Inventory Management Module for eCommerce System

«Part of a Whole» Project

We know how to design a specified part of a whole project being implemented by some other party

Our Approach to «Part of a Whole»

1. Develop Software Requirements Specification compliant with IEEE Standard
2. Reengineer database using CASE tool (Silverrun, Rational Rose)
3. Elaborate integration scheme
4. Perform software design using modeling approach and CASE tools
5. Develop software
6. Take part in software deployment, or hand software over to developer (if developer wishes so) 

Purpose of the Project

Collabria has had a Web Service product that allowed buyers and sellers in printing industry to conduct their business via the Internet. While the product met most of the customer?s needs, there was a need in several additional modules. One of the new modules, Inventory Management, was subcontracted to Argussoft

Objectives

• Track quantity status of various printed material categories
• Automatically order category items to refill Inventory
• Provide email notifications of certain Inventory events

Customer Requirements

• System should utilize Web interface to work across enterprise Intranet
• System should not require installation of any other components than Web browser on users? computers

System Architecture

Remote clients
Hardware: Pentium 133 MHz PC or Mac 120 MHz
Software: Internet Explorer 4.01 (or higher) or Netscape Navigator 4.08 (or higher)

Application server processing clients? requests
Hardware: Intel-based server
Operating System: Windows NT Server 4.0 
Software: Web Application Server: Microsoft Internet Information Server

Database server
Hardware: Intel-based server
Operating System: Windows NT Server 4.0
Database: MS SQL Server 6.5 

Solution

Client-side HTML and JavaScript
HTML including JavaScript allows remote user to create, search, view, edit, process and store orders in the database

Active Server Pages
Provide interaction between Web-browser client and backend database. Handle application business logic

Stored procedures
Store and retrieve information from the database

Integration issues

• Developer could not provide exact specification at the moment he hired Argussoft as subcontractor
• Inventory functionality was spread in a thin layer throughout the application
• The application has been simultaneously modified by both Developer and Argussoft

Project success

Despite all issues, project development was accomplished on time, under budget and with good quality The product was successfully demonstrated on Trade Show Sep 1- 3, 1999