BUILD YOUR OWN BOOKSTORE

Build a virtual bookstore (a la barnesandnoble.com).  These are the steps:

1. Model entities such as books, their authors, topics, publisher
house, etc... Create a schema and an E/R diagram representing your
database.  Create useful and meaningful relationships between the
emtotu sets. Also describe any constraints you want to have on your
schema (referential integrity constraints, functional dependencies,
etc...)

2. Transform your E/R diagram into SQL syntax and create a "real"
database in SQL Server using your model.

3. Populate your database. You can either use "synthetic" data or
download a list of "real" books and populate your database. You should
have at least 25 books in the database. If you choose to use synthetic
data, please use meaningful names and entries.

4. Create another table(s) storing customers along with their VISA and M/C
card numbers and other relevant information. Create meaningful
relationships between customers and books, authors, etc...

5. Create a WEB portal to your database. Books should be able to be found
using names, authors, ISBNs and keywords. Once a search has completed, a
web page should be created summarizing the results of the search. Also for
each book in the summary, there is a link that the user can click on to
expand the information about the respective book.

6. Add e-commerce functionality to your website. Let a user be able to
buy his/her desired book from your database. Each buyer needs to be
able to order his book, and fill in his credit card information. (Do
not worry about security issues). Store the credit card information in
your database, so that a user does not have to enter this information
more than once. However, allow the user to modify his credit card
information.  For each book title keep track of how many copies there
are currently in stock.  When a customer buys a book, decrement that
number.

7. Export your database in XML.  Design an XML DTD that contains
elements and/or attributes corresponding to the entities in your
database, such as books, their authors, etc, and write a program that
exports the entire database into an XML format with that DTD.

BONUS: If a user is searching for a book you don't have in stock, your
database application should go to barnesandnoble.com, search for the
respective book and add it to your database. The price of the book
should be $5 over that at barnesandnoble.com.  For example, in order to search
for Kundera's "Unbearable lightness of being" you would submit the
following URL:  http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=kundera+unbearable+lightness+of+being

NOTE: Do not make your schema too complex: the entire project should
contain at most 3-4 entity sets plus relationships.