You are a newly recruited programmer, working for an IT company. This company won a contract to develop a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) for a major retailer. The CRM system has to be designed using Object Oriented techniques and to be coded in Java. This system has to manage information about communication contacts with customers, such as orders, enquiries and complaints.

Requirements

If a new customer contacts the retailer the first time, a new record is created and the customer is given a unique customer number. When an existing customer contacts the retailer, the operator asks for the customer number of the particular customer and types it into the system. If this is correct, the system displays the customer details, such as name, address and date of birth. The customer then becomes the current customer and can order a product, make an enquiry about a product, or return a previously purchased product.

For each of the contacts a customer makes with the retailer, the customer number, the date and time of the contact and the name of the operator are recorded. If the contact is an enquiry, the item number and a short note about the nature of the question needs to be recorded. If the contact is an order, the item number is recorded (it is assumed that a customer can only order one type of item at a time), as well as the price and the quantity. The customer will be given an order number and a delivery date, which both are recorded. If a customer contacts the retailer because he or she wants to return a previously ordered item, the customer is asked for the order number and the details about the order are displayed. The customer is then given a reference number and a pick-up date, both need to be recorded together with the item number, price and quantity. A short note about the reasons for returning the item needs also to be recorded.

It must be possible to browse through the customer records as well as to be able to save and to load the data to and from a text file. It should also be possible to generate a list of all contacts for a specific customer. An operator should be able to search for a particular order or a particular return transaction.

Task and Deliverables

Analyze the situation described above. Develop, implement and test an OO design in Java for the system described above. You need to use any levels of inheritance as possible. You also need to document your design and to give a demonstration of the software to your lecturer.

Software

The software needs to provide functionality to add customer and contact details to the system. The data needs to be stored permanently in ASCII files on the local hard drive, hence functions for loading data from files and for saving data from memory into a file are required. It is necessary to provide functionality for searching the database for a particular customer, a particular order or a particular return transaction. The operators need to be able to browse throughall the contacts of a particular customer in the database. The system has to be tested and evaluated against a pre-developed test plan. Any errors encountered needed to be logged and rectified.

You also have to provide your source code on a disk accompanying the report.