CSCI 5895J: Advanced Java Programming for E-Commerce
Final Project Requirements and Specifications

Requirements

The project is to be done in groups of two to four (if you want to work in a group of a different size, talk to me).

Some suggestions for the project are given below. You are not restricted to this list, however – you are encouraged to come up with something different if you want, as long as you run the idea past me first. In any case, your project must have the following characteristics:

• It must allow multiple user options. That is, the user should not be restricted to a specific sequence of actions – they should be able to choose the action they will take next (find information, choose a product, view the cart, etc.).
• It must involve session data related to users (such as a shopping cart, list of courses, etc.)
• It must interact with a database of some sort, accessing product information and storing long-term data (such as orders) about users. You can use an Access database for this (however, I would be willing to give extra credit for using another server, such as MySQL).
• It must have a good user interface. I don’t expect anything too elaborate (although really nice features might result in extra credit), but the pages generated by the system should be readable and uniform.
• It must require input validation. Any errors should be trapped by the system and presented to the user as informative error messages (instead of Tomcat exception pages).
• It must require that you take steps to keep user information secure.

The system that you implement should follow the Model-View-Control architecture. That is, requests should be handled by one or more servlets, responses should be generated using Java Server Pages, and implementation of the business modeal and interaction with the database should be done with Java Beans.

Initial Proposal

On or before November 14 you are to turn in a preliminary proposal for your project. It should include:

• The names of all people in your group.
• A description of the project that you intend to implement. Think in terms of “use cases” here – describe each of the options available to the user at each point, and how they interact with the user, database, and session.
• A basic plan for how you intend to divide the work up. A good start might be to think in terms of different parts of the MVC architecture.

What to Turn In

The project is due the last day of class (December 5).I

At that time:

• You are to turn in a (well documented) hardcopy of all code for your project (including the deployment descriptor and the contents of sample data files/databases that you use).
• You are to turn in an electronic copy of the project, in the form of an application directory containing the servlets, server pages, Java beans, deployment descriptors, databases, etc.). This can be turned in on diskettes, a zip disk, or on CD.
• You will also be giving a short presentation/demonstration of your project (about 10 minutes) during the final lecture.

Project Suggestions

As stated above, these are just suggestions. See me if you have questions about the details of one of these projects, or if you have modifications/extensions you would like to make.

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Registration System

Develop a system (similar to SOLAR, but hopefully with a better user interface) which would allow a student to select courses for a particular semester. It should provide students with a list of courses to choose from. It would have to verify that the courses selected are actual courses, offered that semester, and not closed. It would store the registration information in some way that a student could see and alter that information in the future. Since privacy issues are important, some password protection would be needed.

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Shopping Cart

Develop a Web based system for making on-line purchases. This would include presenting lists of items, selecting items (verifying that the items exist and are in stock), totaling up and computing a bill, and gathering payment and shipping information. Resulting orders would be removed from inventory and added to a shipping list (containing shipping information). Reasonable security steps are to be taken to verify account information.

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On-line Survey/Voting System

Develop a Web based system for doing an on-line survey or voting sysetm. It should read the format of the questions from a file or database, load them into a page, collect the information from the user, and store the results (in some statistically organized way) into a file. It should allow the user to go back and change their answers, and possibly to see the current results of submissions so far (perhaps expressed in terms of percentages for each choice based on votes received so far), and take steps to make sure that no user votes more than once.