Description
Project Title: Shipping Store (stage 3)
Goal: In this assignment, student will analyze the requirements of a shipping store management
software, and come up with an appropriate UML design, which can be later translated into code. This
version of the software will have added functionality compared to the previous assignment. More
specifically, the software should allow five following operations, see details below:
1. Inventory Management
2. Transaction Management
3. Accounting Management
4. User Management
5. Shipping Store Web site
1. Inventory Management
The software should maintain information about the packages currently in the inventory of the shipping
store. A package is in the inventory if it has been shipped but not yet delivered to its final destination.
The package types and required fields for specific types are the same as defined in Assignment 2. All
packages also have an extra field, tracking location. Tracking location provides the address where the
last scan of the package happened, and it is a string type.
2. Transaction Management
A shipping transaction can be created either by a customer through the store’s website (see below) or
by an employee. A transaction can be in three different states:
1. Pending: when the shipping transaction record has been created but the package has not been
dropped off to the store yet, and it has not been added to the inventory.
2. Active: when the package has been dropped off to the store and it has been added to its inventory.
3. Completed: when the package has been delivered to is final destination and has been removed from
the inventory.
For each transaction, the system keeps the following information:
– Customer id: who shipped the package
– Package Tracking Number
– Cost of shipping
– Employee ID: employee who collected the package (empty if package has not been collected yet)
– Date shipping transaction was created
– Date of delivery: empty if the package has not yet been delivered
– Employee ID: employee who delivered the package (empty if the package has not yet been delivered)
– Status: Pending, Active, Completed
When the employee collects the package from the customer, the status of the transaction is set to
Active and the package is added to the inventory. When an employee delivers a package to its final
destination, the package is removed from the inventory and the status of the transaction is set to
Completed. In other words, the package should exist in the inventory only when the shipping
transaction status is Active.
3. Accounting Management
The accounting management part of the software, allows the software administrators to keep track of
the income, expenses and profit, and print Financial Documents like Balance Sheets, Statements of Cash
Flow and Invoices. To keep things simple, we will assume that all the income comes from package
shipping transaction sales and all the expenses come from employee salaries and space rental. Every
time a new package is shipped or an expense is paid the accounting must be updated and optionally a
financial document can be printed.
4. User Management
The system now supports three types of users: Customers, Employees and Administrators. For all user
types, the system keeps some basic information, like their Name, Phone Number and Email. In addition,
for customers, the system keeps record of their address. For employees, the system keeps records of
their SSN, Monthly Salary, their Bank Account Number, a flag indicating if there are Active or Inactive
and their PIN number. Past employees remain in the system but are considered inactive. Finally, the
administrators are special types of employees with some extra system access rights. For example, an
administrator can add/edit an employee or another administrator to the system and can access the
accounting management part of the software, from where they can pay expenses and print financial
documents at any time. The simple employees, can only create shipping transactions, collect and deliver
packages, add/edit customer info to the system, and reply to customer messages.
5. Shipping Store Website
The shipping store has a website which allows customers to create an account (and edit it), create
shipping transactions, track packages, and contact the shipping store through a web form about possible
questions that they may have. When a customer creates a shipping transaction through the website,
initially the Employee ID is left empty (since there is no employee involved yet) and the transaction
status is set to Pending. Later, when the package is dropped off to the store, the employee id is
populated with the id of the employee who collected the package, and the transaction status is set to
Active. Note that a shipping transaction can be created either by a customer through the website or by
an employee at the store. The customer (and/or the employee) can also optionally print a receipt and/or
a shipping label when they create the shipping transaction.
The website also offers the option to customers to contact the store by sending a message through a
web form. To send a message, the customers need to have first created an account. The message is
added to a queue of unanswered messages. Subsequently, an employee (whoever sees the message
first) can respond to the customer via email. The response of the employee is also recorded, along with
the Employee ID. Each answer is associated with one customer question and is added to a pool of
answered messages.
Tasks:
Assume that the above are the requirements of the system, as described by the owner of the Shipping
Store.
You are asked to do the following:
1. [30 points] Come up with a set of Use Cases that best capture the requirements as
described above. Use free text to describe flows of events for each individual use case.
Create a Use Case Diagram that shows the interaction between actors and uses cases, as
well as the relationships among use cases (communication, inclusion, extension,
inheritance).
2. [30 points] Derive and show a set of Class-Responsibility-Collaboration (CRC) cards that
show the classes that you have identified, as well as their responsibilities and
collaborators. Based on your CRC cards, create a Class Diagram that shows the
relationships between classes (dependences, inheritance, aggregations, compositions,
multiplicities, etc.). In each class of the class diagram, you may show the most important
fields and methods.
3. [20 points] Draw a Sequence Diagram for the sequence of operations taking place when
an employee creates a new shipping transaction and collects the package from the
customer. You can assume the customer already has an account in the system. You
should come up with appropriate method names, and specific method calls to complete
the task.
4. [20 points] Assume a class named “Transactions” which represents shipping
transactions. Create a State Machine Diagram that shows the possible states of objects
of that class and the transitions based on different events from the moment a shipping
transaction is first created by a customer through the Website, until the moment the
package has been delivered to its final destination.
Logistics:
Submit your solutions as a single MS Word or PDF document. To create your diagrams, you can use any
UML editor of your preference, which is compatible with the notation used in class (StarUML is
recommended). You may export the diagrams as images and add them to your document, or simply take
screenshots of your UML editor and crop them appropriately.
There is no single correct solution. All solutions that are reasonable, well documented and follow the
standards that we saw in class, will be accepted. If you are unsure about certain decisions and need to
make assumptions, please state your assumptions clearly in your solution document.
This assignment can be done either individually or with a partner. If you are working with a partner, only
one needs to submit, and specify both names in the submitted document.
Submit an electronic copy only, using the Assignments tool on the TRACS website for this class.
