPS position data, as well as further operational information about the vehicles in time into a database. The client reads the data records and plots the vehicles. The database access and the supply of the necessary map are taken over by the MapXtreme servlet.

Handhelds boom and are more and more used as a portable, universal source of information. Haeni-Prolectron, a developer of traffic control centers, is interested in offering timetables on Handhelds.

This work aims a solution, where a timetable is generated and downloaded over the Internet and can be visualized on the PalmPilot afterwards.

A user can select a timetable and the desired lines over a WWW Browser. The timetable data is picked out from a Oracle database by a JavaServlet and transferred into a storage space-saving format. Now, this adapted data is being stored in a PalmDataBase-file (PDB). This PDB-file is downloaded individually or together with the PalmPilot application over the Internet to a PC. The files are transferred from there to the PalmPilot device.

On the PalmPilot the application and the PDB-file visualize an electronic timetable. The Palm-Pilot user selects departure - and target-station, sets date & time and receives all possible traffic connections to its input. The next departure times or the accurate drive to a line can be displayed alternatively.

An extensive analysis of the data communication possibilities and the timetable database preceded the actual implementation. The evaluated method for solution could be proven in practice by a prototype. The Internet application for building timetables is completely implemented. Lack of time caused the PalmPilot application to be realized only in form of a demonstrator with static data. The reading of the timetable data from the PDB-file is not implemented, but the detailed way to solve this has been presented.

On the basis of the today's central control systems in the public suburban traffic, it would be relatively simple possible to calculate corrected timetable data with current information, which a bus sends continuously. These would have to be made accessible for the customer in any possible way. Next to the conventional indicating panels at the stops, Internet would be a very good instrument for the supply of such information.

Our Diploma paper concentrates mainly on the subject of the preparation and visualising of these effective connecting data. We tried to reduce the quantity of data of a timetable system to the relevant information for the customer and to make them available to him in a clearly and easily way. We divided this difficulty into diverse small sub-problems and combined the different solution versions in a catalogue.

A further task, we were given and which we discuss in this paper, was the implementation of a demonstrator for a WAP and an application of Web. We decided in advance for an independent service. On the basis of this main criterion, we confronted the different solution versions each other and decided for an approach, which we then implemented.

In order to realise the demonstrator, we had the possibility of accessing a Sybase database with the bus timetable of Winterthur. The dynamic pages are generated by Java Servlets. The connection to the timetable database is solved over an Corba interface.

This work forms a good basis for the elaboration of a potential application in the near future. It should serve the developer as a supplying with first reference points and ideas. Present technical restrictions, like for example the exact localisation of the passenger, prevent the implementation of individual solution versions. However, new systems, like UMTS, will open many barriers in the next years.

Nowadays, the operators of public transportation systems deal with a great wealth of data concerning the planned schedule and the actual situation on their networks. In the past, this data was used solely for the efficient management of the transportation network. Giving the passengers a possibility to access a wisely selected subset of these data might help them to plan their journey. One example of useful information for the customers are messages about delays and service interruptions.

The main problem of the network operators was to deliver the messages to the public within reasonable time. The wide spread availability and use of cellular phones lead to new approaches to solve this problem.

The purpose of this diploma assignment is to develop an easy-to-use system that distributes up-to-the-minute status information about the current schedule to passengers via e-mail and SMS (Short Message Service). In a first step, the given set of data had to be analysed in order to find the parts that could possibly be passed along to the public. Three different services were implemented.

The first service allows the passengers to query the exact departure time from their current stations by SMS. To make the usage as easy as possible, the content is split into several SMS messages. If a query has multiple results, it might be refined.

Another service sends an e-mail or SMS notification some minutes before a certain station is being served. The result is a more accurate schedule for the station selected. This service can be subscribed with an easy-to-use web-page on the internet.

To take advantage of the third service, the customer has to order it on the Internet as well. Once the customer has successfully subscribed to this service, he gets all the information concerning the selected route either as SMS or e-mail message. Possible messages include service interruptions, delays or additional services during peak times.

If an ISP wants to offer an online service only available for his costumers, it would be interesting to authenticate them with a Radius Server, which verifies the user's phone number instead of the username and password.

The goal of this project is to develop a software package, which extracts the important information out of a Radius Serverfile and saves it to a database. The database must be accessible for the webserver's requests. We devided the whole project into three modules:

• The Parser module reads the detailfile of the Radius Server and gives the relevant information to the Access module.
• The Access module takes the requests (write/delete/read) and makes the changes to the so called Tel/IP-DB.
• The HTML-Generator module is a servlet, which responds to the user's HTTP-requests. It sends a SOAP-request to the Access module and generates a webpage with the given information.

