The document describes the design of an online auction system for a university campus network using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). It presents UML diagrams including use case diagrams, activity diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, and deployment diagrams to model the key functions and interactions of the system. These include user management, goods management, auction management, and search/inquiry functions to allow students to buy and sell items online through the campus network.

1. Research and Design of Online Auction System Based on the Campus
Network Using UML
Chuancheng Ren
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Dezhou University, Dezhou, China
E-mail:rench@dzu.edu.cn
Abstract
As campus network and shopping online have
grown up, the development of online auction system
becomes integrity. The online auction system based on
the campus network provides a trading platform for
university students, and does not deal with the trading
process. So the online auction system must increase its
quality of service to attract students. In this paper, we
present a scheme for the online auction system using
the unified modeling language (UML) technique. We
adopt the two steps to design the scheme, and the
design scheme of the system is made up of use case
diagrams, activity diagrams, class diagrams, sequence
diagrams, deployment diagrams. In addition, the
scheme can provide certain reference values for
constructing the campus electronic commerce and
realizing the digital campus.
1. Introduction
It is an important construction content of digital
campus to build and manage campus network in the
newly-built local undergraduate university of China at
present. The scale, network performance, application
level and universal degree of campus network have
already become one of the important marks that
measure the factors of the digital campus. The campus
network is an interconnected system that mainly bases
on network servers, computers, network equipments
and network software. The campus network not only
offers a network platform for information exchange
and resource sharing [1], but also provides a necessary
condition for the electronic commerce application in
the campus. So, there is a hardware and software
environment for design and application of a new online
auction system based on the campus network.
The online auction system based on the campus
network is a type of customers to customer (C2C)
business model that facilitates interaction among
university students. C2C business model provides
individuals with a place to converse, exchange and
interact with other people [2]. Nowadays, the online
auction system especially develops rapidly and most
students depend on it day by day. The reasons why
students like to use the online auction system more
than traditional auction are discussed in [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
Up to now, the campus network is also dedicated to
play the role of auctioneer to supply a platform for
trading among buyers and sellers. This auctioneer
attempts to attract many potential students to
participate in the online auction system.
In this paper, we propose to use the UML technique
to analyze and design the online auction system based
on the campus network. This paper is organized as
follows. In the following section we expound the
overview of the online auction system. This is
followed with a section introducing the analytical
method of this system, including the characteristics of
object oriented analysis and design, the advantage of
UML, the overall process of the system using UML
technique. Next, we present the design scheme of this
system in detail, mainly including use case diagrams,
activity diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams
and component diagrams [8]. And, finally, conclusions
are presented.
2. Overview of the system
The online auction system based on the campus
network is a platform for exchange the goods
information among students in the local undergraduate
university. Particularly, it offers the trade platform to
buyers and sellers together with the campus network.
The buyers like to do the trading on the online auction
system, because the system brings out the advantages,
for example, on the one hand the system employs
computer technology to accelerate results of bidding
activities in force and economize human resources, on
this side, it does not restrict the number of students
who want to participate in; on the other hand the
system offers a large amount of goods information, and

