OVERVIEW

GOALS:

        The goals of this project is to provide a solution for facilitating and managing video rental stores.  The system is designed to handle the daily operations such as: renting a video, returning a video, become a new member, pay overdue fees.  It also handle exceptional events such as: late returns, damage video, system down, etc.  For every software system there must be certain functional and nonfunctional requirements.  We must first identified them and make an agreement before the actual design process.  Here are the functional land on function requirements:

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

The new We-b-Videos Point Of Sale Terminal (POST) system mimics the functionality of the old POST system and is also adaptable for use over the internet. The system facilitates renting and returning videos by allowing the cashier to scan the customer's membership id and the selected videos. The system monitors inventory and account late fees by creating rental transactions that track when and under what account individual videos are checked out. When a customer has late fees, the system notifies the cashier and the cashier notifies the customer. Rental transactions are closed once the videos have been returned and the late fees have been paid.  The customer may use the system to search the store inventory for specific selections and to see if those selections are in stock. New membership accounts can also be created from the in-store terminals available to the customer. Though currently the customer may directly use the system only for these two functions, the system will eventually be expanded to allow the customer to rent videos and pay late fees over the internet. It is assumed that a downloadable video format would simple expire after the rental duration and thus late fees would not be necessary. As such, all late fees functionality will proceed through the cashier and will be used only for hard-copy (video cassettes, DVD, etc.) transactions. The system allows the customer or cashier to cancel any operation at any time. An operation may be canceled by clicking the cancel button or by beginning another operation.

NONFUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS: 

1) The system must response to the cashier's request within three seconds. 

2) The software for the system must be written in Java. 

3) The system must use Intel Pentium processor. 

4) The system must have a tutorial to help the new users learn how to use it. 

5) The system must be user-friendly. 

6) The system must run on Oracle. 

7) The system must be efficient in resource allocation.

8) There must be a "Cancel" button on every screen.

SCREEN MOCKUPS:

        From all the possible use cases that our research team comes up with we were able to create the following screen mockups.  In additional to the use cases, functional and nonfunctional requirements play a crucial role in our screen design.  Here is the link to screen mockups for the daily and exceptional operations: http://www.oocities.org/SiliconValley/Node/1176/mockups/main.html

FUTURE EXPECTATIONS:

        In the near future the system would be implemented over the World Wide Web.  People will be able to login from home and rent, reserve, return a movie.  People can also register by simply clicking on the "New Account" button.  Customers can rent movies and download them to their computers.  People will no longer have to leave the house to watch a good movie.