Course : CS491B Software Design Lab

Professor : Chengyu Sun

Student : Ya-Chi Liu

Date : 12/03/2004

TNT CO OF CALIFORNIA:

Footwear International Trading System

Abstract:

International trade is the exchange of goods and services between countries. It is not easy to design a general trading system for all trading companies because each trading company may carry different products. In this report, we present a new system specifically for International Footwear Trading Company, such as TNT Co of California. TNT company receive sample orders or purchase orders from the customer in the United State, Canada, or Japan and then place those orders to the manufactures in China. TNT will be in charge of controlling the schedule of sample orders, purchase orders and other internal operations. Based on the internal operations, the system supports the following subsystems: Picture, Product, Purchase Order, Sample Order, TNT Customer, Customer, Customer Event, Guide Line, and Query.

1. Introduction

This system is designed for an International Trading Footwear Company, TNT Co. of California, which is involved in female footwear import business. Nowadays, most manufactures move to China. International trading may be described as a "tetragonal" business, including customers, TNT-Customers, Trading Company(TNT) and Manufacture. For example, the following diagram shows the tetragonal relationship of TNT Trading Company:

Figure 1: diagram of Tetragonal Business

Customers are footwear stores opened to publicsuch as Mervyns,Sears,JC Penny, and ValueCity… etc. In the diagram, it shows that "Customers" areTNT’s indirectly customers.TNT-customers are companies who will receive purchasing orders from customers. TNT-customersare usually English-speaking Footwear Company, such as Nine West Footwear Inc. In the diagram, it shows that "TNT-customers" areTNT’s directly customers. Trading company, such as TNT, isusually bilingual including English and Chinese. Trading companies acts as interpreters between the USA companies and Chinese companies. TNT will receive orders from “TNT-customers" and replace the orders to China-factories, but the merchandises may ship to "Customers" directly from China. Manufactures factories are located in China, usually only speak in Chinese.

2. Technological Background

The technological Background are as following: operating system is Unix[1], the database of this system is MySQL[2], and the Web Server is Apache[3] and the language is PHP[4].

3. System Architecture

This is a three tiers model as following System Architecture Diagram, including Client, Web Server, and Database Server.

For the server side, the system needs to be implemented a web server and a database system. The recommended operating environment includes the proper configurations of a web server running a Microsoft Windows Operating System (XP Professional) , Apache Tomcat greater than 4.1.24, Internet Information Services 5.1, MySQL 4.0.20.

For the client side, an end user must be required a functional Internet Access and a web browser. The recommended web browser is Internet Explorer (IE).

Figure2: Diagram of System Architecture

4. Design and Implementation Details

4.1 GUI Design

It is a web-based system that users can use the system by IE as following screens.

Figure 3: GUI Design

4.2 Interface View and Functionalities

This system is a webpage and server-client module, including the following view and functionalities. Picture Manager will show information and picture of each shoe. Product Manager will have a list of shoe in this functionality. Purchase Order Manager handles the purchase orders from different customer. Sample Order Manager handles the various sample orders from different customer. TNT Customer Manageris a function to manage the information of TNT-customers. Guideline Manager contains the functionalities of file upload/download for guidelines from different customers. Query Managerprovides query function to search data in other functionalities. User Manager provides administrator users to minapulate all users for the system including five levels: administrator, employee, customer, manufacture and visitor. Other Manager is the function to maintain customer information and customer events information.

4.3 Database Backend

There are nine tables in the database: tntcustomer, sample, sample detail, order, product, manufacture, customer, customer event and user tables. The user table is used for administrator to manage the users for this system. Other tables have the following relationship which reflects the internal operations of TNT.

Figure 4: ER Diagram of Database Design

4.4 User Types

There are five different types of users in the system including Administrator, Employee, Customer, Manufacture and Visitor. The system will depend on those five levelsto authorize different functions to be used as following:

Subsystems /User Level / Administrator / Employee / Customer / Manufacture / Visitor
Picture Manager / V / V / V / V / V
Product Manager / V / V / V
Purchase Order Manager / V / V / V / V
Sample Manager / V / V / V / V
TNT Customer Manager / V / V / V
Manufacture Manager / V / V / V
Guideline Manager / V / V / V
Query / V / V / V / V
User Manager / V
Other / V / V

Administrator users have full authority of each subsystem. Employee users who work in TNT havemost authority of all functionalities except User Manager which should be used only by administrator level user.

Customer users have the authority or limitations to different functionalities. For example: Picture Manager can see pictures and prices of all shoes including this customer’s develop-shoes, other customers’ develop-shoes, and manufactures’ develop-shoes.Product Manager: customers can not use this function because this subsystem shows the costs of each shoe from the factories. Purchase Order Manager: provide all shipping information of each order.Sample Order manager: a customer can only see the sample orders issued from this customer.TNT Customer Manager: cannot share TNT customers’ information to each of them.Guideline Manager: TNT customer cannot use because this functionis designed for the use between TNT and the manufacture. Query Manager: customer can search for information of products, orders, and samples, but a customer can only see the orders and sample orders issued from himself/herself. User Manager: only be used by administrator level users.

Manufacture users have the authoritiesor limitations to use the following functionalities. Picture Manager: can see pictures and prices belong to this manufactures only. Product Manager: can see the shoes made from this factory only. Purchase Order Manager: can see the orders belong to this factory only. Sample Order manager: can see sample orders placed to this factory only. TNT Customer Manager: can see all TNT customers’ information. Guideline Manager: factories can download the guidelines from each customer. Query Manager: a factory can only search his own products, orders, and samples information. User Manager: only be used by administrator level users.

Visitor: can only use the Picture Manager to see all shoes can be provided by TNT.

5. Summary

In the future, the system will be implemented more functionalities such as CFM Sample, Order Query, Sample Query, and Customer Event Query. CFM sample will be a function to provide the shipping status of each order. If every combination of material and colors for a shoe has been confirmed in a order, the order will go to production and be ready to ship. Other functionalities of queries will be added to provide different queries for every role in tetragonal business of TNT. Those functionalities will improve the system and benefit the users of the system.

6. References

[1] Unix stands for UNiplexed Information and Computing System. It was originally spelled "Unics." Coined in 1969 to describe a specific computer operating system, the term "Unix" now covers a whole host of variations, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

[2] MySQL, the most popular Open Source SQL database management system, is developed, is contributed, and supported by MySQLAB. It is a database management system and a relational database management system. Also, it is Open Source, very fast, reliable, and easy to use. MySQL Server works in client/server or embedded systems. A large amount of contributed MySQL software is available.

[3] Apache web server is the best, and most preferred, HTTP server software in use on the Internet today, and it was written entirely as a volunteer project, by volunteer programmers, in their spare time.

[4] PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side language. This means that the script is run on your web server, not on the user's browser, so you do not need to worry about compatibility issues. PHP is relatively new (compared to languages such as Perl (CGI) and Java) but is quickly becoming one of the most popular scripting languages on the internet.

Appendix A. Database Schema Definitions