CARORDER.COM AND JAVATM TECHNOLOGY TEAM UP TO SELL CARS

Dedicated to removing the hassle from the car-buying experience, carOrder.com, a subsidiary of Austin, Texas-based Trilogy Software, used the Java^TM Servlet API and JavaServer Pages^TM technology to create a highly interactive Web site that allows customers to "build" their desired car online and have it delivered without ever visiting a car dealer's lot.

by John Kirkley

April 05, 2000 -- carOrder.com is building a thriving business on a very simple premise -- consumers love cars but hate the purchasing process. Driving from dealer to dealer, coping with high-pressure salesmen and haggling over prices are activities that few buyers enjoy.

That's why, when four employees of Trilogy Software came up with a better idea, the Austin, Texas-based provider of e-business products, services and solutions was happy to furnish the backing and encouragement needed to make its new subsidiary, carOrder.com, a reality.

"...the power of Java technology allows us to meet increasing customer demand and constantly create new applications and services that keeps our Web site fresh and carOrder.com ahead of its competitors." - Joshua Walsky, chief architect, carOrder.com

"The idea for carOrder.com had been kicking around Trilogy for a while, but we really got underway in June, 1998," recalls Joshua Walsky, carOrder.com's chief architect and one of its founders. "Our idea was to offer consumers a much more pleasant car-buying experience by allowing them to purchase a new car online, at a fixed low price, without ever having to set foot in a traditional car dealership. We decided to build a site that allows the consumer an inside view into the car-buying process -- a user-friendly place where they could specify exactly the car they wanted and then track the process all the way through to delivery."

A New Way to Buy

carOrder.com, as the Internet's first "eDealer," is helping to change the future of online car buying. The company is in the process of purchasing a nationally distributed network of eDealers. Instead of salespeople and parking lots full of inventory, carOrder.com's eDealers have test-drive vehicles, Internet kiosks and a delivery process in which a customer's car is loaded on flatbed trucks and shipped directly to the customer's home or office. This approach allows carOrder.com to trim overhead and other costs so that savings are passed on to the consumer, often amounting to as much as $1000 for a typical purchase. carOrder.com uses Trilogy's MultiChannel Commerce e-commerce software, which integrates Web and traditional business channels.

carOrder.com went live on the Web on January 17, 1999, only five months after the initial ramp-up. "It was a very rapid deployment," says Walsky. "Once you have a good idea in the world of e-business, you can't hesitate or someone else will come along and run away with the market."

To meet their compressed timetable, Walsky decided to use Java Servlet technology for the development effort. "We were building a very complex site," he explains. "Our customers are creating their cars online and they have to have access to all the options that the manufacturers offer. Take just one model -- for example, a Ford Expedition. This car has between 30 and 40 options which makes for a huge number of possible combinations. In addition, as the customer adds or subtracts options, the total price of the car is reformulated in real time. Now multiply that by all the cars and options available on the market and you need a site that is tremendously powerful, flexible and scalable. And, at the same time, it has to be very clear and very easy for the consumer to use. Our entire premise was to make the buying process fun, rather than the ordeal it can be using traditional channels."

A 3-Tier Architecture

"It was a real challenge, " Walsky says. "We chose Java Servlet technology because we needed the power of a full programming language. Java technology provided our developers with an easy way to create high-performance, dynamic Web pages and met our criteria for an extensible, object oriented programming language that would be platform-independent and work seamlessly across our 3-tier architecture. In addition, the site was to be highly interactive -- the pages the users were viewing would be constantly changing as they added and subtracted options or changed car models and trim. Java Servlets could handle this level of complexity."

carOrder.com's 3-tier architecture connects to multiple databases containing information about every automobile available on the market today, as well as data on its other services such as insurance and financing.

"Java technology interfaces very well with our N-Tier architecture, allowing us to leverage other software vendors and their products to help us build our systems," says Walsky. "We use CORBA as a transport layer between Web and applications servers and JDBC technology to the database."

The servlets, which run on the server (as opposed to applets, which run in the browser), simplify and speed up the task of writing server-based code in the Java language for highly interactive applications like carOrder.com. The carOrder.com developers were able to write servlets that take an HTTP request from the Web browser, query the company's extensive databases, generate the response dynamically, and then send a response containing an HTML document back to the browser and the customer.

