ere are some screen shots of the last Web application I developed. Click on any thumbnail image to see a larger image in its own window. he purpose of this application was to allow insurance brokers to connect to an insurance company's Web site and issue quotes on-line. The broker would print the quote and fax it to the prospect.
	racle 8i under the latest Red Hat distribution of Linux and the Apache Web server, all on a single Compaq box, supported the application. I developed the ERD for the supporting database as shown to the left. Since I used Oracle's CASE tool, generating the DDL and building the database went quickly.
	ecurity was handled by encrypted logon IDs and passwords, supported in the database design and the CGI programming, which I wrote in Perl 5.0.
	fter logging in, the user first sees his or her in-box, with its list of the prospects currently in processing. These can be filtered by status, by clicking on a radio button; other functions are accomplished by selecting a prospect from the list and then clicking on one of the action buttons below.
	ontinuing work on a prospect and entering a new one are similar tasks. In both cases, the user goes through the Four Easy Steps. Here is the first step, as it would appear for a new prospect. In this step, the broker finds out if the prospect qualifies for an on-line quote.
	ricing the quote is the heart of the application. There is a lot of application logic behind this screen. However, from the broker's point of view, it is pretty easy to use. The policy inception controls what rates apply (they are typically filed annually) and the list of rates can be sorted on the fly either by job class code or class description (I used the Shell sort algorithm, hand-coded in JavaScript 1.1). The broker chooses an appropriate rate and enters the prospect's payroll amount for that rate, for example, $50,000 for clerical employees. The JavaScript logic inside the Web page does all the rest. Once the rate and payroll combination have been added to the price, they appear in the second list box (which is blank in the example to the left) while the cumulative pricing calculation appears in the rest of the page, below. In case of error, the user can remove a rate and payroll combination from the pricing calculation.
	he third step, after the prospect has agreed to the price, is for the broker to fill in the prospect details that will appear on the printed quote.
	ourth and last, the broker enters information for endorsements. Clicking on "Print and Exit" at the bottom of the fourth page will print a clean copy of the quote to be faxed to the prospect.