2. makes students firmly believe that they can buy the
cheap goods through the online auction system [9].
The system mainly includes the functions that are
divided into user management, goods management,
auction management, inquiry management, etc. The
details are as followed:
• User management: System users are divided
into registered users and anonymous users. Different
users have different systematic authorities. The
registered users participate in bidding, release goods
information and so on, but the anonymous users only
browse the goods message.
• Goods management: The registered users such
as the sellers can upload their goods information to the
system. Once the information is uploaded successfully,
the goods enter the state of auction business. The
system reads automatically the goods information from
the database, and displays it on the web page that can
be browsed by users.
• Auction management: The registered users
browse the goods information, and the registered users
such as the bidders bid for the goods that they are
interested in. If it is successful to auction, the seller’s
contact information is displayed to the bidder.
• Inquiry management: The users can search for
the goods according to the classification of the goods in
the system.
3. Summary of the UML modeling
Currently we often develop the management
information system mainly using object-oriented
analysis and design method. As UML is a mature
object-oriented modeling language that includes a
graphical notation used to create an abstract model of a
system, it has been widely used in the analysis and
design of the information system [8, 10, 11, 12]. The
UML can define behavior diagrams that include the
use case diagram and activity diagrams, structure
diagrams that include the class diagram and component
diagram, and interaction diagrams that include the
sequence diagram. So we select the online auction
system based on the campus network as main research
object, and introduce the process of applying the UML
technology to describe the functions and business
process of the system in detail.
We describe all kinds of objects with graphical
symbols using the UML technology in the online
auction system, and the UML technology is applied to
the overall process of the system requirement
description, system summary design and detail design.
The UML modeling process of the system adopts the
use case as the driving and uses iteration. The detailed
steps as follows:
Step 1: recognize and ensure use cases and actors of
the online auction system. Firstly, we carry out the
requirement survey to the original system, and then
recognize use cases and actors of the system; secondly,
we analyze the relationship among the actors and use
cases as well as the relationship between the use case
and actors; finally we describe the system’s function
models with the use case diagram.
Step 2: build the static model and dynamic model of
the online auction system. Adopting the use case as the
driving, we use the activity diagram to indicate the
workflow of the specific use case internal and among
the use cases, next, we abstract various kinds objects
and their attributes and operations from the function
models, and draw the relationship among various sorts
of classes by the way of using class diagram; finally
we describe the conduct characteristics expressed by
the use case of those classes in the given circumstances
with sequence diagram and describe the system
component model with component diagram.
4. The online auction system model
4.1. Use case diagram of the system
A use case diagram is a type of behavioral diagram
defined by the UML and created from a Use-case
analysis. Its purpose is to present a graphical overview
of the functionality provided by a system in terms of
actors, use cases, and any dependencies between those
use cases [13]. This system mainly includes the actors
such as the system administrator, the registered users
and the anonymous users. The system administrator is
a network administrator of the university. The
administrator is not only responsible for identifying
and authenticating the bidders, but also for issuing the
bidding rights and maintaining the bidding order
during the auction. The anonymous users are not login
users. They only browse the goods information. The
registered users who are enrolled students are divided
into the buyers and the sellers. The buyers can search
for the needed goods, and participate in online auction
and comment on the online goods. The sellers can
accomplish operation procedure as following: they can
release and revise the goods information; secondly
they choose the types of auction; finally they configure
the type of payment and the term of delivery.
The use cases of the online auction system mainly
include register case, add goods case, comment case,
search case, auction case, transact case, settle case, etc.
• Register case: a user becomes a registered user
after registering; the registered user can perfect the
personal information such as photos, sex, ID card
number, telephone number, E-mail, address, etc. After

3. setting up a table of the registered user information, the
table can provide basic data for the auction in the later.
• Add goods case: The sellers can add the goods
information that includes the name, price, descriptions
and so on.
• Comment case: This case finishes commenting
the trust of the sellers.
• Search case: The buyers hope to inquire about
the goods that they are interested in. This case offers the
functions, for instance, searching for the goods
according to the classification or name.
Figure 1. The use case diagram.
Figure 1 is the use case diagram of the online
auction system. This use case diagram mainly
describes the functions of the online auction system.
We introduce the “auction case” specification
document that should cover the following areas:
Actors: the registered user(the bidder, the seller)。
Type: primary, fundamental.
Pre-conditions: The bidders must be registered
users. The activity of auction must be within the
certain range of time that each type of auction has its
specific time required for preparing and conducting the
auction.
Basic Flow: The system displays the types of
auction; the bidders choose one type of auction; the
system retrieves all the goods information to satisfy
this type of auction; the bidders choose the goods,
participate in auctioning and bidding price; when the
auction is over, the system would notify the successful
bidder about the bid information.
Post-conditions: if carrying out this use case, the
bidders can comment on the transaction.
4.2. Activity diagram of the system
Although the use case diagram describes all kinds
of functions offered by the system, the workflow could
be described with characters in each use case. It is hard
to read them under the condition of the workflow
having the complicated logical control, while the UML
provides the activity diagram to describe the use case
internal work process or the interaction process among
the use cases [12, 14]. An activity diagram could
intuitively and clearly illustrate what kinds of
continued activity are needed to accomplish the
function requirement that the use case expressed.
Figure 2. The auction activity diagram.
Figure 2 depicts an activity diagram for the auction
use case. The control nodes at the beginning and end of
the flow in Figure 2 are initial and final nodes
respectively. When the auction activity is invoked, the
control token flows from the initial node to the login
action. The bidders flow from the system to the
invocation action for the goods information, which
must wait for the sellers to provide the goods
information. When the goods information is retrieved,
the bidders can choose the types of auction (English
auction, Dutch auction, Sealed first-price auction [15])
and begin to call out a bid. For instance, when the
bidders select the type of English auction, one of them
may announce price, other bidders may call out their
bids themselves (or have a proxy call out a bid on their
behalf), or bids may be submitted electronically with