Because the servlets are written in the Java programming language, the developers had access to the entire family of Java APIs, including the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC^TM) API. Also helpful in meeting the tight deadlines for the launch is the ability of the servlets to access a library of HTTP-specific calls and provide all the benefits of the mature Java platform, including portability, performance, reusability, and exception handling.

Customer-friendly Features

A major feature of the site is a "virtual garage," which allows users to begin building their dream car and then save the results if they are interrupted or decide to continue the process at another time. The site also provides an order-tracking mechanism that allows customers who have purchased vehicles to follow the progress of their new car through the manufacturing and delivery process. On-line insurance quotes from Progressive Insurance Online and Insweb are available. carOrder.com also provides a mechanism to apply for financing through Chase Auto Finance, a division of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Once the site was up and running and the orders began to roll in, Walsky decided to move into phase two. "Although the servlets were great in terms of computational power, we realized that the site would be constantly changing in content and scope. The servlets are primarily a developer's tool. If we wanted to change the appearance of a page, we had to edit and recompile the servlet, even if the logic was already in place. We wanted an easier way to work with HTML so our designers and writers could create new pages or modify existing ones to include dynamic content without going back through the whole development process."

Enter JavaServer Pages^TM Technology

It was at this point that Walsky decided to upgrade to JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology. JSP technology was developed specifically by Sun Microsystems to integrate with and leverage existing expertise and tools used in the Java programming environment, such as the Java Servlet API and JavaBeans^TM components. Because carOrder.com was now knowledgeable in the use of servlets, the move to JSP technology was a natural. Particularly important to Walsky was the fact that JSP technology, like the servlets, shared the Java platform's promise of "Write Once, Run Anywhere^TM" and could run on any Web or application server in the carOrder.com infrastructure.

JSP technology, which simplified the development of carOrder.com's highly interactive, Web-based applications, could also be quickly implemented -- always a major factor in Internet-based e-commerce applications and particularly in the highly competitive online car-ordering marketplace. For Walsky, the fact that JSP technology is able to separate content generation from presentation was a key consideration in making the upgrade.

To create a dynamic Web page, the carOrder.com Web developer uses HTML tags to design and format the results page. The JSP framework's tags or scriptlets are used to change the dynamic content on the page -- the content that changes based on customer input such the make and model of the car, the selection of various trim options such as cloth or leather seats, and whether or not to include a CD-player or a GPS system. The core logic is encapsulated in the JSP framework's tags, allowing the carOrder.com page designers and content writers to edit the page created with JSP technology without impacting the generation of the content. On the server, a JSP technology-based engine interprets the JSP framework's tags and scriptlets, generates the content by accessing the carOrder.com databases, and sends the results back in the form of an HTML page to the browser.

A Smooth Upgrade

The carOrder.com developers began incorporating JSP technology into the Web site in the early fall and by the beginning of November of 1999, the upgrade was completed. "The upgrade went very smoothly and, given the complexity of our site, much faster than we anticipated," Walsky recalls. "We began noticing the benefits immediately. For example, one of the reasons we like the JSP framework and Java Servlet API combination so much is that it allows our content designers to be much more inventive, and much more creative in their designs without worrying about core functionality."

carOrder.com's commitment to Java technology is reflected in their use of the programming language through the organization's system. Walsky says Java technology is powering almost all the company's internal applications, from order and customer management to data processing tools. It is also used on application servers located throughout the organization.

"Another big plus with the Java technology-based implementation is its contribution to the site's scalability," Walsky continues. "carOrder.com is growing rapidly. As a privately held company, we don't publish revenues, but I can tell you that in December, 1999, we sold over 2,000 cars for more than $50 million in sales. We are continuing to grow at a constantly accelerating rate and, with JSP technology, we are able to make site changes quickly easily to accommodate this growth. Buying a car online is a lot more complicated than purchasing a book or a CD, but the power of Java technology allows us to meet increasing customer demand and constantly create new applications and services that keeps our Web site fresh and carOrder.com ahead of its competitors."

See Also

carOrder.com
(http://www.carorder.com/)

Java^TM Servlet API
(http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/index.html)

JavaServer Pages^TM Technology
(http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/index.html)

[ This page was updated: 07-Apr-00 ]