TT282
Weeks One to Three

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subjects

Web Apps

TT280

TT281

TT282 Sciences

Computing

TT282 Desktop
Current students only.

Week One

The Role of the Server in Web Applications.

I will only be dipping into this course and its conferences from time to time this week, as I am busy revising M358. CMA 41 has already been made available - good news!


The discussion in the Teach conference this week centres around the following:

What is a web server and what are its characteristics?

What are the benefits of using a web server to deliver web pages, and what are the drawbacks of using a standard PC?

Is the content of the material a deciding factor and, if it is, then what are the differences in content that would induce one to adopt a particular solution?

Is there any situation where a simplistic PC solution would be appropriate and, if so, in what circumstances would that arise?

References for Week One:

Webopaedia  For definitions of terminology.

Storage Area Networks.

www.cisco.com  Load Balancing, Fault Tolerance.

Biometrics

RSA Security

Load Sharing with DNS.

Round Robin DNS

Week Two

Web Server Security and Vulnerabilities.

This week the following topics were open for discussion:

In what ways can the files on a web server be considered to be "vulnerable"?

Is there such a thing as a completely secure server?

When accessing or allowing access to a secure site, at which points are we relying purely on trust? Can you highlight the weaknesses that may exist (and suggest how to strengthen them)? (Think about your own experiences in using online applications here.)

To what extent do businesses balance security against simplifying the user experience?

References for Week Two:

SSL/TLS Strong Encryption.

SANS Top 20 (2004).

Trojans, viruses and worms.

IIS 5.0 Technical Overview.

PKI Tutorial.

More on PKI.

Week Three

Planning an Application.

You will be installing and testing out the wireframes application provided in this course, and developing a wireframe model for an estate agent application. You may or may not "take" to wireframes, depending on your previous experience with web designing. I didn't much care for them, but others liked them a lot. Each to their own! You do need to get to grips with them, however, as a wireframe model is required for the ECA.

This week the following topics were open for discussion:

For the discussion, we should aim to focus around the topic of planning a web application and communicating with the client.

If you are already involved in web development, or indeed software projects more generally, do you use wireframes? If so, what do you see as their benefits (or drawbacks)?

If you use other methods, what are they and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

If you have done this type of work before, you'll know that extracting information from the client can be one of the biggest bugbears in web or software development! It often feels as if they don't know what they want until you've built it and shown it to them (and then they know that what you've done isn't what they wanted. So another strand of discussion is communicating with the client more generally. I'm thinking here about interviewing techniques as well as methodologies like wireframes, process-flows, and storyboards. What works best for developing mutual understanding and streamlining the development process?



The first CMA

It covers the first three weeks of the course and to my surprise I found it the easiest one out of all the Web Apps CMAs I've done to date, and there have been some real stinkers, especially in TT281! It only took me a few hours of research. There were a couple of questions with options that I didn't think were completely sound, but on balance, it was OK.


Acknowledgements to Chris Bird (on the course team for TT282) for the discussion topics above.

Onwards to Weeks 4 to 6.

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