We built a distributed system in order to take care of the load balancing and to split the project in logical parts. The communication between the modules is based on a new protocol called SOAP.

So far a user can log himself in and his phone number and IP-address are stored to a database. If the user visits our website, he gets his own phone number as a confirmation.

The ZHW has an online city map of Winterthur on the internet. There are two versions. The currently running and another one done as a diploma project in 1997. Our task was to develop a new software with more features based on the two other versions, as well as to write a management tool which provides decentralized administration for the data. In order to make it possible to store an object's position not only as a point but also as an area, the data model had to be extended.

Since the old software design was insufficient we made a completely new design, with the aim to have a greater degree of flexibility for future modifications. We created a new database scheme. An object's position can now be stored as a point, a polygon or a line string. The design allows almost any possible updates for new geometrical shapes. The new design also allows to store information for every object. Objects can be grouped in layers, which can be plotted in the city map.

The city map and the management tool software is nearly finished. There is only miner work still to be done, to achieve a stable system suitable for real use.

As database we use Oracle 8i with the spatial data extension. The spatial data concept provides efficient storing and queries for shapes. The program has been written in Java. The management tool uses RMI to communicate with the city map.

For computer scientists and engineers it is important to understand how microprocessors work, to be able to judge possibilities and limits of hard- and software based systems. The hardware systems commonly used for training are in general expensive and rely on a lab providing the required infrastructure. Alternatively a complete software emulation system could be used. But in this case it is not possible to do experiments with hardware components.

The goal of this work is to develop and implement a multimedia simulation platform for microprocessor systems that combines the advantages of a software solution with the possibility to include real hardware components through a simple interface. The platform is based on the results of a previous project thesis where several simulation concepts were investigated.

The heart of the platform is the simulator core, which is responsible for coordination of and communication among simulated components. The simulator is kept very general and can simply be extended. In addition, together with already implemented components, any digital system or component can be simulated.

Besides decoders, latches and memories, the systems provides virtual input- and output components, a generic logic component (GAL) as well as network access through a byte-oriented socket interface. The main component is a simple processor, which can also be used for more demanding applications. Based on different reasons, we have decided to use for our purpose the Intel 8085, which has a 8-bit wide CISC architecture.

Another important part of our work is the visualisation of the simulated components. To support the multimedia aspect of the simulation, as much as possible of the available information is graphically displayed and can interactively be manipulated. This provides the user not only with a better understanding of the internals of a processor but also with a lot of interaction with the entire system.

The task this diploma project was about was a feasibility study on using genetic algorithms to automatically generate shift schedules.

In order to be able to answer the questions raised by the task a software prototype was programmed. This prototype had to be very flexible to allow the generation of different types of shift schedules. These ranging from timetables for a school to a shift schedule for nurses in a hospital. Due to the fact that so diverse types of shift schedules have completely different data structures and rules that have to be observed, these two areas presented quite a challenge. In order to develop such a data structure and a way to represent the rules the common denominator of these different shift schedules was implemented into the prototype. Any additional functionality specific to a type of shift schedule had to be programmed separately. Such separate software parts can be easyily implemented into the prototype due to the fact that the communication interfaces to the prototype have been defined and have to be used by any external software part. All the programming was done in Java.

Once the prototype was completed tests and adjustments to the prototype went hand in hand. The better the genetic algorithm was investigated and comprehended, the easier it was to implement the necessary changes.

In conclusion it can be said that genetic algorithms can be used to generate shift schdules. In order to produce good schedules a lot of adjustments have to be done to the original algorithm. One example of such an adjustment is the producing of starting conditions that already adhere to certain rules. If such adjustments are made it is possible to produce good shift schedules.

Today, devices which unite the advantages of laptops and organisers, are being developed and produced by many manufacturers. The main usage of these so-called handheld computers is supplying information of any type for mobile users. Siemens will bring a device called SIMpad (Siemens Web PAD) on the market, which unite these characteristics in one device and it will be available by the end of this year. Being equipped with the Smart Card interface, the SIMpad will be ready for E-Business and online banking, when introduced to the market.

The integration of Smart Cards in a personnel computer environment is still very young. Today's standard for this integration is called PC/SC (personal computer/smart card), which is implemented in all newer Windows operating systems. As SIMpad features the Windows CE operating system, Smart Cards can be used with this device as well.

