Turners Auctions

Turners Auctions are New Zealand's leading auctioneers and Netbyte Internet has been their internet partner from day one.

Objectives

To provide online access to data made available from Turners legacy master database system.
Allow dealers access to dealer only auctions.
To develop a real-time interactive auctioning system that allows for users to watch auctions in real time over the internet and also participate in the bidding process through the same medium. This is still in a pilot phase that only provides the internet user with a live view of the auction; the bidding process still takes place via telephone.

Target Audience

Several key target groups including the general public and dealers, car auctions are the biggest percentage of the business.

Solution

Data replication managed through relatively simple means using comma separated text, basic ftp scripting and a data import routine with data validation.
Real-time auctions via the web using Java and the existing database. Java applet at Turners end for the auction clerk runs on palmtop pc (HP Jornada 720) running Windows CE and wireless LAN and communicates via the internet to Java servlets at the web server. These in turn display the continually updating information to another Java applet running in the users' browsers.
Photo processing done at server so all branches can upload raw photos to the site from digital cameras and the images on the web site will at least be consistent sizes. System makes thumbnail images and larger display images.
Smart ads populate the site for sellers to have an extra advertising option.

Results

Netbyte, through its nine year relationship with Turners, and two major builds, has helped Turners grow the site to handle in excess of 4 million page impressions per month. Netbyte is planning with Turners now the third major rebuild of the site, which will incorporate a platform change at both the web server end and Turners internal systems.

Technology

Java/JSP
Sybase ASE 12.5
Server-side and client-side JavaScript
HTML
Perl
ImageMagick

Environment

Solaris
Linux
Netscape Enterprise Web Server
Sybase ASE 12.5
Apache Web Server
J2SE 1.4.2

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