Next Steps for the Site

I l @ ve RuBoard

In addition to second thoughts about what you did code, there are a number of interesting things that you might need to implement depending on how the rest of your business operates. Before moving away from the application, let's talk about a few of these things.

For example, right now, when an order is recorded, that's the end of the story. For all you know, magic fairies come in the middle of the night, read the database, and stuff FedEx packages.

In the real world, someone has to actually put the product in the mail. In a large enough company, you'll have to integrate your application with an existing fulfillment system that was probably designed to handle mail-order or telephone sales.

This is when the large commercial Java application server platforms such as WebLogics, WebSphere, or iPlanet can be helpful. They come bundled (or can be bundled to include) integration with existing enterprise systems such as SAP. In other words, rather than having to hand-code your own classes to communicate with third-party applications, you can use the prewritten modules that are already available in commercial servers. This can save you the trouble of trying to do an integration on your own.

In addition to the code to talk to the fulfillment system, you also might need to add some kind of marker on the order to indicate whether it has been sent out for shipping yet.

Another nicety would be to do real-time stock checking. Right now, the application assumes an infinite amount of each product in stock. In reality, companies run out of things, have to back-order them, and so on. Again, you'd have to integrate with the existing stock-management system to make this work.

Depending on how modern the shipping department is, you might be able to have the order updated to include a UPS or FedEx tracking number after it has been sent. Again, some integration with existing legacy systems will be involved.

Even if none of the above is applicable to your business, you'll want to have some reporting in place so that you can ask questions such as, "How many copies of Java for Marketers have I sold in the last month?" Because you're using a standard SQL database, you might want to use a tool such as Crystal Reports (a Windows-based SQL query and reporting product) instead of writing your own reporting. Otherwise, it's straightforward to write these kinds of things. Remember that you'll want to put another layer of security over anything that displays confidential information, lest your competitors start reading your sales figure.

I l @ ve RuBoard