User Guide

50 Chapter 5: Lesson 1: Preparing to Build the Sample Application
Determining the application functional requirements
Before you can build the sample application, you must understand the functional requirements
underpinning its design. The design of the sample application centers around the daily tasks
performed by Compass Travel’s trip coordinators. These tasks are listed in the following table:
You can derive several functional requirements for the new application from the preceding table.
For example, the sample application must provide the following functions:
In the lessons that follow, you will build ColdFusion pages to address each of these functional
requirements. Central to every requirement is the notion of a trip. Before you can build code to
address any of these requirements, you must understand which attributes of a trip are important
to Compass Travel. For this you must determine the data requirements for the application.
Understanding the data requirements is essential to building the proper database to hold the
application data.
Trip coordinator task Description
Produce current trip
listing
To help Compass Travel agents take trip reservations over the phone and
in person, the trip coordinator maintains a list of current trip offerings.
Provide trip information On an ad hoc basis, Compass Travel management asks the trip
coordinator to develop lists of trips that meet specific criteria.
Maintain trip information The trip coordinator is responsible for keeping all trip information up to
date. To do this, the coordinator needs to locate a trip to edit it or delete it.
Additionally, the coordinator must be able to add a new trip.
Ensure the quality of trip
information
The trip coordinator is responsible for periodically browsing the current trip
offerings to ensure that all the information is accurate. Additionally, when
adding a new trip or editing an existing one, the trip coordinator must
ensure that the data adheres to the Compass Travel business rules.
Functional requirement
1 The ability to generate trip listings
2 A trip query facility based on user supplied criteria
3 Trip browsing functionality
4 The ability to add a new trip
5 The ability to delete an existing trip
6 The ability to edit an existing trip
7 A mechanism to validate new or updated trips against Compass business rules