I have recently been working on a project for the Multi media team, they provide a service for students and staff which allows them to upload audio files the their server for download and streaming. They currently were billing the service annually according to storage capacity and there was currently no system which measured how much server space was being used.
I met with Alex Carter the section manager and we discussed his requirements, and the resulting brief was to build a system which would perform a scan of a directory structure, store the users names and the amount of media stored they have stored on the server. The media was stored in two sets of directories, one for podcasts and another for streaming.
At the same time the application will connect to the media teams database, one of the challanges presented was how we could connect to the Apple based LDAP system which the data was stored on.
As part of of the brief I was required to specify the programming language to produce the application with and suitable server software to support it.
The resulting data is stored in its own MySQL database and can be displayed through a series of password protected web pages.
This task is repeated every month and gives the reporting information required to administer billing of the storage accounts.
This is a smaller project than the dev team is used to however that makes me an ideal candidate to build it.
As always there is supporting information in the evidence folder to support.
The project has been the first time I have had end to end control over the development process. I was responsible for producing the following:
- System design specification
- Recommending free, open source CFML engine
- Prototype (if required)
- database systems
- Coldfusion application
Other factors I would encounter along the way were:
- Install and configure Apache Tomcat
- Install and configure Railo
- configure scheduled task in Railo's web administrator
- remote desktop administration to windows and mac
Things I learned about along the way were:
- data structures in Coldfusion
- scope
- modularising functions
- passing data between functions
One of the main things I've taken away from this project is organisation, when I studied Adobe's learning guide it guides you through building the art gallery application. The way that build is structured puts all the action into the forms, there are one or two configuration pages possibly outwith the browsers reach but in general what you see and what it does are in the same page.
In practice I have learned to use a framework to support the application which removes the functionality from the publicly available web pages. Further to this I have also learned how to further modularise the components providing the functionality.
I got some fantastic help which really pinpointed my weak spots as a result of me trying failing & trying succeeding. sometimes the help I get is a bit vague and sits a wee bit higher than my knowledge can reach.
As a direct result of the help being just a bit more explanatory I was able to create a pseudo Model View Controller software architecture, connect to and run queries against Apples LDAP system.
Footnote
During this project am having trouble due to the snow, I've been stuck at home this week because of the bad weather.
Where I've had difficulties in the project I have been emailing Martin Jones for help. Ive also been putting alot of extra hours into the project due to being snowed in at home all day.
