Help in Java Website.

Hello all, I'm Max and I'm new to this forum and also new to java. Lately I've been given an assignment to create an online video shop website. I've done the skeletons and so on, now I'm trying to enhance the website for better marks. So if your free, please kindly help! Thank you.

Currently, I have the sign up/login page done, as well as the add/remove movies. shopping cart(modify/remove quantity), also the admin page which allows to edit
the price and the stock available.

I'm currently using NetBeans IDE 6.7.1, with personal glassfish v3 Prelude. I have the database set up too. Those SQL stuff (SELECT WHERE etc)

So basically, I have several stuffs that I want to implement into the website.

1) How do I check if if a new username created, if the name has already exist in the database. I think it is to use the select count query but I'm not really sure how and where to use it.

2) I would like to make implement a admin/customer account. Basically for the customer account, everything will be standard except that you have no access to the admin.jsp. For the admin account, it will be a different page which will have a link going to the admin page as well as everything else. Best is when I log in, there will be a label saying "Welcome (USERNAME)", Account Type : Administrator / Customer. I have a few ideas about this basically maybe using a radio button in the sign up page either selecting Customer or Administrator. After, making a new database specifically for each account type. But I'm not sure how I could do this. Some guide would be nice.

3) Search Engine. To search for a specific movie title or specific group/genre of movie titles

4) Tracking customer's purchasing histories and preference.

This is what I currently have in mind now. Most probably more in time to come. If any of you are free, maybe you could add me on MSN : [email removed by moderator] or reply to this thread to help. Thanks in advance all!

Please don't solicit off-forum communication, as that defeats the very purpose of a forum, which is to share problems and their possible solutions.

db

1. Just SELECT for the database using the username in the WHERE clause. Write a method that simply does that and returns true or false - public boolean userExists(String username). Of course you could simply try and create the user using that name and the database should throw an exception (duplicate key) assuming you have the username down as a primary key, or at least marked as UNIQUE if you are using an id as the primary key.

2. Just have a flag on the account which says whether it is an admin account or not. Do not allow the creation of admin accounts through the normal front end (assuming it is customer facing). Only allow another admin account to add an admin account, that way Joe Bloggs should not be able to add an admin account. This does mean you need a bootstrap admin account. The other option is to simply not allow the creation of admin accounts through that site (which is more normal). They would be created using some internal app.

3. This would involve having a decent database model, which you;re not likely to get anyone here suggesting, and lots of SQL querying.

4. Database again.