Utilization of Internet Technologies

The intent of the capstone project was to demonstrate mastery of the interdisciplinary curriculum and involve the implementation of an innovative concept for the use of Internet technologies. Projects are evaluated on the basis of how successfully, in the context of a chosen problem of significant scale, they:

• Make an appropriate choice of Internet engineering technologies to deploy;
• Demonstrate a thorough knowledge of those technologies; and
• Apply those technologies to the problem at hand. Consideration is given to the scope and complexity of the deliverables.

The diagram below illustrates some of the technologies used and on which systems:

Internet Technologies Utilized

Deployment

The following Internet Technologies were chosen and integrated in order to deploy the iWander Virtual Wanderer Web Application and Database:

• The User Interface Component of the Virtual Wanderer Web Application was implemented as HTML forms and pages, dynamically generated by Perl CGI Scripts.
• The Perl CGI Scripts are invoked when the Apache Web Server software receives HTML requests from the user client browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers were used).
• The Virtual Wanderer Application Database was implemented as a MySQL Database, running on a Linux Server. MySQL software and the Perl DBI programming interface provide access and connection to the data.
• My student Linux Server system (carson-city.marlboro.edu) was made as secure by following the security guidelines discussed in all of the MSIE courses. (However, security was not a major concern for this application).
• An understanding of the Internet hardware and software connections, TCP/IP communications protocols, firewalls, routers, etc … provided by our Internet Technologies I & II classes, was applied during use of the development and deployment environments.

Development

The following technologies and tools were used during the development of the iWander Web Application:

• The SecureShell (ssh2) Terminal and File Transfer client will be used for connecting and moving files between development systems.
• CVS (the Concurrent Versions System) is setup on my Linux server (carson-city.marlboro.edu) and a project area were set up to control the multiple versions of code files that will be produced as part of the project. A Revision History Section was also part of each source and document file.
• A digital camera (HP PhotoSmart 315), with 32 MB memory stick, and ImageMate USB ScanDisk memory card reader will be used to capture and transfer Virtual Wanderer images into the development environment. Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Adode PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator were used for manipulation and processing of the .gif and .jpg files.
• Linux shell scripts, emacs editor and general Linux commands will utilized and explored during development, configuration, testing and deployment of the project environments. On the windows laptop(s), Ezpad HTML Editor was used for development of html data pages and presentation pages. Microsoft Word and Visio were used for documentation and presentation development.

Testing:

• Test was informal and pretty much confined to unit testing, as would normally be done by developers in a development (white-box testing) environment.
• Additional testing (black-box, functional and performance testing) should be performed.