Introduction to Coursework

This part of the coursework is designed to give you a chance to demonstrate your skills in developing an e:Commerce application using ASP.NET.

Example Case Study

The following describes an organisation in need of an e:Commerce application. You can develop an application for this organisation or for a similar organisation of your own choosing with your tutor's approval.

Scenario

You have been commissioned to create a dynamic Web Site for a local shop who are anxious to investigate the possibilities of e:commerce. Their final decision will be based on the results of your investigation and your demonstration of a prototype application. The company sells mp3 players from their local premises. They require a site which will not only display the products from the main manufacturers they support - Apple, Sony, Creative and Samsung, but also allow a user to select a product and buy it.

Specific Tasks

You are to design an interactive dynamic web site to demonstrate the above requirements to the shop. The site must allow the features listed below to be demonstrated. You will demonstrate these in a ScreenCam video.

You should attempt to include a wide range of features, the basic ones being:

- Your website should contain an SQL Server database. This database must contain at least three tables that are related to each other. Your tables must contain suitable primary and foreign keys.

- Your website should have a unified look and feel and a consistent layout. You should achieve this through appropriate use of a master page.

- Your website should provide appropriate navigation features based on the Site Map Model (which allows you to define the navigation structure of your website) and navigation controls such as menus and TreeViews.

- You should allow new users to register on the site and existing users should be required to log on to access all the features of the site.

- You should allow a user to search for and select an item from a catalogue to carry forward to a simple ‘shopping basket'. The user should be able to remove items from the basket before submitting the order.

You do not need to deal with the problem of creating an order, asking for payment details etc. We will however look at these features in the second part of this module - in term 2.