Software Engineering for Internet Applications - Student Community

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You might find that in making the data model precise with SQL tabledefinitions questions for the client arise. You realize that your earlierdiscussions with the client were too vague in some areas. This is anatural consequence of building a SQL data model. Pick up thephone and call your client to get clarifications. Email with severalalternative concrete scenarios. Get your client accustomed to fieldingquestions in a timely manner.Show the draft data model to your teaching assistant and discusswith other students before proceeding.6.8 How the Workflow Problem ArisesIt is easy to build and maintain a Web site if• one person is publisher, author, and programmer• the site comprises only a few pages• nobody cares whether these few pages are formattedconsistently• nobody cares about retrieving old versions or figuring outhow a version got to be the way that it isFortunate for companies and programmers that hope to make a niceliving from providing content management "solutions", the precedingconditions seldom obtain at better-financed Web sites. What is moretypical are the following conditions:• labor is divided among publishers, information designers,graphic designers, authors, and programmers• the site contains thousands of pages• pages must be consistent within sections and sections musthave a unifying theme• version control is criticalThe publisher decides what major content sections are available,when a content section goes live, and the relative prominence to beassigned each content section.The information designer decides what navigational links areavailable from every document on the page, how to present theavailable content sections, and what graphic design elements arerequired.by making minor changes, end up with a vastly improved applicationby the last day of the class.13.2 Clean up the CodeBefore beginning the planning process for the rest of the course it isworth going through what you've done already in order to (a) clean itup a bit, and (b) familiarize yourself with things that will needsignificant rewrites. Work through every page script, data model file,and documentation page and ask yourselves the following questions:• is every script signed and dated? does the header explainwhat the script does? is that description still accurate?• are all of the SQL queries within scripts readable andproperly indented (see http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/stylefor some tips)• do the data model files contain appropriate comments?• are the file and variable names consistent?• is the structure consistent with the standards that you setforth in the Software Modularity chapter exercises?• if you're using some sort of templating or code-behindsystem, are you using it on every page?• is the documentation all signed, dated, and appropriatelylinked?• is the documentation consistent with the standards that youset forth in the Software Modularity chapter exercises?Fix the small discrepancies and record the large ones for inclusion inyour rest-of-course implementation plan (see below).13.3 Clean up the User ExperienceWith multiple programmers working on a system it is easy for smallinconsistencies to creep into the designs of various pages. Come upwith a set of representative tasks that are important for users toaccomplish within your application and document these tasks at/doc/testing/representative-tasks. Work through the tasksas a team to see if indeed there are small things that should becleaned up in terms of what the user sees.At the same time look for larger problems. Ask yourself howconsistent task accomplishment within the application you've built iswith the page design and flow at popular public Internet applications,such as Amazon, eBay, and Google. Remember that it is unique104245
Chapter 13Planning ReduxA lot has changed since the the Planning chapter. You have a betterunderstanding of the challenge, which may have sparked newservice ideas in your mind. Your clients have had a chance to see aprototype of the ultimate service, which may have sparked new ideasin their minds. Your clients should have an increased respect for yourabilities and therefore an increased willingness to devote thought andattention to this project. Consider that most computer programmerssuffer from profound deficits in the following areas:244• thinking critically about what a computer application shoulddo• writing down a design• writing down an implementation plan• documenting important features or design decisions• clean modular design• exercising good judgement (e.g., don't try to build somethingcomplete and complex when you only have a week or two)• communicating project statusTo the extent that you've demonstrated that you're a cut abovesoftware developers with whom your clients have worked in the past,you'll find that their confidence in you has increased since thebeginning of the class.13.1 Why You Are Talking to the ClientRecall how much you learned in conducting the usability test in theDiscussion chapter. Computer science textbooks and RDBMSmanuals can teach you how to handle concurrency but onlyobservations of and interactions with users can teach you how tobuild a better user experience. Your client holds the keys to thekingdom: (1) content to attract people; (2) authority to launch theservice; (3) editorial power over existing Web sites that can link to thenew service; (4) email addresses and phone numbers of people whowould be likely to find the new service useful.If you can launch your online learning community before the end ofthe course you'll have an opportunity to learn from the first users and,The graphic designer contributes drawings, logos, and other artworkin service of the information designer's objectives. The graphicdesigner also produces mock-up templates (static HTML files) inwhich these artwork elements are used.The programmer builds production templates and computerprograms that reflect the instructions of publisher, informationdesigner, and graphic designer.Editors approve content and decide when specific pages go live.Editors assign relative prominence among pages within sections.In keeping with their relative financial compensation, we consider theneeds and contributions of authors second to last. Authors stufffragments of HTML, plain text, photographs, music, sound, into thedatabase. These authored entities will be viewed by users onlythrough the templates developed by the programmers.Below is an example workflow that we used to assign to students atMIT:Your "practice project" will be a content management system tosupport a guide to Boston, along the lines of the AOL City Guide athttp://home.digitalcity.com/boston/. You will need to produce adesign document and a prototype implementation. The prototypeimplementation should be able to support the following scenario:1. log in as publisher and visit /admin/content-sections/2. build a section called "movies" at /movies3. build a section called "dining" at /dining4. build a section called "news" at /news5. log out6. log in as information designer and visit /cm and specifynavigation. From anywhere in dining, readers should beable to get to movies. From movies, readers should beable to dining or news.7. log out8. log in as programmer and visit /cm9. make two templates for the movie section, one calledmovie_review and one called actor_profile; make onetemplate for the dining section called restaurant_review10. log out11. log in as author and visit /cm12. add two movie reviews and two actor profiles to the movies105
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SoftwareEngineering forInternetAppl
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end-users. We use every opportunity
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• availability of magnet content
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• we want to see if a student is
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you supply English-language queries
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What to do during lecturesWe try to
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332• spend a term learning how to
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has permission to perform each task
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UDDIUnixcustomer's credit card. If
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thousands of concurrent users. This
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OraclePerlnamed XYZ" without the pr
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LDAPLinuxbits per color, a vastly s
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FilterFirewallFlat-fileGIF318functi
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when there is an educational dimens
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system. The authors of the core pro
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Sign-OffsTry to schedule comprehens
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scheduling goals that both you and
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Client Tenure In Job (new, mid-term
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ReferencesEngagement ManagementSQL*
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Decision-makers often bring senior
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presentation to a panel of outsider
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300always been written by programme
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17.3 Professionalism in the Softwar
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In this example, we:194• ask the
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As in any XML document, every openi
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(http://www.voicegenie.com). These
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Chapter 10Voice (VoiceXML)questions
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9.15 MoreStandards information:•
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9.14 The FutureIn most countries th
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9.10 Exercise 7: Build a Pulse Page
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9.6 Keypad HyperlinksLet's look at
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text/xml,application/xml,applicatio
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Protocol (IP) routing, a standard H
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