According to a study, students in computer-science courses learn much more by building large-scale exercises instead of many small-scale test programs, which give fragmented knowledge contrary to solid understanding of the language.

• Have to use Microsoft ASP.NET [Visual Studio (Community)] and Microsoft Access DBMS to complete this exercise. Be sure to create the exercise by selecting the following Visual Studio options:
  
  
  • Get started: Create a new project,
  • Project template: ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework),
  • Language: C#,
  • Platform: Windows, and
  • Project type: Web.


• The exercise should be located at C:\260\WebApplication3\ .


• The folder C:\260\WebApplication3\Access\ should host the database such as C:\260\WebApplication3\Access\Bookstore.mdb, instead of .accdb, if you want to use the CEC205 podium machine to demo your exercises.

• Turn in printouts of all ASP.NET source code and no documentation is needed. (Online students may send the code to the instructor via emails.)


• Send an email to the instructor at wenchen@cs.und.edu to set up an appointment to demonstrate your exercise to the instructor individually, so misunderstanding would be minimized. The mail lists the times you will be available. The instructor will prepare a set of test data to be used by all students. (Online students may use Skype to demonstrate their exercises and the instructor’s Skype ID is whu678 .)


• Students may save the whole website at C:\260\WebApplication3\ in a flash drive or in the cloud and demo it at a classroom or conference-room machine at the location C:\260\WebApplication3\ . The instructor will also save the code in his computer.

• The data of a book includes
  • a unique ISBN (10 characters),
  • a title,
  • a list of subjects (must have at least one subject), and
  • a price.


• Database design is supplied by the instructor as follows. The following three tables show sample values of a relational Bookstore database, of which ISBN, SID, and (ISBN, SID) are the primary keys of the tables Books, Subjects, and BookSubject, respectively. The foreign keys of the table BookSubject are ISBN and SID.
  
  

  Bookstore Books ISBN Title Price 111884677X Build your ASP.NET skills 27.56 1484224779 Web applications using Microsoft VS 34.48 1942270844 Microsoft Access programming by example 36.21 1285860268 Programming with Microsoft VB 82.06 1937161730 Visual Basic and databases 74.95 0596002734 Access database design and programming 7.45 0596005431 Web database applications with VB 8.45 1285183479 Using Access and Visual Basic 15.99 ... ... ... Subjects SID Name 1 Computer Science 2 Electrical Engineering 5 Social Studies 6 English Literature 10 English Composition 11 World History 20 U.S. History ... ... BookSubject ISBN SID 1484224779 2 1484224779 20 1484224779 6 1937161730 5 1285183479 2 1285183479 6 0328030201 29 0328030201 1 0328030201 6 111884677X 1 0596005431 10 0596005431 23 ... ...



• (Entering books: 20%) Enter books one by one. User-friendliness will be heavily considered here; for example, the number of subjects should be unlimited and the subjects’ names should not be fixed and entered again and again.


• (Listing all books: 10%) Display all books and each book includes the following items:
  
  
  • a checkbox,
  • a hyperlinked book title, and
  • an input box filled with the book’s current price.


• (Updating multiple book prices: 10%) After listing all books, update multiple book prices at the same time.


• (Listing all subjects: 05%) Display all subjects and each subject includes the following items:
  
  
  • a checkbox and
  • a hyperlinked subject name.


• (Searching for books: 20%) After listing all subjects, display the books if each of them contains any of the checked subjects. The listed books are ordered by the number of matched subjects. Each result book includes the following items:
  
  
  • a radio button,
  • a hyperlinked book title, and
  • the number of matched subjects.


• (Deleting a book: 10%) After searching for books, delete a book from the bookstore. In addition, the corresponding subject data has to be updated. One subject must have at least one book. If the deletion results a subject without a book, delete the subject too.


• (Showing book data: 05%) List all data of a specific book (including hyperlinked subject names) by clicking its hyperlinked title.


• (Showing subject data: 05%) List all hyperlinked book titles of a specific subject by clicking its hyperlinked name.


• Since there is only one user, the store owners, user signing up, in, or out may not be needed.


