BUSINESS PLAN APPLICATION FOR AGRIBUSINESS WALDEMAR KARWOWSKI, ARKADIUSZ ORŁOWSKI Wydział Ekonometrii i Informatyki Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego Summary The paper is focused on the Business Plan subproject, part of the e-farmer project. One of the issues in the e-farmer project is to interchange of experience concerning various approaches to rural development problem area between the participating regions from old (Finland) and new EU member states (Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia) as well as to create new innovative supporting tools and to establish cooperation and international partnership between the existing local and regional institutions dealing with rural development. Business Plan is one of the tools which can fulfill mentioned issue. Most important issue in Business Plan are data formats, especially standards for storing and exchange agriculture information. Some assumption about project and possible software solutions to construct planned application are discussed in the paper. Additionally some proposed XML data formats are presented. Keywords: agriculture, farm, consulting data integration, project management, information system, design, implementation, analysis, data base, data standard, XML, soap 1. Introduction Today almost every computer application has to be based on Internet connection. Globalization of the world economic information is not to be doubted. Internet based solutions are applications of globalization era and can help in cooperation among many agribusinesses located in different countries. Agricultural and rural areas, especially in new members states of EU, are now affected by the rapid development of information technologies as it could be. European regulations, like for example IACS, forced this development. The lack of existing Internet based solutions for agriculture and rural areas is one of the factor of insufficient usage of information technology. As huge amount of data is used in modern agriculture, the absence of such solutions becomes a serious problem. Sharing know-how across borders can benefit farms and whole regions in many important ways. To properly exchange information within the agricultural sector and rural regions, suitable standards for data and information exchange should be selected. For such selection analysis of existing standards, methods and their use is necessary. It helps in definition of new extensible data formats for agribusiness. In the rest of our paper we will describe e-farmer project, architecture of Data warehouse, Business Plan application and proposed data formats.
28 POLISH ASSOCIATION FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Series: Studies & Proceedings No. 9, 2007 2. E-Farmer project E-Farmer project is an important initiative to solve mentioned above problems. This project is performed in INTERREG III C - East zone program. The main idea of the e-farmer project is to stimulating enterpreneurship competitiveness and regional development in rural areas. Lead Partner in this project is Pardubice region from the Czech Republic, other partners are: Association of Rural Advisory Centers from Finland ProAgria, Jäneda Training and Advisory Centre from Estonia, and Regional Advisory Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development in Pło sk from Mazowieckie Voivodship in Poland. Besides partners there are a few participants from every country, one of them is Warsaw Agricultural University. One of the issues in the project is to interchange of experience concerning various approaches to rural development problem area between the participating regions from old (Finland) and new EU member states (Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia) as well as to create new innovative supporting tools and to establish cooperation and international partnership between the existing local and regional institutions dealing with rural development. As a result of long-term and strategic cooperation between the RFO (Regional framework operations) regions are expected: support of active participation in the process of the European Integration; creation of a multi-dimensional and stable framework for cooperation between the participating regions and their regional actors; enhancing the knowledge and skills of the actors in regions by transfer of tools, methods and policies; increasing the international cooperation of the regions and actors in regional partnership; Additionally important aim is to create efficient tools for implementation of newly established rules of reformed Common agricultural policy of EU for the management of agricultural enterprises and so to enable to increase the effectiveness of economy, protection of landscape, welfare of animals and food safety in respects to specifics of development of partners agricultural sector and rural areas. The operation is also aimed at increasing of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises and at balanced regional development in all involved rural areas. The defined aims have to be achieved by means of subprojects realised in cooperation of at least two partners. Such subprojects have to concentrate on new approaches and methods for advisors in agriculture and for management of farms, the creation of capacity for educational and training activities focused on rural development, implementation of data warehouse collecting information for farmers, development of modern accesses for using data from data warehouse, new methods for e-learning and life-long education in rural areas. In every country there are several applications from different areas of agriculture like livestock production, plant production, farm food evidence, business planning, e-learning and market information such as market prices. The mission of the e-farmer project is to provide open platform for data integration and exchange to help the competitiveness of farmers to support their decision-making. The Steering Groups in June 2006 approved the following subprojects that solutions would be realised during 07-12/2006, 01-06/2007 and 07-12/2007: 1. Improvement of planning in animal production 2. Business plan application and data exchange systems 3. Agrarian WWW portal cooperation
