Electronic Gadget

As the Internet grew into a major player on the global economic front, so did the number of investors who were interested in its development. So, you may wonder, how does the Internet continue to play a major role in communications, media and news? The key words are: Web Application Projects.

Web applications are business strategies and policies implemented on the Web through the use of User, Business and Data services. These tools are where the future lies. In this article, I’ll take you through the essential phases in the life cycle of a Web application project, explain what options you have, and help you formulate a plan for successful Web application endeavors of your own. First, though, let’s take a brief overview of Web applications.

Who Needs Web Applications and Why?

There are many entities that require applications for the Web-one example would be Business-to-Business interaction. Many companies in the world today demand to do business with each other over secure and private networks. This process is becoming increasingly popular with a lot of overseas companies who outsource projects to each other. From the simple process of transferring funds into a bank account, to deploying a large scale Web services network that updates pricing information globally, the adoption of a Web applications infrastructure is vital for many businesses.

The Web Application Model

The Web application model, like many software development models, is constructed upon 3 tiers: User Services, Business Services and Data Services. This model breaks an application into a network of consumers and suppliers of services.

The User Service tier creates a visual gateway for the consumer to interact with the application. This can range from basic HTML and DHTML to complex COM components and Java applets.

The user services then grab business logic and procedures from the Business Services. This tier can range from Web scripting in ASP/PHP/JSP to server side programming such as TCL, CORBA and PERL, that allows the user to perform complex actions through a Web interface.

The final tier is the Data Service layer. Data services store, retrieve and update information at a high level. Databases, file systems, and writeable media are all examples of Data storage and retrieval devices. For Web applications, however, databases are most practical. Databases allow developers to store, retrieve, add to, and update categorical information in a systematic and organized fashion.

Choosing the Right Project

Choosing the right types of projects to work on is an extremely important part of the Web application development plan.

Assessing your resources, technical skills, and publishing capabilities should be your first goal. Taking the 3 tiers into consideration, devise a list of all available resources that can be categorically assigned to each tier.

The next consideration should be the cost. Do you have a budget with which to complete this project? How much will it cost you to design, develop and deliver a complete project with a fair amount of success? These are questions that should be answered before you sign any deals or contracts.

Let’s look at an example. A company called ABC needs to develop a Web application that will display sales information created by different sales agents. The data is updated daily through a completely automated process from all 3 service tiers. The client tells you that this entire project must be done in ASP/SQL server and that you should host the application as well.

After assessing all your resources, you and your team come to a conclusion that the company is unable to do data backups on a daily basis. After further discussion, you realize that this is a very important part of the setup for your client, and you should not risk taking a chance with the project. It’s very likely that you will be more prepared next time around, when a similar project lands on your desk, so you decline the job and recommend someone else who has the capabilities to do it right now.

The Phases in a Web Application Project

The Web application development process has 4 phases:

Envisioning the nature and direction of the project

Devising the plan

Development

Testing, support and stability

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

1. Envisioning the nature and direction of the project

In this phase, the management and developers assigned to the project come together and establish the goals that the solution must achieve. This includes recognizing the limitations that are placed on the project, scheduling, and versioning of the application. By the end of this phase, there should be clear documentation on what the application will achieve.

2. Devising the plan

In this phase, you and your team must determine the “how’s” of the application.

What scripting language is most appropriate, which features must be included, and how long will it take? These are some of the questions that must be answered through this planning phase. The main tangents at this point are the project plan and functional specification. The project plan determines a timeframe of events and tasks, while the functional specification outlines in detail how the application will function and flow.

3. Development

Once the project plan and functional specification are ready, a baseline is set for the development work to begin. The programmer/s or Web developer/s begin coding, testing and publishing data. This phase establishes the data variables, entities and coding procedures that will be used throughout the remainder of the project. A milestone document is prepared by the development team, which is then handed to management for review.

4. Testing, support and stability

The stability phase of the application project mainly focuses on testing and the removal of bugs, discrepancies and network issues that may otherwise cause the application to fail. It is here that policies and procedures are established for a successful support system.

Web Application Development – A Guide to Success

Knowing Your Options and Using them Wisely

Ok, now that you have an understanding of the architecture and procedures behind Web application development, let’s look at what technical options you’ll need to consider for the development process itself.

