E-mail supported, agent-based portal for automobile sales

Abstract

Most organizations today have web presence as a way of quickly reaching out to a diverse clientele community, spread across the universe. Unlike in the early days of the Internet, the current Internet technology and infrastructure has matured to not only support display of static contents, but also support for dynamic contents that allows interactivity with the end-user. It also supports a mix of technology, such as integration with e-mail services. Although the environment offers more, very few organizations have taken advantage of its full potential. This project realizes a 3-tier, web-based application for searching automobile portal. It was designed and developed to operate in asynchronous mode, where a web client logs on, sets search criteria and logs off. The system then searches for the client's request and informs him/her using electronic mail (e-mail). The underlying technology deployed relied on component-based approach, with three independent software agents developed to handle the three key operations: Account management, Dispatching e-mail messages and searching for a client's request. Unified Modeling Language (UML) was used as a modeling language, and Rotational Unified Process (RUP) as a software engineering methodology. Web developers interested in building 3-tier web systems may find this work a good starting point.