This experience report describes the design and implementation of an electronic commerce portal system for insurance companies which supports the insurance agents in their daily work. The electronic commerce portal, called IPSI, is used within an intranet.

The insurance agents need information about their industrial and private customers and have to be supported in organizing their work by an organizer with reminder function, address management, etc. The insurance company has the goal to provide its employees with the most current information about its product portfolio and tariffs as well as wordings of the law and comments on it. An electronic commerce portal therefore has to provide a multitude of functions. The advantage of a portal lies in the integration of different software systems that provide these functions and thus leads the users directly to the desired information. They do not have to search awkwardly and are not served with irrelevant information.

An object oriented design using UML, the realization of adequate adaptors for the integration of different heterogeneous software systems using the Java programming language, and the use of the middleware CORBA for communication within the portal were objectives of the project. This project was realized by the University of Dortmund in cooperation with different insurance and software companies. The electronic commerce portal was implemented as a prototype for a certain insurance company, including the integration of one of their legacy systems.

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