Deck used by Kausal for his presentation at the Student Research Symposium (SRS '13) co-located with 2013 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI – 2013) on 24th August, 2013 in Mysore, India

1. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Implementing the ATM based Voting Services -
The RESTful Way
Kausal Malladi
Srivatsan Sridharan
International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore
August 24, 2013

2. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
About Me
An M.Tech. student from IIIT Bangalore specializing in
Computer Science
Systems Engineer at Infosys Limited for 2 years
A B.Tech. graduate specialized in Information Technology
from JNTU, Hyderabad
Interests
Theoretical Computer Science
Machine Learning
Information Retrieval
Web Services
Hobbies
Occasional Blogging
Music
Cricket
My website - http://www.kausalmalladi.tk
2/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

3. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Agenda
1 Motivation
2 Proposed Model
3 Implementation
Why, the RESTful way?
4 Conclusion
3/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

4. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Motivation
Design a robust e-voting system
Using most of the existing infrastructure (ATMs)
Minimize costs to governments
Highly scalable
Real-time Performance
Security and Voting guidelines to be adhered to!
4/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

5. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Why using ATMs?
Highly scalable infrastructure already setup
Good on-going research, to include Non-Financial Services
Few modifications to business logic and database schema of
Banks can result in incorporating several Non-Financial
Services
Issues to be addressed:
Increased load on Bank Servers
Heavy traffic flow all the way
Adherence to Banking and Voting process related issues
Security!
User Interface
5/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

6. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Features
Registration of Right to Vote
ATM Card registration for Voting
Robust e-Voting system
6/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

7. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Functional Flow
7/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

8. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Architecture
Available Options
Simple extension to existing Architecture
Web Services
Simple extension isn’t effective!
Existing Architecture not easily known
Not an easy task
Huge loads on servers
Architecture is not same across all Banks
Web Services chosen because they can be plugged in
anywhere without much difficulty!
8/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

9. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
High Level Sequence Diagram
9/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

10. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Why REST over SOAP/WSDL?
REST is cleaner than SOAP
Safe encapsulation of Legacy systems
REST isn’t any obscure, its the way Web works aided with
some rules!
Plain Text Data exchange
Not many standards to follow other than basic HTTP
methods!
10/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

11. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Advantages of using REST style
Scalable Components
Simple interfaces
Independently deployable
Secure
Easy real-time deployment
Real-time performance
Multiple data formats
Lesser loads on servers
11/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

12. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Scalability
REST encourages using good practices for Scalability
Each Web Service can be deployed on a separate server
Ensures the services aren’t affected by performance
bottlenecks
Very close to real-time deployment
Easier Functional Scalability
More Non-Functional Services can be added to the ATM
Terminals
12/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

13. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Security
Security a serious issue!
ATMs in private networks of Banks
All messages transferred via SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
Messages required to be transferred directly between the
Election Authority and the Client are encrypted using a shared
key (2048 bit) between ATM Terminal Client and Election
Authority
Bank merely forwards the messages to Election Authority but
will NOT be able to read it!
13/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

14. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Real-time Deployment
Web Services can be deployed on different servers as
interfaces are well-defined
Supports deployment on distributed servers
Real-time performance because no much interaction latency
Banks already have well set-up infrastructure and setting up a
robust infrastructure for Election Authority can handle huge
requests, which is a typical scenario of an e-Voting system
14/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

15. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Multiple Data Formats
Parsing XML is a costlier process
SOAP/WSDL allows only XML for interactions
XML, JSON, HTML, Plain Text are allowed in REST
Parsing one data format to other not required, as the Web
services can agree on a single data format as simple as Plain
Text for simplicity
15/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

16. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Load on Servers
In an application where large number of requests are to be
served, storing state information can lead to performance
bottlenecks
e-Voting is a system where almost 100000 clients may perform
some operation plus the normal financial transactions on ATM
terminals are also to be satisfied
In REST, the servers are not required to maintain state of
clients
Messages contain necessary information required for a Web
Service, including but not limited to state of the client
16/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

17. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Winding it up...
ATM based e-Voting system is robust
RESTful implementation ensures easier deployment
Saves money, long term investment in rural areas
Improves infrastructure and literacy rates
Hopefully changes the state of Indian politics!
17/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

18. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Acknowledgement
Prof. L T Jayprakash - Associate Professor, IIIT-B
Assistance all the way!
Freedom in architecting the system, to be deployable in a
real-world scenario
18/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)

19. Agenda Motivation Proposed Model Implementation Conclusion
Thank you!
Kausal.Malladi@iiitb.org
Srivatsan.S@iiitb.org
jtl@iiitb.ac.in
19/19 IIIT Bangalore / SRS ’13 (colocated with ICACCI 2013)