Online Sales And Management System: Design And Implementation With ASP.NET And Multi-Tier Architecture

Establishment, maintenance and delivering the high levels of reliability and availability required of business-to-consumer Web sites requires not only great technology, but also great operational processes.This thesis discusses the design and implementation of a computer application that supports an online sales and management system. Its development is based on the multi-tier architecture technology, which provides special features essential for the functionality and flexibility of the system. The features desirable in a computer application supporting business functions are: security, scalability, availability and ease of use especially for the end users. Given that the underlying architecture of any system greatly impacts on its performance, multi-tier infrastructure has been taken as the ideal choice. It is common today to find selling operations through the Internet but how secure, efficient and scalable are these systems? The multi-tier architecture is intended to solve many setbacks faced when working with a system developed with existing alternative architectures.The thesis depicts the development of an application that deals with sales and management issues that are related in any transaction involving an online customer and a seller. The application is a solution for an e-commerce store (Nairobi Cyber Stores), which depicts both storefront and the back-end. It is basically dealing with selling of computer components among other electronics .The store application demonstrates basic online shopping tasks which includes a product catalog, user authentication and personalization, shopping baskets, and order checkout. The application also deals with store management at the back-end obviously with the right security measures.From the architectural point of view the application has three layers i.e. presentation, middle and data-access layers. The client uses the presentation layer to interact with the database through the middle layer. The functionality of each layer is independent of the other layers though they work together. The middle layer encapsulates the business logic, which has been coded into several classes. Each class contains related functions and methods. The middle layer coordinates with the stored procedures within the data access tier to present the clients (customers) with the required results.The database server that was used in this application was primarily chosen due to its scalability and reliability, which enhances the application development and future adjustments. Asp.net is a key tool that was significantly due to its dynamic nature and flexibility. The security features of Asp.net in regard to authentication and authorization were significantly considered throughout the application development. With regard to the interaction between the client and the server, secure socket layers (SSL) was used to offer the security due to the transactions involved such as payment of goods by use of credit cards. The security aspects were used hand in hand with the IIS, which acted as the web server.