Technology¶
ShipHawk WMS is a web-based product that can be deployed to the cloud or on premise in a customer’s environment. The following sections below provide details on the technologies employed within ShipHawk WMS and the architecture.
Overview¶
The enterprise components of ShipHawk WMS reply upon three open source (GPL license) technologies to operate; these are:
- Apache HTTP Server
Note
The Apache HTTP Server is the world’s most used web server software.
- MySQL Database Management System
Note
MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. It is used by ShipHawk WMS as a local repository to acheive high performance processing and throughput while still storing all mission critical data within NetSuite or other ERP.
- PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
Note
PHP is a popular object-oriented scripting language that is especially suited to web development. It is fast, flexible and pragmatic and powers everything from blog sites to the most popular websites in the world. JQuery UI libraries are also referenced within ShipHawk WMS’s PHP code base.
This architectural stack could easily be supported with a standard LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) bundle; however, ShipHawk WMS is not limited to only a Linux deployment. Rather, ShipHawk WMS can be deployed on any foundation that supports Apache, MySQL and PHP, including Windows, Unix, and OS X, in physical or virtualized environments.
ShipHawk WMS communicates with external systems using RESTful web services (Representational State Transfer, or REST). Real time RESTful integration with NetSuite is acheived with the installation of a single, unobtrusive, ShipHawk WMS RESTlet installed within NetSuite using standard procedures. The REST “architecture style” reduces the complexity of interfaces, while increasing the throughput, performance, and maintainability of the solution. The REST architecture within ShipHawk WMS is multi-threaded, and not restricted to the single-thread limitations of NetSuite’s prior generation SOAP-based web services integration.
ShipHawk WMS also provides a high performance integration engine which is developed using Java SE that can be deployed on any system that supports a JVM (Java Virtual Machine).
The ShipHawk WMS User Experience (UX) is 100% web-based and will run on virtually any mobile and fixed device that supports the WebKit-browser engine, including but not limited to Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, or Silk. If operating ShipHawk WMS on a mobile device, that device must be running a recent version either Google Android, Amazon Fire OS, or Apple iOS. You may also run ShipHawk WMS on virtually any modern-day desktop or tablet operating system, using one of the browsers noted above. ShipHawk WMS is NOT compatible with WindowsCE. ShipHawk WMS is compatible with touch screen devices, AutoID barcode scanners (acting as keyboard wedges, either wired or wireless), and traditional keyboards (soft or hard). The most common device deployed for using ShipHawk WMS in a warehouse is a Motorola (or Symbol or Zebra) TC70 Mobile Computer.