Waldemar Karwowski, Arkadiusz Orłowski BUSINESS PLAN APPLICATION FOR AGRIBUSINESS 29 4. Plant production and data communication with DW 5. Remote advisor 6. E-Dictionary 7. New Model of Extension Service by elearning 8. Bringing the data warehouse for agriculture in practice 3. The Data Warehouse Faculty of Econometrics and Informatics of Warsaw Agricultural University is responsible for project and implementation of the Business Plan software. The Business Plan application is planned as an independent application, but one of expectation in e-farmer project is strict cooperation with data warehouse subproject. The main idea of data warehouse is in regular import of data from integrated databases into it, where the data may be used for comprehensive analysis. Its output should be used not only by farmers, but also by farm advisers or official authorities. In regard with this there are considered three expected groups of users farmers, advisers and authorities. Agroportal Plant Production DB AGROPORTAL Business Plan DB Authority systems Other DB Data warehouse Figure 1: General schema of Data warehouse connections. Other systems General schema of data warehouse connections is shown on the figure 1. Every application has its own database but data from each application might be stored in common database and used for comprehensive data analysis. The Agroportal (Agrarian WWW portal subproject) plays role of common interface to data warehouse. For example the farmer would have possibility to see what was foddered from his own plant production or vise versa where was the dung used on his soil. Data integration is only the first step. If the time factor is mentioned, then data integrated from several areas are stored in longer period and represent huge amount of information. Hereafter are the data warehousing techniques quite good solution. The main aim of the data warehouse subproject is to describe data and functional structures of the processes running in agricultural enterprises as the basis for proposing new and innovative solutions, which will increase competitiveness of agricultural units within the region. The two tasks that have to be done are: determine of structure of input and output flows of data of the data warehouse and proposal of service and end functions of a data warehouse. The main expected result is more effective communication and information
30 POLISH ASSOCIATION FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Series: Studies & Proceedings No. 9, 2007 environment (IT management) for advisors and farmers during their daily activities. This will consecutively lead to the improvement of effectiveness and competitiveness of the individual organisations and subsequently of the whole sector and regions. Communication between data warehouse and collaboration application, like Business Plan, should be performed in standard way. For Internet applications such standard is xml and SOAP protocol. Xml standards are defined by preparing xml schemas. More detailed communication between business plan and data warehouse is shown on the figure 2. Main source of input data is a www interface (browser) on advisors computer. Program must be able to produce xml data packages, validate them against the common schemas and to make the data transfer to the database. Program should also have to do basic controls for the quality for the entered data. Structure of the document must be validated against the public schema (xsd). Structure of the schema will be published during the project. Only validated documents can be sent to the database. Data stored in database should be exported as xml files to the data warehouse. System should validate them against the common schemas and to make the data transfer by using SOAP interface. On the data warehouse server side first thing to do is the authentication. Every user has a personal license and keycode. This license is used for authentication. Next thing is to parse xml document as SQL and to send it to SQL procedures in the data warehouse. In these procedures we make the final checking of the data. For example referential integrity. SOAP Authentication Service XML document SOAP XSLT parsing XML to DB format XSLT sheets XML Schema XML Schema Business Plan DB Data Warehouse XML document Busines Plan application (www server) WWW interface of Busines Plan Figure 2: General schema of Business Plan Data base communication with Data Warehouse
Waldemar Karwowski, Arkadiusz Orłowski BUSINESS PLAN APPLICATION FOR AGRIBUSINESS 31 4. The Business Plan application Business Plan application started few years ago from simple Excel spreadsheet with formulas prepared by faculty of AgriEconomics. The role of data store are played by flat Excel files themselves. As was mentioned above such approach is not enough in the era of the Internet. The objective of the Internet Business Plan application is to provide to counselor of extension service and farmer suitable means for improvement their total performance of agricultural enterprises/farms and to make accessible information support for planning and decision making of manager in agricultural enterprises/farms with the main objective maintenance and increase of competitiveness of agricultural enterprises. By means of internet application there will be provided to users the possibility to use both data corresponding to the typical costs of production technologies and to record data which correspond the level of intensity just his enterprise /farm. By means of this procedure there will be possible combination as for utilization of data corresponding level of typical costs, normative data and concrete data recorded by user. It will enable evaluation of the evaluated enterprise with maximally concrete data. Expected results are: 1. Improvement of farmer's knowledge regarding economical aspects of their enterpreunership, improvement of their position on the market, improvement of their competitiveness. 