CASE STUDY
Project Start: November 2008Delivered: March 2009 (and updated annually)
Overview
Leading book exporter, Mallory International needed a school book procurement tool for their customers’ use. Paper catalogues were expensive and slow to produce, and sending them to a distant sales force was not practical. The SBM ships on a DVD and features comprehensive browsing and searching, reflecting the complex nature of bibliographic data. Schools can build and maintain multiple book lists and submit them over the web.
Internet access in the developing world can be unreliable, so this stand-alone package with a compact footprint allows most of the work to be done offline. Only the final submission of a list requires a connection.
Screenshots: (1) Bibliographic search, (2) subject search, (3) search results.
Technical Description
The SBM is a .NET application written in C#, bundled with all the requisite runtimes to avoid impractical downloads by target users. The bibliographic data is stored in an encrypted SQLite database. Booklists are maintained in XML format and submitted over HTTP. XSLT is used to format lists for viewing.
Users
The SBM is used by schools across the globe.
Benefits
- Ease of use – simple to install and use.
- Versatility – books can be searched by keywords, subject, age, level and curriculum.
- Highlights – titles which come highly recommended or have won prizes are flagged with special icons.
- Colour – jacket images and additional bibliographic information are included.
- Regular updates – Mallory International maintain their database of school books and issue new SBM releases periodically to ensure that customers are offered the most up-to-date information available.
- Cost savings – since releasing the SBM, Mallory International have avoided the expense of printing and shipping bulky catalogues.
- Secure – encryption is used to protect the intellectual property of the data.
Technologies
.NET, SQLite, XML, XSLT