Online Postage for Private Customers

Web application for private customers of a global postal and parcel service provider: buy postage online, pay and print the shipping label yourself – operated as a clustered application and designed for the peak loads of the Christmas season.

The service is still online today: Online-Frankierung (German).

Period: 2006 – 2008, 2010 – 2013 · Client: global postal and parcel service provider · Industry: logistics

Challenge

Private customers should be able to pay postage for their shipments around the clock, without going to a counter: choose a parcel, small parcel or express product, book a pickup if needed, enter addresses, pay and print the shipping label as a PDF themselves. Shipments are dropped off at a branch or a parcel locker, climate-friendly with GoGreen on request. What matters to the end customer: easy access, fast and secure processes, constant availability and familiar payment methods.

The technical challenges behind it:

• Performance under peak load: Before Christmas, a particularly large number of customers buy postage at the same time. The application must absorb these peaks without noticeable waiting times or outages. This applies to all critical processes, from ordering to generating and delivering the shipping label.
• Integration of third-party systems: The application is connected to several external systems – to the payment providers for PayPal, giropay and POSTPAY (incl. credit card), to eBay for importing address data from auctions (sellers don't have to type in their recipients' addresses) and to accounting systems, for example to hand over sales figures.
• Secure payment processes: Payment and customer data are subject to high security requirements – from encrypted transmission to protection against abuse and manipulation. This also applies to voucher sets that are purchased and redeemed individually at checkout.
• Low-threshold access: Customers create shipping labels without registering. Order, payment and documents must be reliably linked even without a customer account and secured against abuse.
• Runtime monitoring: The state and load of the cluster are monitored during operation so that bottlenecks are noticed in time.
• Time-controlled content: Promotional prices and advertisements are only valid within defined periods and switch on and off automatically. They are created and edited in the running system, without a new software release.

Role and Implementation

• Software Architect, Backend Developer
  Phase 1: 2006 – 2008 · Building the application
  • Contribution to requirements management: business processes worked out together with the client
  • Planning and implementation of the application
  • Design as a clustered application on multiple nodes (BEA WebLogic, Oracle DB)
  • Integration of the payment providers for PayPal, giropay and POSTPAY (incl. credit card)
  • eBay integration for importing address data from auctions
  • PDF generation of the shipping labels with Adobe Acrobat
  • PDF generation of customs declarations (CN22/CN23) and other customer documents with iText
  • Load tests (Apache JMeter), caching and optimized database access
• IT Project Manager, Software Architect, Requirements Manager, Backend Developer
  Phase 2: 2010 – 2013 · Expanding the application
  • Consulting and requirements management
  • Architecture and contribution to the implementation
  • Integration into the client's private customer portal
  • New user interface with Apache Wicket
  • Support during the change of operator and hosting location

Technologies

• Java
• Spring
• BEA WebLogic
• Oracle DB
• PayPal Express Checkout
• giropay API
• POSTPAY API
• eBay Trading API
• Apache Wicket
• Apache JMeter
• iText
• Adobe Acrobat