Autumn 2003

INFO 320

Information Needs, Searching and Presentation

The Business of America is Business!

The first shock was a letter from the Washington State Department of Sanitary Plant Preservation. Apparently in the State of Washington, you can't store plant stock in your garage for years and then sell it. If you are going to sell plant stock, then it must originate in a government-recognized supplier.


The second shock was Francoise's request for a calculator on each page. "I don't know if you can do it, but Jorge told me that he would do in Javascript."
-- "A calculator?" you mumble.
-- "Well, so many folks want to calculate the sales tax ahead of time. There has to be a way to type in the price of a plant and then calculate the California sales tax -- did you know that it's 7.25%?"
-- "Ah, yes, a calculator in JavaScript..."

The third shock happened when Jorge was planting tulips, or turnips, or whatever, and suddently threw his trowel against the wall and shouted, "I realize now that I should have fed the sales data into a spreadsheet! Database or spreadsheet," he shouted, "XML is a fundamental storage technology!"


Immediate Action Items:
  • Get that plant stock off your web site ASAP!, i.e., the plant stock from part one of our course. This is the plant stock that you have been storing in your garage all these years.   (ASAP = As soon as possible)


  • The WSPR truck has left another pile of boxes in the driveway. Here is the bill of lading for shipment #588-76 and in an envelope taped to the side of the box are three product catalogs: Vigor Verbena, SouthWest Bellflower and Garden Dianthus.


  • Francoise comes into your office and shows this piece of paper. "The calculator should work like this," she says.


  • "Here are the latest sales slips," she says. "Jorge has put them into XML again. Do you want him to put them into a database?"


Create a website with the following deliverables:

1. Build your third web site and link it to your INFO 320 class website.
Create a third website. Do not write over or destroy the previous two websites you have created.

  • Continue to use a color-coordinated organization for your website.


  • Add the new plant stock of shipment #588-76 using C#


  • Based on the letter from the Department of Sanitary Plant Preservation, the only way to stay in business is to remove all the plant stock from your web site that you had been saving in your garage at home all these years. Programmatically remove the content from part one of this course. [In your diary of changes, note if you were able to do this by using only your part two designs, or did you have to go back to the part one information?]


  • The Department of Sanitary Plant Preservation also requires clear identification of the source supplier. There are numerous ways of accomplishing this, but the essential idea is (1) to link a particular plant with its source supplier, (2) Explicitly show the "s" number. [In your diary of changes, be sure to document exactly how you did this.] For example:



  • Add the calculator to each flower page. In the code for the calculator, insert the name of your flower company for "My Flower Company".


  • Load the current sales slips and the sales slips from part two into Microsoft Access
2. A link to the stylesheet of your homepage. What percentage of the HTML elements were filled with re-used information?

3. A link to the flower page stylesheet (Each flower page should use the same stylesheet). What percentage of the HTML elements were filled with re-used information?

4. Use C# to manipulate XML sources and to create stylesheets. Place a link to each C# code (the "cs" code in Visual Studio .NET). For example, you might list "the code that removes the original plant stock", "the code that adds new plant stock based on color" and "the code that styles my flower pages," etc. Use the <pre></pre> tags so that your code is formatted text in a browser.

5. Write another "Diary of Changes" to explain how the deliverables of this section forced changes in your handling of information. Handle these questions for example:
  • What is your revised strategy regarding the re-use of information: Number and contents of XML sources? Schemas? Your explanation should include comments about how you structured your data.
  • If you created more than one XML source, what is your strategy for linking them together?
  • How have you use C# to manipulate XML programmatically? Comments on the various C# programs you wrote to accomplish everything that needed to be done.
  • How does your information design address future, unknown, ad hoc requests for information?
  • What have you learned about the re-use of information so far?