2. Improvement of the information flow between the farmer and advisor 3. Improvement of the quality of advisory services 4. Establishment of the basis for the further internet-based advisory system for the agricultural sector. The internet application will be performed is such way that there will be created accessible information support for decision making with the objective maintenance and increase of agricultural enterprises competitiveness. Solution will be further supported by decision making as for effective transformation of the enterprise with the objective strengthening his existing competitiveness at the possibility to create own model of enterprise farming. Development plan of the Business Plan software is divided into three main parts. The first part (the one we are actually working on) is the prior analysis of project feasibility the initial analysis. Next thing that needs to be specified in this part of project is to choose the methodic for further detailed analysis. It was agreed that the outputs had to be in UML together with ERD diagrams and methods of object relational mapping. As an example and reference application will be used web application of Poradex, program prepared by Czech participants of the subproject. Poradex software is very suitable and effective in practice. It is in use for few years. Very important issue is the communication with datawarehose. It was decided to use XML format and SOAP protocol. In this area experience of Finnish partner can be utilized. Bitfarm software which is used in Finland for years uses XML schemas for agriculture data. The second part is to design specific application using appropriate database. Such solution can be made as PHP, Java servlets or ASP.NET C# applications. Most interesting seems JSP and Java servlets solution together with Apache Tomcat server. There will be prepared accessible database both for farmers and counselors of the extension service. Available databases are the Oracle database server running on certified Red Hat Linux distribution, the Microsoft SQL server running on Windows Server or IBM BD2. The solutions based on open source database machines such as MySQL or PostgreSQL are available but may cause problems in the future with scalability. Fortu-
32 POLISH ASSOCIATION FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Series: Studies & Proceedings No. 9, 2007 nately right now Oracle DB2 and MSSQL database have free of charge but limited functionality editions. The most interesting seems IBM DB2 Express C edition, it has native XML files support. The third part is the implementation of the system, installation of the system at web site, instruction of the user how to handle the system, and preparing user s guide (manual book). There will be created tool to enable data export from farmer to central datawarehouse. The technical documentation of the system will be created continuously during the second and third part of the project according to the accepted partial results of analysis. 5. Data formats in the Business Plan software The e-farmer sub-project participant's experiences showed a variety of attitude to the field of economical and financial analysis and planning supportive tools in farms and small and medium agribusiness companies. Participants claimed that it is necessary to make arrangements which effects will be to improve actual ones in their countries or build up new format for data exchange. In the beginning of 21 th century there is no place for standalone robust information system. The need for system integration is bigger then have ever been. Due to this reason it is necessary to specify data format standard that can be used for data exchange between applications, systems or enterprises and to support competitive strength of SMEs and wider collaboration between enterprises. The data format standard should be an widely accepted compromise based on enhanced format. Today are known few data standards used/dedicated for agriculture: Set of XML schemas used in Finland; AgroXML used in Germany (only German version); AgXML used in the USA; mpxml - used in the USA (only for meat and poultry); The first step should be the description of these formats to provide relevant information to decision which should be recommended for further usage. Because the project is still in the part of initial analysis, the detailed analysis will be mention only shortly. The output of this analysis shall be the description of all data elements, relations between data elements. The data standard will be specified based on the data elements and data relations. The connectors to the database will be also specified. The database connectors will be based on XML/SOAP/WSDL and appropriate data standard. It will enable, in the future, to make data available to external systems as Web Services. Nevertheless the connectors are based on widely spread technologies there could appear significant problems with realizing communication with e-farmer and other systems. During the next phase we should exchange of experience and views on the construction of XML formats, collecting contributions and opinions from other e-farmer partners, providing information on the progress in realization of the sub-project. 6. Conclusion Business Plan is innovative in terms of accessibility through electronic means of communication, linkages with other tools developed for e-farmer project. XML schemas for exchange data between Business Plan and data warehouse are good base to prepare domain ontology in agribusiness area. To finish this paper, we have to state that precision project management might help to success realization. By dividing problem into the simple specific tasks might improve effectiveness of its solution.
Waldemar Karwowski, Arkadiusz Orłowski BUSINESS PLAN APPLICATION FOR AGRIBUSINESS 33 Bibliography 1. European efarmer project. [ONLINE] Availible on URL <http://www.efarmer.info/> 2. Mareth F., Kubata K., Vanek J., Jarolimek J. (2006). efarmer - Project of Data Integration. Information Systems in Agriculture and Forestry XII, Praha 2006. 3. Mareth F., Kubata K., Vanek J., Jarolimek J. (2006). Data Integration in Agriculture. Information Systems in Agriculture and Forestry XII, Praha 2006. 4. World Wide Web Consorcium: SOAP. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/group/> 5. World Wide Web Consorcium: XML. [ONLINE] vailable on URL <http://www.w3.org/xml/> 6. World Wide Web Consorcium: XML Schema. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.w3.org/xml/schema/> 7. World Wide Web Consorcium: XSL, XSLT. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.w3.org/style/xsl/> 8. AgroXML format. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.agroxml.de/> 9. AgXML format. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.agxml.org/> 10. mpxml format. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.mpxml.org/> 11. Poradex. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.poradex.cz/> 12. bitfarm. [ONLINE] Available on URL <http://www.bitcomp.fi/> WALDEMAR KARWOWSKI, ARKADIUSZ ORŁOWSKI Wydział Ekonometrii i Informatyki Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego