CS 336 -- Principles of Information and Data Management
Summer 2018
Requirements Specification for the Database Programming Project
Introduction
In this project, you will design and implement a relational database system to support the
operations of an online auction system. You will use HTML for the user interface, MySQL for
the database server, and Java, Javascript, and JDBC for connectivity between the user interface
and database server.
You will have to install your own virtual machine with a web server that will host your web
application as well as a MySQL server. Everything will be under the AWS (Amazon Web
Services). Many resources and recitations will be provided about how to do everything so don’t
worry. JJ
You are to work in teams of three.
Project Specification
As you probably know, there are a multitude of online auction systems on the web. The most
popular one is eBay. I suggest that you visit this web site (although I suppose all of you have
visited it many times) to get an understanding of the look-and-feel of an auction web site and how
such a system is supposed to function.
The basic idea behind your online auction system is that it is intended to support a company that
lets users buy and sell an item in an on-line auction. (Think eBay. So we will call the company that
hired you BuyMe. If you are not familiar with how eBay works, please go to eBay to look for
something to buy, and look at eBay's FAQ/Help pages. )
In general, a seller posts an item for sale, starting an auction, which will close at a specified date
and time. The seller also posts an initial price, an increment for bids [which indicates a lower
bound on how much must be added to current bid for the next valid bid] and a (secret) minimum
price [the seller is not willing give up the item for less]. Potential buyers post bids as part of the
auction, and the user with the highest bid at closing time gets to buy the item. (Actually, they must
buy the item.) The process of bidding is described in the above Help pages. The one fancy thing
you need to implement is "automatic bidding", which involves the buyer setting a (secret) upper
limit on how much they are willing to pay; every time someone bids higher than your current bid,
the computer automatically puts in a higher bid for you, till your upper limit is reached. So if there
is not much bidding, you may get the item for less than your upper limit. If someone bids past your
upper limit, BuyMe will alert you.
NOTE: Each teams' BuyMe site will be restricted to a specific category of items (e.g., vehicles OR
clothing OR computers ... ) with at least 3 hierarchical subcategories (eg., truck, motorbike, car,
foreignCar, for Vehicles), which require certain specific fields to be filled for those kinds of
items. (motivation: I have been annoyed on eBay when people do not mention shoe size, or belt
width and length. The choice of category is up to each group in the course. [Bonus points for any
team that can change the kinds of items available without recompiling the code (i.e., be driven by
data in the database).] Additional features for your BuyMe (some of which are not available on
eBay) depend on the three classes of users supported:??
I.End-users (buyers and sellers)
1. They must of course be able to create and delete accounts, and login and logout.
2. An end-user can search the list of items on auction according to various criteria based on the
fields describing an item. (The more complex searches your team supports the higher the
credit.)
3. Potential buyers should be able to set alerts for items they are interested in buying. (motivation:
I am often looking for certain items (e.g., sandals, winter coats) that are no longer
manufactured. I am interested when such items show up, esp. if I could also specify sizes
& colors.)
4. A user should be able to view the history of bids for any specific auction, the list of all auctions
a specific buyer or seller has participated in, the list of "similar" items on auction in the
preceding month (and auction information about them). [You get to decide "similarity
measure".]
5. If you wish, you can anonymize end-users so their actual login-names and e-mail addresses do
not show up in auctions.
In addition to end-users, the BuyMe system must also support its staff.??
II. Customer representatives are available to end-users for answering questions, and modifying
any information, as long as the customer rep decides this is reasonable. (This includes resetting
passwords and removing bids. So your system need not support any specific rules for removing
bids.) They must therefore be able to perform such actions, as well as removing illegal auctions.
III. One administrative staff member , whose account will have been created ahead of time, will
be able to create accounts for customer representatives. This person must also be able to generate
summary sales reports, including: total earnings; earnings per { item, item type, end-user}; bestselling
{items, end-users}.??Communications/notifications between BuyMe, end-users and/or
customer representatives, which would normally be done via email, are to be simulated by
inserting a row into a special table named EMAIL, with columns labelled from, to,
subject, date_time, content.
[Additional features are welcome.]
copyright Alexander Borgida, Valia Kalokyri, Rutgers University
Implementation requirements
The system is to be accessed through a web interface, programmed in jsp, accessing a mySQL
database. Details of the technical set up, which uses the Amazon Web Services (AWS), will be
covered in recitation. At the end, you will need to provide us with a link, where we can invoke and
test your program. This means that if you choose to develop the system on your own machines,
you are responsible for making it available at some URL! In order to be fair to everyone in the
class, please do not use frameworks or other tools that make programming easier. (If we had time
to teach everyone such a framework, we would.)
Good luck! J
PROJECT PARTICIPATION RULES:
If someone is not participating properly in the project, by not carrying their weight, not attending
meetings, not submitting things, it is suggested that the others send emails cc-ing the project TA,
so we can keep an eye out when apportioning credit for the project.
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