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

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

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

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.

2. Describe the purpose of the Open Mobile Alliance Initiative?

Wikipedia (2010) reports that The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is a standards body which develops open standards for the mobile phone industry. The purpose of the Open Mobile Alliance is to grow the market for the entire mobile industry by removing barriers to interoperability, supporting a seamless and easy to use mobile experience for users and a market environment that encourages competition through innovation and differentiation.

3. What are the main components of a mobile Web services framework?

The European Space Agency (2008) states that the components of a mobile web services framework are:



Mobile Server
The Mobile Server is a mobile remote computer, linked to the Internet via an Inmarsat Regional Broadband Global Area Network (RBGAN) User Terminal (UT).

Gatekeeper
The Gatekeeper is placed on the terrestrial Internet, and acts as the sole gateway to the Mobile Server.

RBGAN UT / Thuraya Satellite / RBGAN SAS
The physical connection between the remote web server and the Gatekeeper is established using a Satellite Access Station, a Telecommunications Satellite and a satellite modem.

GPS / Data Acquisition system / Web cam
The Mobile Server is connected to a set of peripherals, such as a GPS device, a web cam and/or a Data Acquisition system.

Application server / Client PC
The Gatekeeper handles requests from clients over the Internet.

4. Visit an airline Web site and search for information on WAP or SMS or 3G mobile application access to booking airline services. The same services exist in banking. How do both industries compare?

I visited the Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Limited web site (http://www.dragonair.com).


And I found her mobile check-in services used WAP in the following:

• Select seats using a seat map
• Save the check-in confirmation with the barcode on the mobile device
• Customer can choose to save her check-in confirmation on her mobile or send it to her mobile device via SMS or email.
• Saving the check-in confirmation barcode on her mobile will allow customer retrieve the barcode anytime



There are comparison between airlines and banks on availability and practicality.
A banking WAP service allows the customer to save from queuing up and anywhere.
A passenger is far less likely using WAP to book a flight, when he is already at an airport. However, a banking WAP service is practicality.

Reference:
European Space Agency 2008, ESA Telecommunication: Mobile Web Services Framework, last modified 19 Jun 2008, viewed 14 May 2010, http://telecom.esa.int/telecom/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=12852

Wikipedia 2010, Location-based service, last modified 3 May 2010, viewed 13 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_based_service

Wikipedia 2010, Open Mobile Alliance, last modified 5 May 2010, viewed 14 May 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Mobile_Alliance

1. List what you consider to be the three strengths of Ruby on Rails workshop series

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.

2. List what you consider to be the three weaknesses of Ruby on Rails workshop series:

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).

3. List what aspects of Ruby on Rails workshop series that you found to be most difficult.

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

4. List what improvements could be made to the Ruby on Rails workshop series:

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

5. Reflect on your experiences with the other Web framework used in this subject: Was it effective? How can it be improved? Should other Web frameworks be used as well or instead of 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.

6. Did the Developer’s or IT managers Team that you joined after workshop 4 have a preference towards using other tools to facilitate collaboration? Comment on the differences between these use of the sub-forum or Interact wiki tools from your experiences in this subject.

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

7. Further comments to add?

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

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.

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

2. Differentiate the various types of software agents.

Haag (2006) suggests that there are only four essential types of software agents:

• Buyer agents or shopping bots
• User or personal agents
• Monitoring-and-surveillance agents
• Data Mining agents

Buyer agents / shopping bots
Buyer agents travel around a network (i.e. the internet) retrieving information about goods and services. These agents, also known as ‘shopping bots’, work very efficiently for commodity products such as CDs, books, electronic components, and other one-size-fits-all products.

User agents / personal agents
User agents, or personal agents, are intelligent agents that take action on your behalf. In this category belong those intelligent agents that already perform, or will shortly perform, the following tasks:

• Check your e-mail, sort it according to the user’s order of preference, and alert you when important emails arrive.
• Play computer games as your opponent or patrol game areas for you.
• Assemble customized news reports for you.
• Find information for you on the subject of your choice.
• Fill out forms on the Web automatically for you, storing your information for future reference
• Scan Web pages looking for and highlighting text that constitutes the “important” part of the information there
• “Discuss” topics with you ranging from your deepest fears to sports
• Facilitate with online job search duties by scanning known job boards and sending the resume to opportunities who meet the desired criteria
• Profile synchronization across heterogeneous social networks

Monitoring-and-surveillance agents
Monitoring and Surveillance Agents are used to observe and report on equipment, usually computer systems. The agents may keep track of company inventory levels, observe competitors’ prices and relay them back to the company, watch stock manipulation by insider trading and rumors, etc.

