One of the most frustrating aspects of the online auction community as a bidder is being outbid in the final seconds of an auction leaving one with no time to place a counter-bid. Another typical situation is when an auction a user would like to win is set to end while at an inconvenient time for a user to watch for these last second bids such as in the middle of the night or when he/she is at work. A final related problem is that of connection speed or type such as a user on a narrowband connection or who loses his/her connection at an inopportune time such as at the auction’s end.

The objective of this project is to increase an eBay buyer’s chances of winning an auction by allowing him/her to place his/her bid during the final moments of the auction automatically. This will solve the problem described above concerning the time of the auction’s end. In addition to an automatic system to perform the task, another main benefit of my application will be user security and ease of use. The proposed application will reside on the user’s personal computer which will yield the highest level of security as a tradeoff for the problem of connection speed. However, it will be possible for the application to account for available bandwidth and latency in order to place the bid at the optimal moment desired by the user. This leaves only the problem of loss of connection which will be traded off for security.

Bid timing is an exceptionally important in successful online bidding. Approximately 75 percent of final bids are submitted in the final 3 percent of an auction’s duration. This technique is commonly referred to as sniping and is considered legal by eBay’s terms of service, “Any bid placed before the auction ends is "legal" on eBay” . There are many services such as and which offer users a way in which to snipe auctions. The main problem with such a service is its lack of security. Conversely, the main advantage of such a system is that its connection is centralized and, therefore, the likelihood that it will lose connection to eBay is greatly decreased. Additionally, it is not necessary that your computer be running or connected to the internet to complete the task.

This project will implement an application in which will gather data from a user-defined eBay auction page and react accordingly. The program will take as input an eBay username and password, an eBay auction number, a time variable (most likely seconds) within which the bid will be placed, and the user’s maximum bid. The program will then retrieve the data specified by the auction number and continually update itself until the auction reaches the specified threshold at which point it will place the user’s maximum bid assuming that it is greater than the current bid.

1. “Sniping.” eBay Glossary. <http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/g-sniping.html>.
2. “Bidnapper.” 2005. Abercrombie Online. <http://www.bidnapper.com/>.
3. “eBay Snipe, eBay Bidding Software, eBay Sniping – Hammertap.com”. <http://www.hammertap.com/powertool/>.

1. Consider the following set of requirements for a university database used to maintain student grade reports (transcripts).

A. The university records each student's name, social security number (SSN), address, phone, birthdate, major department, and degree program (B.A., B.S., etc.). An SSN uniquely designates a student.

B. Each department is described by a name, department code, office number, office phone, and college. Name and code values each uniquely characterize a department.

C. Each course has a course name, description, course number, number of quarter hours credit, and offering department. The combination of a course number and an offering department uniquely designates a course.

D. Each section has an instructor, semester, year, course and section number. The section number distinguishes different sections of the same course that are taught during the same quarter and year.

E. A grade report has a student, section, and grade (A,B,C, and D). The combination of a student and section uniquely characterizes a grade report.

Draw the E-R diagram. Create the database in systems like Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL. Compare the features of each of these systems.

Frame and execute the SQL queries for the following:

1. List name of all students who have registered for courses in more than one department.

2. List name and SSN of all students who have registered for more than one course in a specified department.

3. List name of all students who have got atleast B grade in all the courses taken by him/her.

4. List name of all students who have got A in all the courses offered by CS department.

5. List the highest grade obtained in each course by students majoring in each of the departments.

Assignment 1.2

Write a C program which connects to the SQL servers using ODBCstandard and prints (formatted) the result of the queries in assignment 1.1.

Repeat this in Java using JDBC.

Assignment 2

Online Book Store

Design a Database System for an online book store (e.g., Amazon), based on the following specifications.

1. Books are represented by, ISBN, Title, Author, Publisher, Edition, Year of Publication, Price, Short Reviews if available, Table of Contents if available., an image of the book cover, category e.g., computer science -> operating systems -> MacOS

2. Customers will use an web based interface to browse books based on categories, search books using keywords. Initially only the title and author of the book(s) are displayed, on click other attributes are displayed. Customers can buy books using their e-purse. The store also displays the number of copies of the book left in stock. Out of stock books cannot be purchased immediately, but can be ordered.

3. Customers create accounts in the book store. Each account contains customer profile informations: name, age, geographical location, categories of interest, email. Each account has an e-purse. Customers can specify the amount of money to be deposited with the e-purse. Profile and e-purse informations can be updated by the customer. Customers will login to the book store using an account name and password.

4. All online sales data are recorded in the database with timestamp.

5. Owner of the bookstore can give requisition for buying of books to publishers based on the amount of stock remaining. For each book the owner maintains a stock which is atleast the number of copies of the book sold over last 3 months. Books ordered by some customer are immediately requisitioned. Requistions are placed in a requisition table. The publishers inspect the table on the 1st of every month and immediately supplies the books. Once a book is supplied it is cleared from the requistion table.

Design tables for the above system. Create a separate view for customers. Design suitable forms. Implement authorizations.  Store the functions and procedures necessary in the database itself. You may also use other languages, besides SQL. The front end may be designed using Java/PHP or any other suitable language.

Extra Credits

1. Recommendation systems: Display to the customers a list of books which might be of interest. This may be done based on user profile, or in a collaborative manner - "people who have bought this book have also bought".

2. Send emails to customers when, the ordered book has arrived, new books of interest have arrived in the store.