There are several aspects of this final part of your programming project that are different from the previous parts:

• The due date is on a Wednesday, not a Monday. You have 9 days to complete this part instead of a week.

• This part will be turned in electronically. It must be submitted with a timestamp of Wednesday May 24 or earlier. That is, you may not submit after 11:59:59 PM on May 24. Furthermore, there are no late days permitted on this project part. To receive credit for this part, your project must be submitted on time. Details of electronic submission will be given in a posting to the class mailing list several days in advance of the due date.

• This part will be graded out of 15 points, and it will be counted one and a half times as much as the other project parts. A maximum of 15 points will be given for projects meeting the minimum specification for this part. Up to 5 total additional points may be given in special circumstances:
  • To students who had difficulty completing previous project parts but have now caught up and finished the entire project.
  • To students whose project goes well beyond the minimum specification for this part.
  Also note that as we grade this part of the project we will be selecting the winners of the project contest (described in the Course Information handout). Although the winners will be selected based on sustained novelty and quality of work throughout the project, certainly doing a whiz-bang job on this last part cannot hurt.

There is one very important Oracle handout for this assignment:

• Web-Database Programming: CGI and Java Servlets

Please review this handout very carefully before beginning your work.

Your assignment this time is straightforward: build a user-friendly Web interface to your PDA. As we discussed at the beginning of the course, a huge number of Web sites are based largely on a relational database system. The HTML pages a user browses are generated from the database, and user actions and inputs result in behind-the-scenes SQL queries and updates. Although the database-backed site you will create is not likely to be as snazzy as a typical Web shopping or auction site, the basic idea is the same. Here are some general ground rules:

• Similar to Project Part 5, your Web interface should offer the user several (at least five) different types of interactions that involve the database. You may base your Web interface on the same five operations you implemented for your application front-end in Project Part 5, or you may use new or additional operations.

• The less your Web site looks like it is interacting with an Oracle database, the better. At the very least, the user should be completely shielded from anything resembling SQL.

• Sophisticated error handling is not necessary, however your Web site definitely should not "lock up" regardless of how the user chooses to interact with it.

• Most interactions should involve some sort of input values in addition to the user pressing a Submit button. Whenever possible, input values should be specified using menus, radio buttons, checkboxes, scrollers, etc. Text input boxes may also be appropriate.

• Your interface should support operations that involve data retrieval as well as operations that involve data modification.

• Be creative.

Your Web front-end will interact with your Oracle database using CGI scripts and Pro*C, or using Java Servlets and JDBC. Both modes are described in the handout Web-Database Programming. If you used Pro*C for Project Part 5 then you may want to choose CGI scripts for this part, and if you used JDBC for Part 5 then you may want to choose Servlets for this part, however you may also switch languages at this point if you prefer.

Students using CGI scripts will simply submit their URL. Students using Java Servlets are likely to need to submit their code, which we will run. Details are still being worked out and will be published shortly.