Windows Web Servers

Microsoft has built a loyal customer base on one important factor – their easy-to-use software. Windows NT/2000/XP Web servers are very fast and easy to administer. The fact that the operating system is a Windows shell means that administrators and authors can easily allow the Web server to interact with other software and hardware applications to transmit and receive data over the Internet. Popular server side scripting languages used with Windows servers are ASP/ASP. net, Java Server Pages, and PHP.

UNIX/Linux Web Servers

UNIX has long been known for its reliability. It is a powerful and robust Web server and operating system. Unix is the server of choice for many large-scale Websites that need content management systems or receive an extremely high volume of traffic. Popular server side scripting languages for UNIX are Java Server Pages, PERL, PHP, and CORBA

Every scripting language has its pros and cons. As I’m not writing a book here, I’ll use the ASP model as my language of illustration. When working with Windows servers, there are several important parameters that the developer needs to throw into the equation, including security, scalability, speed and application design. So below I’m going to help you formulate a successful plan to accomplish all kinds of Web projects.

Planning for a Successful Web Development Project

In order to drastically minimize the risk of project failure, I’ve always approached my application development projects in the following sequence.

1. Identify business logic and entities

Start by gathering information on everything you have. If you are going to be working with databases, begin by enumerating how many entities will be used in the business logic. For example, if your program implements sales data, a sales ticket would be an entity.

Once you’ve identified all your entities, establish a clear guideline for their relationships. This can be done via presentations, flowcharts or even reports.

2. Create a functional specification and project plan

This part, in my opinion, is the most important part of the project. Functional specifications (or functional specs) are a map, or blueprint for how you want a particular Web application to look and work. The spec details what the finished product will do, user interaction, and its look and feel.

An advantage of writing a functional spec is that it streamlines the development process. It takes discrepancies and guesswork out of the programming process, because the level of detail that goes into the plan makes it possible to minimize the misunderstanding that’s usually associated with project mishaps. See examples of well written functional specs at RayComm.com.

Once the functional spec is finished, a project plan must be devised. A project plan is a timeline of tasks and events that will take place during the project. The project or program manager is normally the person who creates a project plan, and their primary focus is to detail task notes while being able to accommodate scheduling and resource information. You can download a sample Excel file for a project plan at Method123.com.

3. Bring the application model into play

As discussed earlier, the application model consists of 3 tiers – The User, Business and Data service tiers, each of which serves a substantial purpose.

Practically speaking, it’s always best to start with the data tier, because you’ve already identified your entities and understand their relationships. The data tier can be an SQL server database, a text file, or even the powerful and robust Oracle. Create tables, relationships, jobs, and procedures depending on what platform you have chosen. If the data is a warehouse (i.e. the data already exists and does not depend on real time interaction), then make sure that new and additional data can be added securely and in a scalable fashion.

A quick tip: using views in SQL server/Oracle can improve dramatically the productivity and performance of your application. They increase speed because they are “stored queries” that don’t have a physical existence.

The Business services tier, in my opinion, is the heart of the application. It involves the implementation of business logic into the scripting or programming language.

At this stage, make sure you’ve already set up your environment for testing and debugging. Always test on at least 2 instances in your application, after all, what may work perfectly for you, may not do so well on other platforms or machines. ASP, XML, PHP, JSP and CGI are some examples of server side scripting languages used at the business service level. Whichever language you choose, make sure that it’s capable of handling all the business logic presented in the functional specification.

The last is the user tier, which is absolutely vital for the interactive and strategic elements in the application. It provides the user with a visual gateway to the business service by placing images, icons, graphics and layout elements in strategic areas of interest, most commonly, based on management research. If you’ll be developing the user tier yourself, be sure to have studied your competition. The last thing you need is for your application to look exactly the same as someone else’s.

4. Develop a support scheme

Being able to support and stabilize your application is very important. Define a procedure call for cases of failure, mishaps or even downtime. Give your customers the ability to contact you in the case of an emergency relating to the program.

A good example of a support scheme is a ticket tracking system. This system allows users to file cases pertaining to a support request and the support team, then makes the case track able. This means that the request is identifiable by a unique code or number. Although ticket-tracking systems are normally used by hosting companies or large scale ASP’s (Application Service Providers), they still serve a valuable purpose in helping keep the application stable.

Over to You…

So there you have it – a framework from which you can begin to plan and develop your own successful Web applications.

