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informed decision on the type of menu that should be used in this application. If the
wrong type of menu structure was used the users may not have felt as comfortable using
the application and the project could have been a failure. Of all comments made about
the application, there were never any negative comments by the users about the menu
system.
It was important in this project to perform backend database processing to aide in
the application’s speed and to perform certain steps of the business logic of the
application. This application allowed the author to expand his knowledge of PL/SQL
through the need of stored procedures and functions. Implementing this code as inline
ColdFusion code would have been more difficult. During this project this author was
also able to learn how to retrieve XML data from the Internet, parse that data with Oracle
and insert the data into the appropriate tables.
Probably the most important lesson learned throughout this project was about
perseverance. Often times a situation was encountered where this author did not know
how to proceed any further, however, by taking a step back and revisiting the problem a
solution would manifest itself. Perseverance also played a part due to the fact that this
author had a timeline to follow in terms of developing the application, and while at times
it was difficult to work on the application it needed to be done. A specific instance of
when perseverance played a part in the project was when ARC added the requirement of
specific users being able to upload the leads via an XML file. This was something that
this author had never done before and really had no idea where to begin. Through the
examination of numerous code samples and by searching the Internet, the answer on how
to programmatically do this with ColdFusion and Oracle was found.