Design and Development of Web Based Systems - NYU Stern ...

Development of Web and Mobile Applications
The internet has become the most common way to distribute applications to end users, whether they are
web based applications, or mobile device based applications. Many startups are focused on mobile
devices, and the technology to develop mobile apps has progressed rapidly to the point where one does
not have to be a heavy duty programmer.
This course covers application development, from a web page to a web site, including mobile apps.
applications. Students will have access to a private cloud environment in which to experiment with their
ideas. Custom servers can be built for individual projects, depending on the needs of the project. Access
to the cloud will remain available for 8 months after the course has officially ended, for those groups
which are pursuing financing.
The course covers a wide variety of different internet development approaches and architectures. Issues
such as security, performance, scalability, and maintainability of the different approaches will be
examined. Web/mobile enabling of applications will be discussed, and in particular techniques for
developing web/mobile-enabled databases, which can be accessed from browsers running on PCs, or
mobile applications running on iphones, ipads, androids or similar devices.
The class will be highly interactive, and grades will be partially based on how much you participate and
contribute to the class. We will be covering a wide variety of technologies and I will rely on help from
the students in researching and presenting different technologies. Much of the 2 nd part of the term will be
spent working in groups for part of each class. In some cases, the class will be “flipped”. The students
will be expected to have read the materials ahead of class, and class time will be devoted to discussing
and experimenting.
There is a “cloud” computing environment available so that student groups can implement their ideas on
an appropriate platform. Supported platforms will include virtually anything that can run on the intel
architecture, including Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server (including IIS, SQL Server etc.), and
any flavors of linux. Students will have access to the Microsoft Developers Network software suite, as
well as virtually all open source software packages such as apache, python, php, java, mysql, hadoop, …
Students should have the ability to build a simple web page and be proficient with common Microsoft
office business applications, including ACCESS. There will be light programming used as examples of
how to build dynamic web pages and mobile apps. Out of class material and exercises will be used to
augment in class discussions. Short pass/fail quizzes will be used to make sure that students have
adequate background for different sections of the course. Many of the students will be MS/IS students
with significant technical skills, so the class will move fairly rapidly. If you score less than 10 on the
background quiz, you will have to catch up rapidly in order to stay with the class. The class will be
divided into teams, where each team has approximately equal technical skills.