The requirements for ramforless.com are pretty simple. Luckily, you decided to re-key the orders into the old-school mainframe system, which already calculated tax, added shipping charges, and checked credit cards. To keep your customers happy, however, you want to let them know exactly how much will be charged to their card. That means figuring out how to get the tax and shipping totals out of the creaky old mainframe and display them in real-time on the Web.

    To make things more confusing, even though the Computer Chip Corporation is headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company has manufacturing facilities in California, New York, and Iowa, which is where the chips are stored and shipped from. Terry, the tax attorney, says you'll have to collect and pay taxes on any orders shipped to those states, regardless of where you're shipping from.

    On the shipping and handling end of things, Frank in fulfillment wants to charge handling fees in addition to shipping costs. So he recommends that you keep things nice and simple with a flat-fee charge on orders with a certain number of items that need to be packed and shipped. Extra charges would be added for express shipping:

    Amy in accounting says that she can handle debiting the credit cards through her existing system, but you still need to find a way to make sure the credit card numbers coming in are secure and authentic.

    So you have a variety of business rules to implement. Taxes need to be automated, shipping is totally custom-built, and credit cards only need to be partially processed. And you need to find a way to bring it all together. Most importantly, you need to do it on a budget.