HighTech Bookstore — Order Management System

A 4-tier desktop application built in C# (.NET WinForms + SQL Server) for managing a bookstore's orders, inventory, employees, and customers. Built solo as a third-semester academic project focused on client-side application design against a relational database.

Note: This was built as a learning project for a database-driven application development course. Database connection strings in App.config have been redacted — replace YOUR_SERVER, YOUR_USERNAME, and YOUR_PASSWORD with your own SQL Server instance details to run it locally.

Architecture

The solution follows a 4-tier architecture, separating concerns across independent layers:

GUI/        → Presentation layer (WinForms — login, order management, book/author/publisher/category screens)
BLL/         → Business logic layer (domain rules for Employees, Job Positions, Status, Users)
DAL/         → Data access layer (raw ADO.NET queries, stored procedure calls)
Entity/      → Entity Framework (ORM) data models, generated from the SQL Server schema
VALIDATOR/   → Centralized input validation (regex-based)

Key Features

• Role-based access control — different login roles (MIS Manager, Sales Manager, Inventory Controller, Order Clerk) see different application tabs based on their job position
• Database-backed authentication — login credentials are validated against real Employees and UsersAccount tables, not hardcoded
• Hybrid data access — uses both raw ADO.NET with parameterized queries (to prevent SQL injection) and Entity Framework (ORM) for different parts of the application
• Stored procedures — user and employee create/update/delete operations are handled via SQL Server stored procedures (SP_SaveUser, SP_UpdateUser, SP_DeleteUser, SP_SaveEmployee, SP_UpdateEmployee, SP_DeleteEmployee)
• Full CRUD across multiple business entities — Books, Authors, Publishers, Categories, Customers, Employees, and Orders
• Regex-based input validation centralized in a dedicated validator class

Database Schema

Database_Schema.sql contains the full SQL Server schema: table definitions, primary/foreign key constraints, and stored procedures for the BooksDB database. Key tables:

Table	Purpose
Books, Authors, AuthorsBooks	Book catalog and author relationships
Categories, Publishers	Book classification and publisher info
Customers	Customer records
Employees, JobPositions, Status	Staff management and role assignment
Orders, OrderDetails	Order processing
UsersAccount	Login credentials linked to employees

Tech Stack

• C# / .NET Framework
• Windows Forms (WinForms)
• SQL Server (T-SQL)
• ADO.NET (SqlConnection, parameterized SqlCommand)
• Entity Framework 6 (Database-First / ORM)

How to Run

1. Restore the database: run Database_Schema.sql against a SQL Server instance to create the BooksDB database, tables, and stored procedures
2. Open Final_Project.sln in Visual Studio
3. Update the connection strings in Final_Project/App.config with your SQL Server instance details
4. Build and run the solution
5. Log in with one of the test accounts (see ReadMe.txt for sample credentials and roles)

Author

Built solo by Riyaz Badhan as a third-semester academic project.