CS190 Project Requirements Proposal
Toby Muresianu (tmuresia)
1/31/06

1.Name
The Project is called "Facility Finder."

2.Background
The process of reserving rooms for events (or classes) at Brown is problematic because there is no way to find out which rooms meet your requirements without talking to the staff in charge of coordinating reservations-and even then there is no way to see the room short of actually visiting them.  Further, reservations are tracked in a very large binder which lists every room's availability for every day over several months, and finding an appropriate venue requires a trip to the office where the binder is housed during business hours followed by a slow process of finding an appropriate room.
Facilities Management has the data necessary to compile a database, but would like a streamlined way to do it to save time.

3.Proposed Solution
A program with a web-based front end providing access to a database of all the rooms on campus, which can be easily searched or browsed by checking off capacity ranges, desired location on campus, necessary features of the room (sink, projector, etc) and availability on a certain date/time.  The back end will facilitate construction of the database by allowing batch scanning of room photographs.
	Such a solution would work for Brown and could be extended to work for management of other facilities, such as private buildings or complexes.


GUI (to front end user)
_________________________________________
|			|		 |
|Room Options		|Photo of Current|
|			|    rooom	 |
|			|		 |
|			|		 |
|			|________________|
|scroll box of rooms	|		 |
|meeting above criteria	|booking info	 |
|			|		 |
|			|		 |
|			|		 |
------------------------------------------

GUI (to back end user)
_________________________
|			|
|Room info		|
|			| 
|			|	
|			|	
|			|
|list of photos uploaded|
|			|
|			|
|scan photo button	|
|			|
-------------------------

4.Project Components

A C++ program that interfaces between a scanner and an Oracle database, and allows attachment of batches of photographs to room information.  

Password Protected access to the database via Brown AuthID logins.

A web based front end for users that allows searching and browsing of rooms based on various criteria and availability, and submission of requests for room reservations.

An addition to the web based front end accesible by administrators allowing them to enter reservations.

5.Other requirements

Performance: uploading photos should take less than 10 seconds per photo after scan time.
uploading room information to database should take less than 10 seconds.
scanning for available rooms should take under 1 second per five rooms.
Performance should be acceptable on a reliable 56k dialup as well as broadband or t1.
When an administrator books one of the rooms, it should be reflected immediately.
program should make sure scans are at a reasonable resolution.

Reliability: program should not crash, and should indicate if scheduling information is unavailable.  Users should be able to access the interface through any modern web browser.  Multiple users should be able to access room information at the same time.  Administrators changing room information while users are viewing it should not cause crashes or other problems.

Facilities Managers should be able to update the database via a linux pc attached to a scanner.

Risky parts:

Scanning may be difficult and best handled outside of the scope of this project (e.g. simply provide a mechanism to upload .jpgs and leave scanning to other applications).

interface between the web and the program may be difficult.