Data mining agents
This agent uses information technology to find trends and patterns in an abundance of information from many different sources. The user can sort through this information in order to find whatever information they are seeking.

A data mining agent operates in a data warehouse discovering information. A ‘data warehouse’ brings together information from lots of different sources. “Data mining” is the process of looking through the data warehouse to find information that you can use to take action, such as ways to increase sales or keep customers who are considering defecting.

3. Identify various activities in e-commerce where software agents are currently in use.

We can identify some activities in e-commerce by following software agents:
Buyer agents / shopping bots
Amazon.com is a good example of a shopping bot. The website will offer you a list of books that you might like to buy on the basis of what you’re buying now and what you have bought in the past.

User agents / personal agents
Yahoo.com is an example of a personal agent. The website will provide you a e-mail checking, computer games playing and information finding, etc.

Monitoring-and-surveillance agents
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an agent that monitors inventory, planning, and scheduling equipment ordering to keep costs down, as well as food storage facilities. These agents usually monitor complex computer networks that can keep track of the configuration of each computer connected to the network.

Data mining agents
For example, the agent may detect a decline in the construction industry for an economy; based on this relayed information construction companies will be able to make intelligent decisions regarding the hiring/firing of employees or the purchase/lease of equipment in order to best suit their firm.

Reference:
Haag, S. 2006. Management Information Systems for the Information Age. Pages 224-228.

Wikipedia 2010, Web crawler, last modified 30 April 2010, viewed 9 May 2010,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

Developers conclude their work with the OTBS and look at the options for deployment of the site. Examine the various platforms/software tools used for deployment such as UNIX environment suggested in the Discussion Notes, Mongrel or Mongrel cluster, Nginx, Subversion or Capistrano (during development stage), JRuby in the Java environment.

Which way?

The choice is up to you as this workshop present just one option and you may like to use another, such as deploying the OTBS in a .NET or J2EE environment

For my Online Taxi Booking System (OTBS), I install Ruby on Rails 1.8.6-26 and Rubygems 1.3.2 in my windows server 2003.

In Ruby on Rails development, i would like to use “rake” to generate the database table and use scaffolding to generate the view page. It is very powerful for Rapid application development.

Then, I feel Ruby on Rails is very suitable for SQL operation, because the simplest datbase operations are often described as CRUD (Create, Rad, Update and Desctroy).

Can you get the OTBS Running in production mode as a minimal production server?

Hartl & Prochazka (2008) state development and the test are two different environments that the applications are run in Railspace. Similar to these environments, production environment also requires a corresponding database.

when deploy applications for development or testing environment, we need to:

• Configure the production database connection in the file named database.yml.
• Create database in the production server
• Run the migration in Rails by using of ‘rake’ to construt tables in it

Stop the development server and start a new server in production environment by using the -e flag (>ruby script/server -e production)

As a minimal production server:

• Using Mongrel / Linux OS / Apache Web server, as the Rails application server
• Setup the same softwares (such as Ruby, Rails, database and plugins) on the server like the development computer
• Upload the Rails project to the server, follow the deploy application steps at the above to create and configure the production database
• Install and configure the application server and webserver



References
Hartl, M. and Prochazka, A. (2008). Railsspace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails. Person Education, Inc.

]]> https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/workshop-7-end-of-the-line-production-site-migration-and-maintenance/feed/ 0 335 11380545itc594 https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/exercise-13-shopping-cart-specifications/ https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/exercise-13-shopping-cart-specifications/#respond Wed, 05 May 2010 11:30:37 +0000 http://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/?p=344 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)

]]> https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/exercise-13-shopping-cart-specifications/feed/ 0 344 11380545itc594 ClassDiagram_ex13 https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/exercise-12-modelling-with-uml-or-mvc/ https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/exercise-12-modelling-with-uml-or-mvc/#respond Mon, 03 May 2010 14:40:58 +0000 http://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/?p=342 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.

]]> https://itc594hochiman.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/exercise-12-modelling-with-uml-or-mvc/feed/ 0 342 11380545itc594 shopping cart