Something very shocking and mind-bottling just hit me in the face (now that I have a really cool GUI that can search, add, and delete records)... I just realized that there is NO requirement in my assignment to add or delete records from within the GUI. So all of the business logic sits on the server, since I have already written the code to implement the required interface, but I never actually have to do anything with it? Seriously? Here's the client requirements:
* It must be composed exclusively with components from the Java Foundation Classes (Swing components).
* It must allow the user to search the data for all records, or for records where the name and/or location fields exactly match values specified by the user.
* It must present search results in a JTable.
* It must allow the user to book a selected record, updating the database file accordingly.
Which brings me to my second question... I have never understood how or what I'm supposed to do with the "owner" field of my database. The provided database has all owner fields blank. There is a note after the description of the field:
Note that for this application, you should assume that customers and CSRs know their customer ids. The system you are writing does not interact with these numbers, rather it simply records them. If this field is all blanks, the record is available for sale.
It says that my system does not interact with these numbers... but it simply records them. So what is it that gets recorded here? Do I just produce a random 8 digit number each time a client GUI is started? And does this field get displayed in the JTable? Or perhaps simply a "booked" flag?