Design And Implementation Of An Online Sales Management System With N-tier Architecture

This project is about design and implementation of a computer application that supportssales information management system. Its construction is based on the N-Tier architecturetechnology infrastructure, which provides special features essential for the functionality andflexibility of the system. The features desirable in a computer application supporting businessfunctions are: security, scalability, availability and ease of configuration. Today, businessesare run on computer programs that support local purchases, online purchases and Internetordering and purchasing. However the performance of such programs is dependant on theunderlying architecture used in the construction of the application. The theme of this project isproduction of a computerized application service that is distributable across businesscompanies with a feature that supports management of selling and ordering operations,whether through local selling points or through the internet. It is common today to find sellingoperations through the Internet and local distribution points but how secure, efficient andscalable are these systems? The N-Tier architecture is intended to solve many ills faced whenworking with applications constructed with existing alternative architectures. The overallscope of the project is conceived from literature review of the way businesses are progressingin the Internet based economy and the realization that the need to exploit optimallyopportunities available through the Internet. Most companies lack efficient and convenientbusiness management systems that support online product ordering and purchasing functions.Most applications used in the market exhibit hindered performance with increase in numbersof people interacting with systems. Also there are high security &ie*tsrising from permittingaccess to sensitive business data over the Internet and rigid systems that require upgrades orcomplete replacement in case of increase in size of operation or expansien of the businessoperations.In this study, N-tier implies addition of an extra logical layer in the middle of the client-server (two-tier) architecture. Three tiers are used to test the feasibility of the proposals advanced in this project. The three tiers are composed of the presentation tier, the middle tier and the data services tier. The Presentation-tier constitutes the client applications. Theseinclude the web-based and local client based applications. Both client applications interact with the database through the middle-tier component services. The details of how the middle-tier interacts with the database are unknown to the client applications, which enhance security of the system. The function of the local client application is to facilitate the business management operations at the selling premises. The web application program runs on the Internet servers and corporate intranets and extranets. The users of the web application use web browsers on client computers to run the program residing on the server. The entire processing is done on the server as if it were done at the user's local machine, which is intended to increase system security. The middle-tier was designed in consideration of the advantages provided by the multi-tier architecture. Specifically, the middle tier was designed to encapsulate business logic and avail abstract interfaces to web and local clients access to the database resources. The middle-tier design incorporated the functions and methods required to establish connections to the database, and communicate with data stored procedures and triggers without degraded performance as a result of the number of clients requesting for a connection with the database. A database system was implemented using MSQL 2000 platform. Data access components that contain the logic of interfacing with the data storage system were implemented. SQL Server 2000 was used as a back-end database server. Three business operations upon which evaluation of application performance was based were application scalability, se...