This project is worth 30% of the final grade.The finished projects will be installed on the web site and made available for sale to potential customers. This project may be done in teams of 1 or 2 or 3. Teams larger than 3 are not acceptable. Please make up your own teams. It is expected that students will work together and help each other, but each team must have it’s own project.

Each team is to complete an information systems or other application with the following characteristics:

• realistic application
• runs under Microsoft Windows
• programmed with Microsoft Visual BASIC
• install utility
• help file
• comprehensive error handling
• marketing and distribution from a web site

An example is a customer data base for a barber shop. The system stores name and phone number for each customer, and the dates of previous haircuts. The business owner is able to extract information such as:

• a list of long-term customers
• a list of customers who were serviced just once, more than 6 weeks ago
• a list of customers who were last serviced more than 8 weeks ago

The system could be extended to, for example, do financial projections based on past experience.

Each team may venture into the community to locate a business partner. Teams are encouraged to partner with volunteer agencies, non-profit groups and family businesses, as well as with the agricultural, business, commercial, entertainment, industrial communities.

A proposal is due by e-mail. It should include a brief description of the project, the name of any business or organization for which the project is being done, the names of the team members, and 4 keywords that a potential customer might use when searching the web for your software.

By the beginning of the last week of classes, the project is installed on the web site for marketing and distribution.

Ensure that your project satisfies the following list. Marks will be deducted for shortages in any of these areas so that a project may receive less than 50% of the grade. A program which does not run, or which runs poorly, because of syntax or other technical problems, is not acceptable for evaluation.

• meet the requirements of the project description [above]
• help files as in chapter 40
• program design as in appendix A; keyboard conventions optional
• names of team members, a brief description of the program, and command button access to a license agreement in Help|About.
• test your project by downloading and running it from a location other than that from which it was developed and uploaded
• good run characteristics
• custom error handler to catch errors, especially the drive not ready error, and any errors that come up if the user chooses ignore for this particular error
• drive, directory and filelist controls for files
• App.Path code; no use of paths in the code or in properties

First, satisfy the criteria above; then consider the following:

• 20%: subjective comparison by the professor; you will need to hand in a printout showing the screen while your program is running; use a screen capture program; this will be demonstrated in class
• 15%: use realistic data from a real company or organization; you may keep the quantity of data relatively small; identify the company on the same sheet of paper as your screen printout; include the name of a contact person, and either an e-mail address [preferably] or a phone number; test your program on a computer which does not have Visual BASIC installed
• 15%: 5% each for application of up to 3 of the following techniques, or techniques that you have learned from sources other than our textbook; provide a list of your chosen techniques, if any, on the same sheet of paper as your screen printout

chapter 29: Crystal reports	chapter 38: OLE
chapter 34: control array	chapter 39: external Windows function
chapter 35: MDI	chapter 41: context sensitive help
chapter 36: random file	chapter 42: help graphics and hypergraphics
chapter 37: serial communication	chapter 43: help macros