Part-1
Use one business rule: delivery fees consist of a fixed amount of $1000 per truck, plus carbon emission charge, and plus a variable amount depending on variable hourly rates (as defined in Appendix A and B) and delivery times. The carbon price is equal to 7 cents per kilometre of the travelled distance. As for the variable hourly rates, Appendix A lists the hourly rates varying on time, date and location; and Appendix B lists Australian public holidays. The CRM system must consider deliveries that travel between multiple time zones, time periods and/or states/territories. The CRM system will make a number of assumptions in regards to computing delivery times and costs, as is listed below.
Additionally a complete list of Australian post codes is provided in CSV format on CloudDeakin which may assist you when estimating the distance between an origin and destination.
Assumptions
As mentioned, the CRM system is expected to make a number of assumptions when calculating delivery times and costs in order to simplify the computation required. These assumptions are:
• A truck driver will always drive at a constant speed. Alternatively the CRM system may consider variable speeds (e.g. a truck will not travel the same speed in a suburban area as on a highway).
• A truck driver will always work for a constant amount of hours before stopping to rest. Time spent resting is unpaid.
• Deliveries to/from Tasmania will be ferried, a ferry will always be available upon arrival, will cost a fixed amount (that the customer gets charged for), and takes a constant amount of time to ferry between Tasmania and Victoria.
• When traveling interstate, a truck spends an equally divided amount of time and/or distance in each state (e.g. a delivery from Victoria to Western Australia 2,000 KM long consists of 666.67 KM travelled in each of Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia). Alternatively the CRM system may consider more accurate representations.
Front End
You will need to create an ASP .NET website with one web form. You do not need any other web pages other than the one with the web form. On this web form (e.g. "Default.aspx"), there should be at least the following:
• Several controls (e.g. Textbox, NumericUpDown) for inputting:
o First Name
o Last Name
o Origin delivery address
o Origin postcode
o Destination delivery address
o Destination postcode
o Billing address
o Phone number
o Delivery date
o Delivery time (Note: The delivery should arrive at or before this date/time, so you will have to calculate the start time and date)
o Number of trucks to hire
• Several "Label" controls to indicate the compulsory input fields and error messages.
• A set of appropriate ASP.NET "Validators" to validate user input from the server side.
• A CSS component.
• A reference to the DLL file which generates PDF files.
• And a "Button" control to submit the data.
Back End
In the C# file associated with the form (e.g., "Default.aspx.cs"), you should write C# code to implement the following actions:
1. Retrieve the user input and place them into appropriate variables.
2. Process a CSV file for postcode information by using LINQ or other methods.
3. Implement the business rules according to different time, days and locations.
4. Apply the business rules for each truck hiring case including carbon price surcharge.
5. Derive the amount to charge and its GST.
6. Generate a unique invoice number.
7. Generate a PDF file with the invoice number, your business address, customer's billing address, current system time, the invoice items (i.e., how many trucks), promised delivery date and time, total cost and GST.
Additionally, in order to demonstrate the correctness of your implementation of the business rule, you should include a few sample invoice PDF files which include the following cases:
• Multiple trucks are hired to deliver goods across two adjacent states.
• A delivery takes more than 4 days (must include the period between 31/12/2014 and 3/1/2015) to complete.
Prototype
A prototype of the assignment has been provided on CloudDeakin. This prototype is of the front end and is given to clarify how users are expected to interface with the assignment. This prototype does not have all features required of the assignment and does not contain
any back-end component. Assignments may use any functional aesthetic and layout, the aesthetic and layout of the prototype is not a requirement (Remember that your assignment needs a CSS component as well).
Part-2
Part 2 involves development of a marketing analysis component where statistical results are derived based on a salary database. More specifically, an engineering company provides its employment information in a compressed database dump named "employees.zip" which consists of a few database tables such as department, titles, salary and so on. Your task is to categorize the employees into one of three membership groups. Only those employees younger than 68 years are eligible. Furthermore, we have three types of membership - gold member, silver member and regular member. Gold members are those who earn at least as much as the top 20% salaries in the employee database; silver members are those who earn at least as much as the top 50% salaries in the employee database; and the regular members are those whose ages are between 60 and 67.
Database Migration
The first task is to migrate the database dump into your ASP .NET solution. The database dump provided is a MYSQL dump, but your ASP.NET solution is going to use a Microsoft SQL database (MS SQL), so you will be required to convert the SQL dump file. This can be
accomplished in a number of ways; one possibility involves using additional software packages such as XAMPP to convert the database to a usable format. Another method involves manually translating table structures and then inserting the data (Hint: You will have to make use of "BULK INSERT" and thus also write a small program/script to convert the data into a compatible format such as a CSV file). The migration implies that you should consider verifying the validity of data entries.
Alternatively, if migration proves too difficult you may create your own database that mimics the employees SQL dump as close as possible, and use your own dummy data to fill it out. This will let you attempt the rest of the assignment.
Your database should not store date-of-birth, salary and gender information of any employee in plain text. How this is implemented is not important, you may use in-built database encryption, you may use encryption classes provided by the .NET framework and store/retrieve the data already encrypted, or you may even use your own encryption scheme (it does not need to be a secure scheme for this assignment, e.g. a Caesar cipher).
