2. Inventory Tracker
An inventory tracker helps a business monitor products, stock counts, reorder levels, suppliers, and adjustment history.
Why employers care
Employers care because inventory apps show database design, validation, reporting, and business rules that matter in real operations.
Main build outline
- Create product, category, supplier, location, and stock adjustment records.
- Add screens for product lookup, low-stock alerts, receiving stock, and reducing stock.
- Validate that stock adjustments cannot create impossible counts.
- Add filters for category, supplier, location, low stock, and inactive products.
- Add a report for low-stock items and recent stock movement.
Modern .NET stack
- Blazor Server or ASP.NET Core MVC/Razor Pages for the web UI.
- C# services for validation, workflow rules, and business logic.
- Entity Framework Core with SQL Server locally, then SmarterASP SQL Server or Azure SQL.
- SmarterASP for practical hosting, with Azure App Service or AWS as cloud stretch paths.
- Optional GitHub Actions, Docker, dashboard reporting, and small AI helper features.
Portfolio proof
- README with the business problem, screenshots, setup steps, and tech stack.
- Database schema or diagram that explains the main tables and relationships.
- Screenshots of list, detail, create/edit, search, filtering, and status workflows.
- Small commit history showing steady feature work and clean fixes.
- Secret-safety note confirming connection strings and API keys are not committed.