The design objective of this project is to create an online bookstore. The system will provide a mechanism for searching the available book title database with various criteria. The system will call attention to books in the inventory that are designated as "special" and will allow users to order books online. The browsing will be done via an HTML web page that uses IDC in IIS. A primary goal is to make the web site highly interactive and dynamic. Figure 8-1 shows the home page for the online bookstore.
Figure 8-1.
The home page for the online bookstore.
When the user enters a subject, he or she will be able to view information on all books that correspond to that subject. The user will also be able to find additional books written by the author of a favorite title. If the user's request returns more than 20 selections, the system will warn the user and provide helpful instructions on how to perform better queries.
When the user has identified a book to purchase, the system will allow him or her to enter important information, such as name, address, and credit card number, to complete the transaction. Prior to committing the transaction, the system will validate data on the client side to ensure that data is present in each required field. When the form has been correctly filled out, it will be submitted to a back-end database.
On the back end, the data for the book inventory will be stored in an Access database. The same database will be used to store the customer order information. This data can be accessed later to process the orders. Any changes to the database, such as the inventory of books or the specials offered, will be reflected immediately on the web site.