Elevator Pitch 2

Hello everybody,

This is Chi Man. I have completed second assignment in last month. I worked as a Developer in workshops 5 – 8.

As a developer, I started creating small Ruby on Rails exercises to learn basic Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern , then enhanced my knowledge by the help of RailsSpace e-book, in order to develop Online Taxi Booking System. I have continued with migration issues and tried to discuss and find out deployment configuration.

Study Guide exercises helped me to gain brief knowledge about internet security, concurrency and transactions, distributed systems design and case studies for investigation.

Finally, I have completed my evaluation reports according to my experiences during workshops.

Thank you

Exercise 16: System integration

The final topic is for group reflective study using the wiki tool in Interact and a way for you to add a final reflective comment on systems integration and make your closing remarks to your Developer’s blog.

1. Choose ONE of the four ways to manage and develop integrated systems as listed below;

I choose Federated databases to manage and develop integrate system.
These are multi-tiered systems for load balancing and improving performance across a set of cooperative database servers by horizontally partitioning tables. Member servers can be at separate business sites and are configured to cooperate in processing database SQL requests, similar to clustered systems. Most large database vendors all have database products for implementing a federated system. Consider a comparison of federated vs fault tolerant clustered architectures as used by MySQL database products.

2. Summarise your understanding and describe its relevance (250 words max) in either your study at university or in your work environment;

McLeod and Heimbigner (1985) states a Federated Database Architecture, as one which define the architecture and interconnect databases that minimize central authority yet support partial sharing and coordination among database systems.

Federated architectures differ based on levels of integration with the component database systems and the extent of services offered by the federation. It can be categorized as loosely or tightly coupled systems.

Fault-tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. Fault-tolerance is particularly sought-after in high-availability.

The basic characteristics of fault tolerance require:
• No single point of repair
• Fault isolation to the failing component
• Fault containment to prevent propagation of the failure
• Availability of reversion modes

MySQL Cluster is a high availability database which leverages a shared-nothing data storage architecture. The system consists of multiple nodes which can be distributed across hosts to ensure continuous availability in the event of a data node, hardware or network failure. With this distributed architecture, where dependencies have been minimized, applications continue to run and data remains consistent, even if any one of the Data, Application, or Management Nodes fail.

3. Edit TWO similar versions (include bibliography) of that summary to CSU Interact:

a. post version A as a wiki page contribution;
Here is my version A studies summary


b. add version B as a final entry to close your developer’s blog.
Here is my version B studies summary

Reference:
Heimbigner, D. and McLeod, D. (1985). A Federated architecture for information management. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Volume 3, Issue 3. pp. 253–278.

MySQL 2010, How to Use FEDERATED Tables, viewed 19 May 2010, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/federated-use.html

MySQL 2010, MySQL Cluster Architecture, viewed 19 May 2010, http://mysql.com/products/database/cluster/architecture.html

Wikipedia 2010, Federated database system, last modified 29 December 2009, viewed 19 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_database_system

System integration: Federated databases

McLeod and Heimbigner (1985) states a Federated Database Architecture, as one which define the architecture and interconnect databases that minimize central authority yet support partial sharing and coordination among database systems.

Federated architectures differ based on levels of integration with the component database systems and the extent of services offered by the federation. It can be categorized as loosely or tightly coupled systems.

Fault-tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. Fault-tolerance is particularly sought-after in high-availability.

The basic characteristics of fault tolerance require:
• No single point of repair
• Fault isolation to the failing component
• Fault containment to prevent propagation of the failure
• Availability of reversion modes

MySQL Cluster is a high availability database which leverages a shared-nothing data storage architecture. The system consists of multiple nodes which can be distributed across hosts to ensure continuous availability in the event of a data node, hardware or network failure. With this distributed architecture, where dependencies have been minimized, applications continue to run and data remains consistent, even if any one of the Data, Application, or Management Nodes fail.

Reference:
Heimbigner, D. and McLeod, D. (1985). A Federated architecture for information management. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Volume 3, Issue 3. pp. 253–278.

MySQL 2010, How to Use FEDERATED Tables, viewed 19 May 2010, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/federated-use.html

MySQL 2010, MySQL Cluster Architecture, viewed 20 May 2010, http://mysql.com/products/database/cluster/architecture.html

Wikipedia 2010, Federated database system, last modified 29 December 2009, viewed 19 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_database_system

Exercise 15: M-commerce: Innovation and mobile devices

1. What is meant by a location based service? Explain using the Web applications found on a late model mobile device.

Wikipedia (2010) states that location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device. LBS services can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, work, personal life, etc. LBS services include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS services include parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location.