Web applications will be around for a long time to come. As we move further on into the future, they will become less manual and more automated. This will eventually lead to new kinds of research, but for now, we can be happy with the fact that it is this that drives the Web.

Java is a general purpose programming language similar to C++ and was developed by Sun Microsystems to take advantage of the flourishing World Wide Web. Java programming language is well designed to develop effective web based applications and offers many advantages over other languages like C++. Technically, Java source code files (.java files) are compiled into bytecode (.class files). This complied java code is then executed by a Java interpreter. Since Java interpreters and Runtime environments called Java Virtual Machines exist for most operating systems (Windows OS, UNIX and Macintosh), you can run java based applications on almost every computer!

Portability

As explained Java is platform independent language which means you can write your application on one computer and can run that application on all computers. Java support is built into all major OS and popular web browsers, making it available on virtually every Internet-connected computer worldwide. Even electronic devices like mobile phones, set-top boxes and PDAs nowadays come with inbuilt Java applications.

Efficient Programming and Timeliness

Java is designed to remove common programming errors and comes with excellent set of APIs making it easier for programmers to write bug free code than in other languages. This in turn reduces development time and cost of any application.

Dynamic Characteristic of Programs

Java is object oriented language and the source code is organized in small units called classes. Programs written with Java code automatically call and load these classes whenever it is required to run the application. This means applications written in Java can dynamically expand their functionality by loading these classes anytime from the Java interpreter.

Security

Fortunately, Java programming and platform community is prompt enough in fixing security related bugs. Any new security bug on Java platform immediately catches eye of media because of the promises given by Java community for security!

Like any other programming language, Java is not spared of snags and hitches. Java is an interpreted language and hence programs written in Java language runs comparatively slow. But with availability of faster processors at competitive prices, this barrier should be only a temporary one.

In India, there are many Java web development companies having experienced team of Java programmers to develop quality Java applications with best feasible solutions. They are capable of developing highly interactive web solutions for your business with effective project management support. If you want expert programmers to create competitive Java web applications at affordable rates then India is the best destination. You just need to find right offshore development partner that best suit your business needs and budget. Outsourcing your Java web development projects can save you significant amount of time and money.

Action games are very popular in the gamer world. Many games are available free but the best most elite action games usually come with a price. Action games require special equipment in order to play which is another expense. Still action games are the most marketable game play offered today. There are game stations that either you can obtain by buying or renting at a video store and multiple action games that played on the game station for fun.

The internet offers many different websites where you can obtain access to these games. The different websites offer you the capability to download the game and play or buy the action game to play and even join their group and pay a monthly fee giving you unlimited access to many games. The game networks work at a very fast pace to create new action games on a daily basis.

You may go to a college today to earn a degree in game programming which is a very successful career choice. The career person of today fined that creating action games to be very profitable. The game of today becomes history by tomorrow that is why the constant need for new game ideas. Although many games created for the younger children that provide a form of teaching, many of the newly invented games are action games. The action game play today creates a wide range of gamers. Some of the games are military based but others have a completely different venue.

The adventures of certain characters created by Hollywood have also become outstanding action games for the avid gamer. Adventures in the jungle, adventures in the desserts, adventures in swamps, adventures anywhere in the world make good action games. There are action games, which carry a lot of violence, but many games are not blood and gore. Escaping from a temple from a tribe of natives avoiding rockslides, snakes, and fire for instance can take place without anyone harmed. Perhaps the player likes winter games where snowmobiles and sled dogs are used this is possible without creating violence.

The favorite for older adult young people seems to be where a lot of warfare is used. Judo moves, crashing, blowing-up, helicopter crashes, knife fights etc. that all show blood and extreme removal of body parts seem to be part of the reality world of gamers. This fascination with violence has become a major concern for parents, churches, law enforcements, and public. Unfortunately, the games seem to be the direct cause for violence in our society. The theory that violent games make for a violent society seems to be the voice of the nation but still big corporate invent these games constantly without fear of any reprisals.

The important thing to remember about action games is the age of the player. Parents are advised to carefully check the game and make sure that too much violence is not presented by the game before you buy the game. It is similar to the restrictions that parents need to put on some of the movies that are rated not for children so are some of the action games. The adult gamer can enjoy playing the action games created just for them but it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure these games do not end up in the hands of young impressionable children.