CS779 Term Project Steve Shoyer Section 5 December 9, 2006 Week 6

Project Outline Scope - Design and creation of a database to be used to manage an art collection. It will have a web interface, and will contain items such as: Artist biographies Artwork descriptions (sizes, costs, etc.) Artwork pictures Scanned documents of receipts, proof of origin, insurance appraisals, etc.

Project Goals Primary goal: to allow the collection owner and guests to retrieve data from the database Secondary goal: to allow the owner to maintain (and expand) the database through the web pages.

Technical Approach The initial focus is on the database design, to make sure that it is as solid as possible before designing the user interface to it. This will include the data to be stored, as well as typical queries to retrieve data to be able to design the database for performance. Technical decisions include: DBMS to be used (Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server) Web front-end package (FrontPage, Dreamweaver) Web languages for scripting (ASP, Java, PHP) Possible use of XML Ability to add security and identity management capabilities Best way to store image data for scanned documents and pictures Feasibility of allowing the user to dynamically modify the table structure (to add new properties or remove ones not needed) To simplify the implementation, an existing web server running Windows 2003 Server and IIS will be used

DBMS Selection Choices include Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server –Oracle: free Express Edition available, with limited CPU, database size, memory; sufficient for this project, industry standard –MySQL: free software available, growing standard for web –SQL Server: popular DBMS for Intel-based systems DBMS selected: Oracle XE –Consistent with DBMS used for other class activities, no cost, scalable for future use

Web Software Selections Web server: IIS on Windows Server 2003 Web front-end development package: Macromedia Dreamweaver Server scripting language: PHP Client scripting language: JavaScript Database interface: Zend Core for Oracle

Table Design

Progress Report Week 2 – initial project plan completed Week 3 – project report started, DBMS selected (Oracle XE), initial tables created, web interface (Zend Core) installed and tested Week 4 – manually cleaned and loaded table data Week 5 – built data retrieval and data entry web pages Week 6 – completed website functionality and project paper

Project Website