As e-commerce gathers a lot of momentum web developers are faced with the challenge of integrating the various information sources.  It is intended to develop a web application that integrates the information from various information sources and present them intelligently to the user.  The underlying information sources may be in different database environments like oracle, MySQL for e.g.

                    The following project simulates such a distributed processing environment. Imagine the following scenario:

                     An Internet based firm intends to sells automobile spare parts over the web.  Many companies, which sell automobile spare parts, have signed up with the firm and agreed to sell the automobile spare parts that they manufacture through their web site.  In a distributed environment like the web each company can have itSome companies may choose Oracle for developing their databases, some may choose Informix etc.  The web site must support all these environments.  Most companies will be reluctant to release their schemaunderlying database structure).  Also if each company has loads of data the server will not be able to accommodate all of them.  A possible solution is to allow the companies to have their databases on their servers and connect the servers

                      The company submits to us the server name and the port on which the database server is running.  We have to integrate such different databases in one processing environment.  Hence in short we must support a 4-tier, distributed and parallel environment over various types of database.

                    The clients can browse this web site to search the spare parts they are looking for and buy one if he is interested.  From a list of spare parts for each company that are displayed after search, the client chooses the spare part he wants to buy.  The client can be either an employee of the company or a privileged stockholder or an ordinary customer.  They can place their orders online.  When they want to buy a particular spare part we accept the invoice.  The intimation about the order is then given to the company whose spare part they have chosen to buy.  The client gets a 15% discount if he buys a certain number of parts from a company. Also privileged customers and the employees of the concerned company must be given 10% discount on their purchase.

                    When the customer wants to buy a particular part type he submits an RFP.  The RFP is then read and accordingly mailed to the company from which the customer wants to buy.  There is to be an automated mailing system for doing this.  The record of the RFP is to be kept within the Database.