[jboss-user] [JBoss Seam] data modeling 101

[José Moreira]

Hello,

this is not directly related to Seam but...
im starting to develop an application with Seam and i have the following 
business case:

the webapp will allow car shop dealers to manage their business.

- the application will have 2 roles, 'customer' and 'system admin'
- the customer can have multiple accounts for it's employees, each with 
the same permissions
- they will have an auto stock management composed of multiple vehicle 
types (cars, boats, motocycles)
- they will have file attachments, notes, tasks and events related to 
vehicles
- the admin role can supervise all information from the customers, 
manage their accounts and create adittional admin accounts
- the will be a CMS module (pages with blocks and sub-pages mostly) to 
on-line administer static site content like help, faq's, contacts, etc. 
Only admin's have permissions
- the website will be composed of 3 'logical' parts:
  * the public site which will allow customers to register, perhaps demo 
accounts will be available or should be considered. also it will have 
static information / pages like a normal website
  * the private part where the customers manage their business after login
  * the administration back office for system admins.

Of course i'm not expecting for you to architect my application :) but i 
have doubts about how to implement this in Seam.

This will  sound stupid but ... some doubts are:


- If the customers are groupped by it's "company", the information 
(vehicles, etc) should be attached to the company not the customer right?

- Are Stateless Java Beans appropriate for this case? I would very much 
like to delegate bussiness logic to classes outside the action listeners 
(if i'm saying correctly)

- How can i / should split the interface in the 3 parts: public, 
customer and administration?

for example the customer will have forms and lists with their vehicles, 
manage their employees accounts, etc.
the system admin will have to have access to the same information (plus 
administration) but in a different interface (for example to correct / 
verify some information) but using the same interface / login seems 
wrong unless another interface is presented if the user is an admin.
So the thing is about code (view/model) reuse between the customer 
interface and the admin interface.

Somehow it doesnt make sense for the admins and users to login from the 
same frontpage. Can i share the same Authentication but redirect to 
another part of the application afterwards

Also for example, if a customer adds a vehicle, the vehicle will be 
attached to the logged in user company, but if its an admin that 
inserts/edits a vehicle, it will have to be attached to a customer 
(perhaps previously selected). So the forms/components must be prepared 
for that right?

- The vehicles share common properties but will have to be sub classed 
because for example a car doesn't have a 'sail type'.
So i'll create a base Vehicle class and use inheritance to create a 
Car/Boat/Motocycle.
How to and what problems will i have adapting the forms to the subclasses?

kind regards,

-- 
Melhores cumprimentos,

José Moreira


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