Description
Problem 1
Goal
Access SQL through Java, practice developing SQL queries, and gain some exposure to XML.
Background
You work for the Northwind food distribution company. Management periodically wants a summary
of the company’s operation over a period of time.
Problem
Your job is to extract the summary information from the database, given a particular time period. You
will store the summary information in a file that follows an XML format. Someone else will then use
XML tools (notably XSLT) to convert your information into something that management will review.
There is no specific class structure for this problem. You are tasked with writing a command-line
program with no constraints on the structure except for
• the program inputs, summarized below,
• the program outputs, summarized below, and
• your code must compile
Input
Your program will obtain the following information from the keyboard in the following order:
• The starting date for the period to summarize
• The ending date for the period to summarize
• The name of the file for the output
All dates will be in a YYYY-MM-DD format. For instance, valid text input for the date will be 2002-02-17.
1
Output
Your program will write all of its output to the specified file.
You will extract and report data in 3 categories:
1. Customer information
• Report the customer name, address, number of orders in this period, and total
dollar value of their orders in this period.
2. Product information
• Report, for each product category, the category name and for each product in the
category, report the name, supplier, units sold, and total dollar value of product
sold in this period.
3. Supplier information
• Report, for each supplier with products sold in this period, the supplier name,
address, number of products sold, and the total dollar value of business that we
sold from this supplier’s products in this period.
In all of the reporting, do not report any customers, products, or suppliers who have not had any
interaction over the reporting period.
Your output file will be in an XML format. XML uses a set of tags to surround data to let you know
what the data is. Some tags can be nested in other tags. HTML follows an XML-style format.
We will use a simple version of XML. The first line of your XML file should provide information on
the version of XML to use. The following line will be sufficient:
Following this first line, we get a set of nested tags to store the data. The starting tag has the format
<...> and the matching ending tag has the format (differing by the ending slash) where …
is the tag name. The outermost tag is period summary
Here is a description of the XML schema we will use in Document Type Definition (DTD) format (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document type definition#XML DTD schema example).
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This means that a tag period summary must contain nested tags for each of
• period,
• customer list,
• product list, and
• supplier list.
In the tag period, the nested tag start date is defined further below as #PCDATA — this simply
means that the start date tag will not contain any nested data and will instead just be a string, such
as
nested customer tags, as indicated by the * after the customer tag in the !ELEMENT clause.
While spacing doesn’t matter in an XML file, you should always use line breaks and tabs to make the
XML file readable by a person.
Sample output
Constraints
• You may use any data structure from the Java Collection Framework.
• Write your solution in Java. The solution code must be your own.
• Use the mysql JDBC connection for Java.
• If in doubt for testing, I will be running your program on timberlea.cs.dal.ca. Correct
operation of your program shouldn’t rely on any packages that aren’t available on that system.
Notes
• Use SQL vs Java for processing data as you deem best.
• Be sure to document your approach and any resources that you use.
• Look at where the bulk of the marks are in the marking scheme to help focus your efforts.
• You can run your queries against the csci3901 database on db.cs.dal.ca. I will also make the
sql file for the database available to you so that you can create your own copy of the database.
What to submit
• Your Java code
• A .pdf file containing an argument as to why your solution is ready to be deployed
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Marking scheme (out of 25)
• Documentation – 3 marks
• Program design, organization, style – 2 marks
• Proper XML format, including indentation for readability – 3 marks
• Correct extraction of customer information – 4 marks
• Correct extraction of product information – 4 marks
• Correct extraction of supplier information – 4 marks
• Extensibility of your code (i.e. how easy it would be to report additional information for customers, products, or suppliers without copying code segments) – 2 marks
• Whether your argument that your code is ready to be deployed is convincing – 3 marks
0 Argument is unconvincing
1 Argument is somewhat convincing but it needs additional testing before deployment
2 Argument is convincing enough to deploy in parallel with manual duplication of effort
3 Argument is completely convincing, enough to deploy fully without manual duplication
5