Abstract

The purpose of this project is to provide Biblio Inc. with a client-side inventory management system that they can offer to their customers as a free download. Biblio's principle business is aggregating "For Sale" listings of new, used, and rare books from thousands of booksellers around the world. Booksellers post their listings on biblio.com where a larger group of book buyers browse for items of interest. When a sale is made, Biblio Inc. handles the logistics of shipping and ensuring the prompt receipt of both goods and money for both the buy and the seller. For this service, Biblio charges a commission.

Currently, booksellers use a variety of third party applications to manage their individual inventories, including some applications provided by Biblio's competitors and third party businesses such as Microsoft (Excel). Customers are required to export the data from their application of choice and upload the file via FTP. This process puts Biblio at a disadvantage in many ways: first, the loss of brand identification by using competitors' products negatively affects Biblio's marketing efforts; second, new and less technical users often have difficulty exporting and FTPing data to Biblio (competitors like ABE books offer one-click integration with their systems); third, Biblio's competitors often feel the need to change the file format of their applications with predictable results.

Though Sherpa is currently an eyesore for lack of color or graphics, it does address these problems by providing integrated FTP support and file export utilities for a number of common formats. The SWT library allows Sherpa to utilize high performance, native GUI widgets from its host OS without sacrificing Java's write-once, debug-everywhere features. Biblio.com Inc. has asked me to continue developing this application over the summer.