Salespoint Framework

Salespoint is a framework for the simulation of business processes, which we use as the common infrastructure of our project courses on object-oriented software development. The users of the Salespoint framework are mostly undergraduate students. The framework supports the development of point of sale simulations ranging from simple vending machines to big department stores. Typical applications include an exchange office where you can obtain foreign currency, a post office offering stamps and a well-defined set of services, a drugstore, or a video shop. The simulations comprise both business with customers (selling, buying, or renting goods) and administrative tasks (like accounting, refilling the stores, removing slow-moving articles, and putting new kinds of items on sale).

Current Release

In its current form, Salespoint is a web application framework based on Spring Boot and development continues as an open source project on GitHub. Reference documentation, tutorials and more are available on the documentation pages.

History

Initially, SalesPoint Framework was a joint project between two german universities, Technische Universität Dresden and Universität der Bundeswehr München. It has been used in software project courses in

• Technische Universität Dresden since 1997
• Universität der Bundeswehr München from 1998 to 2008

Even though we have been using it since 1997, Salespoint is an experimental software. We regularly obtain feedback from our students working with the framework and use this, as well as our understanding of the changing technological expectations on our students, to refine and extend the framework. At the same time, we always try to ensure that the framework remains usable for students at this relatively early stage of their studies.

In 1997, Salespoint only supported the development of desktop applications (SalesPoint 3.0). Later, as part of final theses and internships, we further developed SalesPoint for the creation of web applications and experimented with various web technologies.

Publications

• Birgit Demuth, Marc Kandler: An Approach for Project Task Approximation in a Large-scale Software Project Course. in: Proc. 30th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T 2017), November 2017, Savannah, USA, IEEE Computer Society [doi]
• Steffen Zschaler, Birgit Demuth, Lothar Schmitz: SalesPoint: A Java framework for teaching object-oriented software development. Science of Computer Programming (2014) [doi]
• Seiko Akayama, Birgit Demuth, Timothy C. Lethbridge, Marion Scholz, Perdita Stevens, Dave R. Stikkolorum: Tool Use in Software Modelling Education (invited paper). Educators Symposium at MODELS 2013 [pdf]
• Birgit Demuth, Lothar Schmitz, Barbara Wittek: Softwaretechnologiepraktikum im Grundstudium: Universitäres oder Reales Projekt? in: Software Engineering im Unterricht der Hochschulen (SEUH), dPunkt.Verlag, 2005 [pdf]
• Birgit Demuth, Mike Fischer, Heinrich Hussmann: Experience in Early and Late Software Engineering Project Courses. in: Proc. 15th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T 2002), 25-27 February 2002, Kentucky, USA, IEEE Computer Society [doi]
• Birgit Demuth, Heinrich Hussmann, Lothar Schmitz, Steffen Zschaler: Teaching OOT Using a Framework and Both Direct and Net-based Tutoring. ED-MEDIA 2001 World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Tampere, Finland, June 25-30, 2001 [pdf]
• Birgit Demuth, Lothar Schmitz, Steffen Zschaler: A Framework-Based Approach to Teaching OOT: Aims, Implementation, and Experience. in: Proc. 13th Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T 2000), 6-8 March 2000, Austin, Texas, USA, IEEE Computer Society [doi]
• Birgit Demuth, Lothar Schmitz, Steffen Zschaler: Verkaufsanwendungen auf Basis des Anwendungsframeworks SalesPoint. in: Silvano Maffeis, Fridtjof Toenniessen, Christian Zeidler (Hrsg.): Erfahrungen mit Java. Projekte aus Industrie und Hochschule. dpunkt- Verlag, 1999 [pdf]
• Birgit Demuth, Heinrich Hussmann, Lothar Schmitz, Steffen Zschaler: Erfahrungen mit einem frameworkbasierten Softwarepraktikum. in: Software-Engineering im Unterricht der Hochschulen (SEUH), Teubner-Verlag, 1999 [pdf]
• Birgit Demuth, Heinrich Hussmann, Lothar Schmitz, Steffen Zschaler: Using a Framework to Teach OOT to Beginners. OOPSLA'98, Educators' Symposium, Oktober 1998 [pdf]

Contact: Birgit Demuth