Business Project
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Project Statement
The TradeMe New Zealand website, although has achieved business success in the last decade, has now been identified to have certain limitations which may impact the further development in the online auction market in New Zealand. While all users are getting familiar with the current design of the website, their expectations have been constantly evolving which means continuous improvement of the website is necessary. The major issues that have been identified by a 3rd party analyst including the following items: lack of mobility, lack of interactivity and lack of instant communication. It turns out that, even though mobile devices are capable in browsing online content via mobile Internet, the costs associated with such usage is still not feasible for most of the auction site users due to the amount of required bandwidth to transfer data, and performance issue. This means users have to use Internet capable devices such as computers to access TradeMe website, imposing geographical and responsiveness constraints to their usage. A more mobile, cost-effective and interactive communication channel is therefore expected to resolve users requirements and strengthen TradeMe website market position.
Overview
The following sections provide an overview of the SMS TradeMe system project.
Background
The increasing demand of real time interactivity on online auction system has triggered TradeMe New Zealand to review its current operation model. Because auction is a highly interactive activity, which requires timely and accurate communication support, users may find difficult to get involve when they are not sitting in front of a computer. On the other hand, mobile device such as mobile phone or PDA devices is now very popular, and it is becoming a form of identity to a person. With the development of mobile communication technology, SMS messaging is now one of the major mobile communication approaches other than voice communication, and it is relatively inexpensive compare to other mobile communication channels in New Zealand. Therefore, combining the mobility, effectiveness and efficiency of SMS system with TradeMe auction system, the new system can cope with the demands of real time involvement and interactivity of an auction raised by system users.
Overall Description
The Mobile SMS TradeMe system is an improved system over the existing TradeMe system by adding support to SMS interface. Mobile TradeMe system will have additional facilities to store SMS related information in the database, as well as a communication interfacing connecting to the SMS gateway to perform push/pull SMS operations. Additional external and internal user interfaces will be added to support SMS registration and management, which will be accessible by online users for self-service and internal users for management and administration purpose. The newly added SMS module will use similar architecture and technologies as the current TradeMe system to ensure best scalability, maintainability and performance.
Database
The following sections contain information about the detailed database design used by SMS TradeMe system.
Entities Identified
The following entities are identified in the Mobile SMS TradeMe system. Certain entities are direct mapping to existing entities in the TradeMesystem database to allow integration of the SMS module with current system.
Entity Name
Description
user_account
The details of user accounts registered within TradeMe system.
address
The address records supplied by registered users for billing and delivery purpose
auction
An auction started by a registered user
auction_question
The questions and answers related to a particular auction.
watch
The alert/watch placed by users who are interested in a particular auction
The bids placed onto an auction by registered users
sms_service
List of available SMS services in the system
sms_subscription
The subscription status of SMS services by registered users in the system
sms_usage
History of SMS service usage in the system
transaction_history
The transaction history in the system for accounting purpose
Attributes of the Entities
The following sections describe the detail design of the database.
3.2.1
The Data Dictionary
The following tables illustrate the column details of each table in SMS TradeMe system.
User account table:
Table Name
Column Name
Column Type
Column Size
Required
user_account
user_account_id
Auto Increment
4 bytes (32 bit)
login
password
full_name
phone
status
create_date
Date Time
Date Time
balance
Currency
Currency
Address table:
Table Name
Column Name
Column Type
Column Size
Required
address
address_id
Auto Increment
4 bytes (32 bit)
user_account_id
Long Integer
4 bytes (32 bit)
street_address
suburb
postal_code
Auction table:
Table Name
Column Name
Column Type
Column Size
Required
auction
auction_id
Auto Increment
4 bytes (32 bit)
owner_account_id
Long Integer
4 bytes (32 bit)
reserve_price
Currency
Currency