• (Instructor’s requirements: 15% total)
  Other than the above system requirements, the instructor has the following requirements:
  
  
  • (User-friendliness: 10%) User-friendliness will be heavily considered when grading. In the past, some exercises were awkward, which made the grading or browsing difficult. For example, it is considered not user-friendly if the system repeatedly asks users to enter their names/IDs/passwords.
  
  
  • (System reset: 05%) The system can be reset, which is to clear all data stored in the database and files, so the instructor can test the system by using only his own test data. That is the system has to include a button such as “Clear system” on the system entry page.
  
  

• Specifications:
  • The instructor (or your assumed client) has given the exercise specifications as detailedly as possible. If you are confused about the specifications, you should ask in advance. Study the specifications very carefully. No excuses for misunderstanding or missing parts of the specifications after grading.
  • The specifications are not possible to cover every detail. You are free to implement the issues not mentioned in the specifications, but the implementations should make sense. Implemented functions lacking of common sense may cause the instructor to grade your exercise mistakenly, and thus lower your grade.
  • The exercise must meet the specifications. However, exercises with functions exceeding the specifications will not receive extra credits.


• Grading:
  • This exercise will not be graded if the development requirements and submission methods are not met. Students take full responsibility if the web site does not work.
  • A set of test data will be used for all students. The grades are primarily based on the results of testing. Other factors such as programming styles, algorithms, and data structures will be only considered minimally.
  • Before submitting the exercise, test it comprehensively. Absolutely no extra points will be given after grading.
  • To make sure the data is saved to and retrieved from permanent storage like a database, the website may be shut down a couple of times during demonstrations.
  • The weights of this exercise are 12% and 14% of the final grades for the campus and online students, respectively.
  • Microsoft ASP.NET [Visual Studio (Community)] and Access DBMS have to be used. Using other IDEs might cause the instructor to fail executing your exercise correctly.
  • Have to use Access database to save data. Otherwise, the data will not be kept after the system is signed off. Failing to do this will substantially reduce your grade.
  • Multiple browser tabs, browsers, or computers will be used to test the systems at the same time to make sure the multi-processing is working well.
  • If not specified, no error checking is required; i.e., you may assume the input is always correct for that case. For example, the ISBN entered will always be a string of 10 characters.
  • Feel free to design your own interfaces; user-friendliness will be heavily considered; each function/button will be tested extensively; and from the source code submitted, the programs will be examined.
  • The newest Firefox browser will be used to grade exercises. Note that Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox are not compatible. That is your exercises may work on the IE or Chrome but not Firefox.
  • The exercise printouts will be kept until the end of this semester. They will be re-checked for plagiarism from time to time. The instructor will inform you the exercise evaluations by emails after grading.


• Databases:
  • Microsoft Access database has to be used and try to perform the tasks by using SQL (Structured Query Language) as much as possible because SQL, a non-procedural language, can save you a great deal of programming efforts.
  • There are many advantages of using databases. If database is not used, the problems caused by not-using-transaction must be considered. For example, if two customers are enrolled at the same time, an ID may be assigned to different customers if databases are not used.
  • Database design is supplied by the instructor, but you still need to implement the database by using SQL commands or Access IDE.
  • The database schema (tables) from database design may not be unique. You may design your own database as long as it is correct.


• Comments:
  • Make the exercise work first. Do not include extra features, such as passwords, in the beginning. By the way, you will not receive credits for the extra features.
  • One way to build a complex web system from scratch is to design the user interfaces first and then implement the system button by button. By doing this way, it could simplify the construction. The recommended construction steps are
    
    
    1. Studying the specifications very carefully,
    2. Designing the databases (E-R modeling or normalization),
    3. Implementing the databases (SQL),
    4. Building the interfaces (HTML and CSS),
    5. Implementing the system button by button (C#), and
    6. Testing the exercise thoroughly.
    
    
  • Many times, simplicity is the same as user-friendliness.
  • Security concerns are mainly ignored here. For example, a customer may be able to check others’ account information if protection is not enforced. Small or medium -size businesses do not usually implement their own secure payment scheme. Instead they use a third-party payment system such as PayPal or purchase software from company like Cayan and integrate it with their websites.
  • The function of automatically sending emails is important for e-commerce systems, but will not be used here since companies complained our students sending out numerous mails because of faulty programs.