CSE 134A Fall 2001 Project 4

Department of Computer Science and Engineering	CSE 134A
University of California at San Diego	Fall 2002

Project 4

DUE FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2002, AT 5 PM.

The task here is to handle greeting cards via computer. A sender should be able to design a card through a web browser. Then the recipient should be able to get the card either as PDF or as HTML.

You can organize your work on this project as follows.

(1) Figure out how to store greeting cards in a MySQL database. A greeting card includes the following:

The name, email address, and street address of the recipient and of the sender.
The body of the card, which includes a message and an image.
A logo for the greeting card service.

Choose a standard format for images such as GIF, and store them in the database as "blobs," i.e. binary large objects.

(2) Create your own XML document type definition (DTD) to represent greeting cards. When a card is retrieved from the database, it must be converted into XML.

(3) Next, you should create two XML style sheets (XSL) for converting a card into multiple formats.

One format should be for printing. This should use PDF as the output language.
The second format should be an HTML email message that can be sent using the PHP email functions.

(4) The U.S.P.S. provides a web site that gives the zip+4 code and standardized spelling for any address in the U.S., using the POST feature of the HTTP protocol. You should create a web service that encapsulates this functionality in a SOAP (simple object access protocol) interface. You should implement your SOAP server on ieng9.ucsd.edu using the NuSoap library.

You may also use the University of Buffalo address server, which may recognize more accurately when an address does not exist. Note that the U.S.P.S. already provides an XML-based web service for validating addresses, but this requires user registration and is based on an HTTP GET interface, not SOAP.

(5) Finally, you should implement your whole system. Designing a good user interface for the system is your responsibility. Users should be able to

create and send a card by filling out an HTML form,
choose a picture from a small library of clip-art,
receive a complete card in HTML by email,
receive email notification of a card, then view it in PDF on the web.

You must provide some simple security method that prevents users from viewing other people's cards. This mechanism must not be burdensome for recipients. In particular recipients should not need to register in advance. Your system should validate the addresses on letters by acting as a client that calls your SOAP server. Give appropriate feedback to senders.

Important: You can build a preliminary version of your entire system without using XML or SOAP at all. Then after you have finished each of steps (1) to (4), you can extend your system to use the code written for that step.

Project organization: You should describe all your work in a well-written report of length at most six pages, single-spaced. The report should provide high-level documentation for your software by explaining all the important design decisions that you make for the project. As before, the most important design issues that you must discuss include usability, scalability, security, and modularity. Another important design issue for this project is extensibility. Your report should explain all the important decisions you make concerning each of these issues.

Similar to previous projects, this project will be graded as follows:

1/3 for the functionality, usability, and attractiveness of your system as seen by users,
1/3 for the quality of your software, including reliability, efficiency, and scalability, and
1/3 for the quality of your documentation and report.

Your software should have commenting of professional quality, and a README file. In all, your documentation should be sufficient for another software engineer to maintain the program easily. Remember that good documentation is necessary but not sufficient. Comments and user instructions cannot alleviate bad engineering.

We will provide instructions for how to submit your software and report, and how we will test your system. Don't forget to attach a copy of the team self-evaluation form, and check the class web page and Discus regularly for updates to this project description. Be sure to follow all the rules and guidelines explained in the general course description. Complete academic honesty is always required.