For the company Siemens it is important to demonstrate a possible use of the Smart Card for the SIMpad. The main task of our project was to personalize the SIMpad with a Smart Card, containing personal data of the user (Email-addresses, URL's). The Smart Card is protected with a personal code.

The result of the preliminary work was an overview over both technical and architectural aspects of the Smart Card technology. Since the SIMpad with the integrated PC/SC interface was only available in the final phase of the project, the applications were developed on a NT-Workstation. Comunication with the Smart Card was first established in a program that accessed PC/SC interface directly. Subsequently, the file structure for the specific card was created and the profile-manager for the NT-Workstation implemented.

The outcome of this project can be used both in NT and CE environments, since porting the software from one environment to the other requires only minor changes. This project can also be used as a guide to develop other Smart Card applications under Windows.

More and more municipalities are using the internet as a platform for information. The homepages of public administrations mostly contain information on current, local affairs, the addresses of municipal representatives, and information about the infrastructure. Because of its large audience a municipality's homepage should be constantly updated. This creates a problem for many municipalities. Most hosting companies charge for all changes to a site and also involve a rather large administrative effort. Commercially available content management systems allow the contents of a site to be monitored from a municipality's PC but cost anywhere from several 10'000 Franks to several 100'000 Franks, which makes them much too expensive for a municipality.

The presentation of the municipality of Seuzach (ZH) on the internet was developed during this dissertation. Major emphasis was given to the development of a simple method of updating the web site. This requirement suggested itself to a data bank based solution. Almost all information which is to be posted on the site is taken from a MySQL data bank by means of PHP. In order to allow the data bank to be constantly updated, a front end with MS Access 97 was developed, which can run on every Win9x / NT computer and has access to the data bank via ODBC. This allows the staff of the municipality to easily change the content themselves.

Several additional modules, which increase the attractivity of the web site or facilitate data search, had already been implemented. www.seuzach.ch is therefor already equipped with a search engine, which indexes the HTML pages as well as the contents of the data bank.

Although the main aim of developing a working basic version has already been reached, the web sites have not been completely finished yet. However, the images and text which have not been delivered by the municipality can be subsequently inserted into the sites within a small amount of time.

The goal of our thesis (diploma) was the creation of a multimedia-CD presentation of the departement of computer sciences, communication and electrical engineering at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur (ZHW). The thesis deals with multimedia items, such as video animations, Virtual Reality, pictures, and music that are employed to create a basic concept and framework for design of future information CDs.

The CD includes informal videos about the school and the various courses in the department. Another feature are " QuickTime Virtual Reality" pictures: From a number of different frames a panorama picture of the ZHW was generated, creating the illusion of a 360 view. Using pictures and photos, we created a modern and exciting slideshow where texts and music are used to fuse the various items into a true multimedia production.

The design allows the presentation to be easily and freely extended and updated. E.g., certain texts and video tie-clips can be directly imported.

A documentation is provided that explains the basic decisions, also offering a general introduction to the multimedia world.

GO OUT published information on bars, restaurants , night clubs and hotels on static web pages. After a while they slowly added more and more services such as information on concerts, museums, and tourist information on winter sports, etc. These new pages were much appreciated by the guests of our homepage. Other companies asked to publish their events on the site. This could only be achieved with an enormous work effort because of the static design of the page.

Our first task was to create a concept. GO OUT asked us to cover the following points:

1. The new site should consist of one database.
2. Customers should be able to enter, to edit or to delete their data themselves. This should be made possible through a password-protected area.
3. The Page should contain three main categories: "Gastro", "Veranstaltung" and "Freizeit".
4. There should be the possibility of sending a newsletter. This newsletter would contain the latest information and be sent to all interested persons automatically.
5. If we had enough time we would add a chat and a discussion forum as a goodie.

The second task was to implement the points that had been requested. GO OUT didn't specify which tools we had to use. We chose PHP and MYSQL. These two tools have been commonly used under UNIX for a long period of time. The only problem was that GO OUT is using a Windows NT Server. So we had to check out first if these two tools were running reliably under NT. After a couple of tests it was proved that these applications were working well.

Then we began to implement the Site. We weren't asked to create the perfect site. The Page should be easy to modify. In a second step the page is going to be redesigned by a professional designer. Therefore we tried to keep the effort for the graphics to a minimum. It was more important to implement the database and the interface to it on a professional basis.

We could implement all the requested points successfully. We managed to implement all th