Botanical Gardens Team 12 Cody Boppert, Sarath Chandra Yennamani, Vijayalakshmi Srinivasaraghavan, Tianqi Fu, Aveek Karmakar, Zilong Ye

The Botanical Gardens Planning for the gardens began in 1868. South Park (where the gardens are) was established between 1894 and 1900 on 156 acres of farmland. The tri-domed building still in use today was constructed between 1897 and 1899. The tri-domed conservatory features plants from all over the world featured throughout in 12 “houses”. Seasonal shows and photography classes occur frequently through out the year.

The Client Maintains a large database which it would like to feature accessible and easy searching and browsing for members and interested persons. The database currently contains over 20,000 entries and may grow to over 100,000 entries. Currently the database is not accessible through the Buffalo Botanical Gardens website. The Buffalo Botanical Gardens would like to appeal to members, students, instructors, and the community, as well as those with casual interest.  The database must feature pictures and information within each entry.  Information includes location within the gardens, location in the wild, type of plant, name of plant, and possibly entries indicating whether the plant is for sale.

The Users Members: Interested in newly featured plants, seasonal shows, photography contests, and plants for sale. Educators: The database might be a tool for educators interested in increasing their pupils knowledge of plants. Students: Pupils will be employ the database to research plant varieties, locations, medicinal effects, and habitats. The Community: Casual interest throughout the community will drive traffic to the database where they should be able to learn about upcoming events and new plant arrivals.

The Objective Plan out a fully featured and easily searchable database for the Buffalo Botanical Gardens. Include tools and features which allow the Gardens to showcase new and upcoming arrivals, plants for sale, seasonal shows, and various contests. Include tools for visitors to plan out their next visit, find their favorite plants, and learn more about plants they found interesting. The database should be searchable by a wide variety of constraints including garden location, geographical location, plant variety, habitat, medicinal value, and whether or not the plant is available for purchase.

System Overview Two servers distribute our web application. One server hosts the databases and one server hosts the web page. Our three databases allow users to interact with games and quizzes which feature plants.

The Administrator The administrator is the Buffalo Botanical Gardens own web technician and developer. This person has full rights to maintain and update both the web server and the database server.

The Staff The Staff of the Buffalo Botanical Gardens has many administrative rights and can update the databases and administrate the forums when necessary. The staff are allowed to update the website’s blog and create new quizzes.

The Public The public users of the website enter through the public domain and may enter photo contests, browse the store, employ the database, and read blogs. Users with accounts have more options and may make posts in the forums and personal blogs.

Feasibility This project is feasible. Many of the components have been created before and prior solutions may be employed for savings. Traffic growth is not expected to exceed bandwidth and data resources available.

Maintenance and Growth Maintenance issues include approving staff updates to the databases, traffic bumps, hardware issues, and upgrades. Hardware may be outsourced which reduces maintenance to software and traffic issues. Outsourced hardware generally allows for easy growth in plans resolving traffic and growth issues.