Business Project

1. Project Statement

The TradeMe New Zealand website, although has achieved business success in the last decade, has now been identified to have certain limitations which may impact the further development in the online auction market in New Zealand. While all users are getting familiar with the current design of the website, their expectations have been constantly evolving which means continuous improvement of the website is necessary. The major issues that have been identified by a 3rd party analyst including the following items: lack of mobility, lack of interactivity and lack of instant communication. It turns out that, even though mobile devices are capable in browsing online content via mobile Internet, the costs associated with such usage is still not feasible for most of the auction site users due to the amount of required bandwidth to transfer data, and performance issue. This means users have to use Internet capable devices such as computers to access TradeMe website, imposing geographical and responsiveness constraints to their usage. A more mobile, cost-effective and interactive communication channel is therefore expected to resolve users' requirements and strengthen TradeMe website market position.

2. Overview

The following sections provide an overview of the SMS TradeMe system project.

2.1 Background

The increasing demand of real time interactivity on online auction system has triggered TradeMe New Zealand to review its current operation model. Because auction is a highly interactive activity, which requires timely and accurate communication support, users may find difficult to get involve when they are not sitting in front of a computer. On the other hand, mobile device such as mobile phone or PDA devices is now very popular, and it is becoming a form of identity to a person. With the development of mobile communication technology, SMS messaging is now one of the major mobile communication approaches other than voice communication, and it is relatively inexpensive compare to other mobile communication channels in New Zealand. Therefore, combining the mobility, effectiveness and efficiency of SMS system with TradeMe auction system, the new system can cope with the demands of real time involvement and interactivity of an auction raised by system users.

2.2 Overall Description

The Mobile SMS TradeMe system is an improved system over the existing TradeMe system by adding support to SMS interface. Mobile TradeMe system will have additional facilities to store SMS related information in the database, as well as a communication interfacing connecting to the SMS gateway to perform push/pull SMS operations. Additional external and internal user interfaces will be added to support SMS registration and management, which will be accessible by online users for self-service and internal users for management and administration purpose. The newly added SMS module will use similar architecture and technologies as the current TradeMe system to ensure best scalability, maintainability and performance.

3. Database

The following sections contain information about the detailed database design used by SMS TradeMe system.

3.1 Entities Identified

The following entities are identified in the Mobile SMS TradeMe system. Certain entities are direct mapping to existing entities in the TradeMesystem database to allow integration of the SMS module with current system.

Entity Name Description

user_account The details of user accounts registered within TradeMe system.

address The address records supplied by registered users for billing and delivery purpose

auction An auction started by a registered user

auction_question The questions and answers related to a particular auction.

watch The alert/watch placed by users who are interested in a particular auction

bid The bids placed onto an auction by registered users

sms_service List of available SMS services in the system

sms_subscription The subscription status of SMS services by registered users in the system

sms_usage History of SMS service usage in the system

transaction_history The transaction history in the system for accounting purpose

3.2 Attributes of the Entities

The following sections describe the detail design of the database.

3.2.1 The Data Dictionary

The following tables illustrate the column details of each table in SMS TradeMe system.

User account table:

Table Name Column Name Column Type Column Size Required

user_account user_account_id Auto Increment 4 bytes (32 bit) Yes

login Text 200 Yes

password Text 16 Yes

full_name Text 200 Yes

phone Text 16 Yes

status Text 16 Yes

create_date Date Time Date Time Yes

balance Currency Currency Yes

Address table:

Table Name Column Name Column Type Column Size Required

address address_id Auto Increment 4 bytes (32 bit) Yes

user_account_id Long Integer 4 bytes (32 bit) Yes

street_address Text 200 Yes

suburb Text 200 Yes

city Text 200 Yes

postal_code Text 16 Yes

type Text 16 Yes

Auction table:

Table Name Column Name Column Type Column Size Required

auction auction_id Auto Increment 4 bytes (32 bit) Yes

owner_account_id Long Integer 4 bytes (32 bit) Yes

reserve_price Currency Currency No