4. the highest current bid publicly displayed. The auction
is over when no participant is willing to bid further, at
which point the highest bidders pay their bid [5]. When
the auction is over, a control is passed to the final node
and the activity terminates.
4.3. Class diagram of the system
A class diagram describes the types of objects in the
system and the various kinds of static relationships that
exist among them [8]. It describes all kinds of the
classes in the system and the relationship model of
association, generalization and aggregation etc. In the
process of system analysis, class diagram not only
helps the analysts understand the relationship among
the system function objects further, but also enables
them make communication with users with the terms
used in domain. Generally, a system includes a certain
amount of class diagrams, and a class could be added
into other class diagrams. In the online auction system,
we mainly divide the classes into common class,
interface class, control class and entity class. Figure 3
shows the entities of the online auction system, such as
administrator, user, goods information, goods, etc.
Figure 3. The entity class diagram.
4.4. Sequence diagram of the system
A sequence diagram is one of the UML dynamic
models, and it underlines the time priority of the
information sending among objects, and describes the
interaction scene among the objects at some time that
the system was executed. We combine the system flow
defined by the use cases and the classes involved in the
use cases together to express the different flows in the
online auction system. As an example, we introduce
the auction flow using a sequence diagram. Figure 4
presents a portion of the basic auction flow for the
auction use case, and it shows how objects interact
during the auction situation. The boxes across the top
of the diagram represent classifiers or their instances,
such as the bidder, the login screen, searching the
goods screen, auction screen, and transaction screen.
The sequences of step that are carried out in the
auction flow are:
• A bidder who is a registered user invokes the
login functionality.
• The login functionality of the system invokes
the searching the goods functionality.
• After the goods information is given, the
auction functionality of the bidder call out a bid.
• Finally, the bidder invokes the transaction
screen to display the seller’s contact information.
Figure 4. The auction sequence diagram.
Figure 5. The deployment diagram.
4.5. Deployment diagram of the system
A deployment diagram depicts the deployable units
of the system, that is, applications, components, data
stores, processes, and devices that make up the system.

5. Figure 5 displays a deployment diagram for the online
auction system. The diagram presents a division of the
system into three types of units: the online auction
system main server which uses software components, a
SQL Server 2000 server which contains the auction
system database, and a Web server which
communicates via the TCP/IP over the connection to
the software on the application server.
5. Conclusions
The analysis and design discussed in this paper are
an introduction to methods and solutions for modeling
the online auction system based on the campus
network with UML. We present a scheme for the
online auction system. This scheme mainly includes
use case diagram, activity diagram, class diagram,
sequence diagram and deployment diagram. The goal
of this paper is to present the scheme to design and
integrate modeling the online auction system, such that
the diagrams of detail and abstraction are appropriate
for designers, developers, implementers, and architects
of this application.
Further, an auction is a market institution with an
explicit set of rules determining resource allocation
and prices on the basis of bids from market participants
[15]. The online auction system as one of very
successful electronic commerce models can provide
service with the trade of the goods among university
students in the local undergraduate university, and
solve daily some problems helping their study and life.
So it can make the network marketing and online
shopping come into the daily life of university
students.
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