Membership Database
Next, the CRM system must be able to allocate eligible employees into appropriate membership classes according to the business logic via a web interface intended for the website's admins (no authentication to access the web interface is required). You should create a membership database consisting of at least the following fields:
• MembershipId (integer, primary key, not null) - a new entry that you have to generate.
• FirstName (string, not null) - contents copied from the salary database or from the web form you will create (defined later on).
• LastName (string, not null) - contents copied from the salary database or from the web form you will create (defined later on).
• MembershipClass (string, not null) - one of the three possible values "gold", "silver" or "regular".
Web interface
To manage memberships, you will need to create an ASP .NET website with one web form. On this web form (e.g. "Default.aspx"), there should be at least the following controls:
• SQL database controls for displaying membership information including MembershipId, names, and MembershipClass and so on.
• "TextBox" controls for updating member's MembershipId, names, and MembershipClass and so on.
• "Label" controls to indicate error messages.
• A CSS component.
• And a few "Button" controls to enable "add member from database", "add member", "remove member", "update member" and "search member" functionalities.
In the C# file associated with the form (e.g., "Default.aspx.cs"), you should write code to implement the following actions:
1. Implement "add member from database" functionality to add members from the given employee database.
2. Implement "add member", "remove member" and "update member" functionalities to membership database.
• Add member is for adding a person not in the given employee database, so additional fields must be filled out, e.g. First/last name.
• Update member checks if a member is still eligible for their current membership class (i.e. Age is still valid and salary is still in a valid range), and updates their membership class if necessary.
3. Implement "search member" functionalities according to given MembershipId, FirstName and LastName.
Additionally, in order to demonstrate the correctness of your implementation of the business rule, you should include the screenshots of the following items:
1. A salary histogram of all your members
2. An age histogram of all members
3. A list of the members who:
• Earn above the average salary of gold class.
• Earn the lowest salary of silver class.
• Earn the top 25% salary of regular class.
Prototype
A prototype of the assignment has been provided on CloudDeakin. This prototype is of the front end and is given to clarify how users are expected to interface with the assignment. This prototype does not have all features required of the assignment and does not contain any back-end component. Assignments may use any functional aesthetic and layout, the aesthetic and layout of the prototype is not a requirement (Remember that your assignment needs a CSS component as well).
Part-3
Part -3 involves development of an integrated system which retrieves clients' orders from part-1, issues invoices with appropriate prices, retrieves membership information, generates a rebate statement and stores transactional messages accordingly.
More concretely, we need an additional component - rebate processor integrated with the two components developed in assignments 1 and 2. Your task is to calculate the rebate price according to the membership classes (Gold, Silver or Regular as defined in part 2).
The rebate value should be derived as following:
• Regular members will receive $200 credit for each booking.
• Silver members will receive 15% discount for every $5,000 spent (excluding GST).
• Gold members will receive $300 credit for every booking and 20% discount for every $5,000 spent (excluding GST).
Note: Discount price should be awarded in the tax invoice during the current transaction; rebate credit should be awarded after issuing the tax invoice, and the amount will be redeemed in the next transaction. Moreover, do not attempt to improve your calculations of delivery distance and price, but you should use the numbers produced from your part 1 solution.
Hence, your rebate processor should store the information of previous transactions. Your first task is to link the first two assignment solutions by adding a textbox for membership ID (mapping to "MembershipID" in the membership database table) in the truck booking web form. More specifically, if the supplied ID matches an existing member in the database, then this member's first name and last name should be retrieved from the database and displayed in the booking form; if the supplied ID does not match any existing member in the database, then the system should insert this customer as a regular member to the membership table.
The next step is to implement the rebate processor which should store every booking record, calculate and apply rebate prices. Each booking should be referred by the unique invoice number generated in part 1.
Then, port your modified booking processor (as in part 1), rebate processor, and database accessing APIs (as in part 2) on at least three separate threads and apply appropriate multi-threading controls such as semaphores/mutex/wait; alternatively, you may use async/await. This will set you up for the final step where you will implement a message queue for the rebate processor.
Finally, you need to set up appropriate ActiveMQ message queues which link the booking processor and rebate processor by sending and receiving messages. One challenge you will have to consider is how you will convert the truck order form's data to a message so that it can be put into a message queue, at which point your rebate processor must be able to parse each message. Another challenge to consider will be how you can convert your rebate processor's results to a message so they can be sent back.
Note: You should submit this assignment as an integrated system which includes the previous two assignment solutions with necessary modifications. In order to demonstrate the correctness of your implementation of the entire system, you should include a few sample invoice PDF files and sample rebate statements (in any readable format) which include the following cases:
• An existing gold member hires five trucks to deliver goods across two adjacent states, and then the same customer makes a second booking hiring three trucks to deliver goods during a weekend.
• An existing silver member hires two trucks for more than 5 days to deliver goods.
• A new customer hires one truck to deliver goods during 2015 Easter holidays, and then the same customer makes a second booking to hire one truck to deliver goods during a weekend.