Presentation Requirements

The bigrez.com user - facing site must walk the user through the reservation process by presenting forms and pages in a logical order and building the reservation visually on one side of the screen. Although the specific appearance and layout of the site may vary from installation to installation, the basic layout illustrated in Figure 3.2 shows the key elements of the display.

Figure 3.2:  bigrez.com basic presentation layout.

The user will interact primarily with HTML forms and content presented in the work area, while the progress of the reservation is displayed in the reservation information area. The reservation information area can also be used as a navigation device to revisit a previous page in the process (for example, to change dates) by clicking on links in the area.

The basic reservation process is illustrated by Figure 3.3. This diagram represents the basic course through the reservation process. The actual process is subject to many detours and alternate courses not depicted in this figure, based on user navigation decisions. We ll cover some of these alternate courses during the discussion of the reservation information area later in the chapter.

Figure 3.3:  bigrez.com reservation process.

We must implement many business rules related to site navigation and the reservation process in the presentation tier of the application. For example, the user may not skip ahead and choose a room type before selecting a property and arrival/ departure dates because the available room types are dependent on these choices. The user may, however, skip ahead and sign in or provide guest information at any point in the process. Note that the Web application architecture defines, among other things, where business rules such as these are implemented in the presentation tier .

The bigrez.com application also requires an administration site allowing authorized users to create and maintain the properties and related information used by the reservation process. Figure 3.4 presents an example page in the administration site, showing the basic structure of a page.

Figure 3.4:  bigrez.com administration site example page.

Both the user site and the administration site must meet all of the presentation-tier requirements discussed in Chapter 2, including display-related requirements, form/ update requirements, and navigation requirements.

The bigrez.com site is not a small application. There are more than 20 JSP pages in the user site and another 15 pages in the administration site. We believe an example application of this size provides a more realistic platform for the construction, deployment, and management discussions to follow.