Workshop 8: Ruby on Rails Workshops Report and Evaluation

Workshop 8: Ruby on Rails Workshops Report and Evaluation

I consider the 3 strengths to be:
• we can study Ruby on Rails via step by step and clear guiding workshops is an effective learning method.
• we can learn Model–View–Controller (MVC) from workshops and describe how to use MVC in Ruby on Rails development environment.
• Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework that has database, application server, and programming environment.

I consider the 3 weaknesses to be:
• there was some syntaxes issue in the workshop’s program.
• there was some dead link in workshop provided tutorial.
• there was not enough relationship between RED team (Developer) and BLUE team (IT Infrastructure Manager).

The most difficult aspects were:
• to setup the Ruby on Rails version compatibility.
• to understand the MVC architecture in Ruby on Rails.

Improvements I would make include:
• double check the tutorial link and source code whether is workable
• descuss and analyse the Mobile Web service framework technologies with Ruby on Rails

I have an experience on using Microsoft .Net, SQL Server and IIS to do the online booking system. It is effective and good to study a new technology. I suggest to use Netbean IDE (http://netbeans.org) for Ruby on Rails development, because it can verify the code syntax and user friendly. The ASP.NET MVC Framework should be another choice for this subject.

As I work in Developer’s team and the communication and collaboration were important during the workshops.

I want to thank all my collegues and thanks Jonathan to introduce me with Ruby on Rails.

Exercise 14: Searching mechanisms, Virtual worlds and Cyberagents (2/2)

4. Computing ethics and bot programming case study: rocky

a. Get an account username and password form the lecturer to LC_MOO at http://ispg.csu.edu.au:7680 and login to the Welcome Lobby.

I use the account named “train8″ and password as “train8″ for logging in to the Welcome Lobby .

b. Hold a 5-minute discussion with Rocky on special topic. Commands and chat are entered in command box (bottom-left of screen in Figure 11) : act rocky (start bot) hush rocky (stop bot)


Figure 11: LC_MOO screen layout with the Rocky bot object.

Here is my discussion with Rocky. It’s very interesting!


c. Rocky is an ELIZA-like bot. Report your findings.
Rocky is an ELIZA-like bot. Rocky provided a corresponding response of a pre-defined instruction. You also can create an instruction by LC_MOO command.

Exercise 14: Searching mechanisms, Virtual worlds and Cyberagents (1/2)

1. What is a spider? What does it do?

Wikipedia(2010) states that a spider is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms or Web spider, Web robot. This process is called Web crawling or spidering. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a Web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses

Workshop 7: End of the Line: production site migration and maintenance

Workshop 7: End of the Line: production site migration and maintenance

Exercise 13: Shopping cart specifications

1. Develop the class diagram for the following shopping cart specifications:

A shoppingCart object is associated with only one creditCard and customer and to items in itemToBuy object. Persistent customer information such as name, billing address, delivery address, e-mail address and credit rating is stored in the customer object. The credit card object is associated with a frequentShopper discount object, if the credit rating for the customer is good. The customer can make or cancel orders as well as add and delete items to the shopping cart product. The credit card object contains the secure method for checking that the charge is authentic.

Here is my class diagram:

Here are common multiplicities:

0..1	No instances, or one instance (optional, may)
1	Exactly one instance
0..* or *	Zero or more instances
1..*	One or more instances (at least one)

Exercise 12: Modelling with UML or MVC?

1. Examine the Use Case in Figure 4 and explain the MVC architecture of the online bookstore (the model the view and controllers) needed to Lookup Books and Add to Shopping Cart.

Figure 4: Use case diagram for a customer using a shopping cart at an online bookstore.

Lookup Books (104)
Model: Lookup Books
View: Book Search page, Book Search Result page
Controller: Book Search Controller

Customers input search strings in the Book Search page.
The Book Search Controller passes the searching criteria to Lookup Books for processing and redirects the display to Book Search Result page.
While rendering of the view, Model will be requested to display the search result.

Add to Shopping Cart (105)
Model: Add to Shopping Cart
View: Add to Shopping Cart page, Shopping Cart Result page
Controller: Add to Shopping Cart Controller

Customers input books information in the Add to Shopping Cart page.
The Add to Shopping Cart Controller passes the book information to Add to Shopping Cart for processing and redirects the display to Shopping Cart Result page.
While rendering of the view, Model will be requested to display the result.