Microsoft .NET Swiss Innovation Award 2009 – Winner: Altran Information Manager, Altran AG

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Altran AG, represented by Frederic de Simoni and Dieter Werner, have won the Innovation Award 2009 for their

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The Altran Information Manger (AIM) is a resource planning system that is currently used by the “Führungsunterstützungsbasis der Armee”.

Being the resource planning a typical process-driven activity, the AIM has been built fully process-driven to better suite the way of working of its users. The video at the end of this post illustrates well this concept.

AIM is also completely configurable and loaded dynamically from its repository. This has been made possible by the use of the following technologies:

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If we take a look at the application architecture in next figure, we see how the SQL Server back-end stores the definitions

  • of the front-end, which is Silverlight 2 based and rendered via XAML
  • of the processes, which are Windows Workflow Foundation based and rendered via XOML.

Knowing the current status/step and the selected next action, the application server is able to build on the fly the next process step and the related Silverlight mask.

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Take a look at the resulting application watching the demo video below!

So, the newest Microsoft technologies and “XAML and XOML on demand”: Definitely a very innovative approach that deserves an innovation award!