Web Applications

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Web Applications

• Dave Elliman

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Summary of your teamwork experiences

• Communication is the vital, essential ingredient
  the very air a project breathes.
• Lack of motivation in any team members is
  devastating to morale and performance.
• Overbearing leadership or a failure to listen to
  all views can split teams into self defeating
  competing sub-groups and kills morale.
• Lack or a supportive infrastructure and agreed
  procedures leads to a chaotic and inefficient
  group
• Selfless individuals who are ready to help others
  are the oil in the group machine.

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Web Document Repositories

• We already met SVN which is excellent as a
  code-base for software teams
• What about general documents such as
• Technical reports
• Quality manuals, procedures and standards
• Forms and standard agreements/contracts
• Information and guidance
• and many more!

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The usual platform choices

• OSS Open Source Softare
• Epitomised by Linux/Apache/MySql/PHP
• also Python and ugly sisters (Perl Ruby)
• Java Enterprise (WebSphere iPlanet etc)
• Java OSS (Spring, Hibernate and JBOSS)
• Microsoft
• Proprietary
• Expensive or low-cost or free
• Do it all yourself

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In the context of DMS (ECMS etc)

• See bewildering variety at
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_manag
  ement_systems

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What can we use for DBC

• I could set up Plone and Zope as this is a world
  I am happy in Python
• Too confusing for the poor students!
• Vik has set up SharePoint services 2007 for me.
• Admin is not especially easy no time now to set
  everything up for this year
• Google Apps?
• Simple and admin is a piece of cake OK

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Google Docs

• The application runs remotely on Googles servers
  (or does it?)
• You can access the document from any computer you
  happen to be using anywhere (or iPod or PDA
  whatever)
• You can edit it locally too (how?)
• Document synchronises next time you log in
• Application remains up-to-date and supported and
  in this case free.

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Security really scares me

• Maybe not so bad.. OK with care
• Use https and make sure everyone else does
• Set up groups for all security levels
• Google use Cloud Computing which is fairly
  secure
• Google systems are less likely to be compromised
  than most arent they?

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How does one set it up?

• I registered with Google which is free for
  educational establishments, and very reasonable
  for everyone else.
• They gave me a desktop
• https//www.google.com/a/cpanel/weed.cs.nott.ac.uk
  /Dashboard
• I logged in and selected Create a new user
• Create multiple users and uploaded a csv file
  with your logins, names and passwords in.

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Mail Addresses are

• Dont work sorry - Why?
• Otherwise I have to change DNS MX records and
  well I cant (no access) and would be shot if I
  did.
• There are test email addresses of the form
  dge_at_weed.cs.nott.ac.uk.test-google-a.com
• You can find our how to use these if you wish but
  it is a bit messy. I an not asking you to.
• (see http//www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py
  ?answer48241 )

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Shared Calendars

• Allow others to see what your are doing and when
  you are available
• Time can be available, busy, out of office
• You can suggest meetings or chat or conferencing
  sessions at a given time and place. People can
  agree or suggest another time

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Chat Applications

• Concept of presence which is displayed to others
  (you can lie)
• Not limited to messages (Jabber) can be
  integrated with Voice (VOIP) or VIDEO (SIP) for
  conference calls
• Sometimes a noticeboard or wall where messages
  can be left

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Wiki

• Shared knowledge source
• Useful for collecting and indexing information
• Usually 1 big Wiki is best

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Shared Project Plan

• Trak with tickets, milestones and a Wiki
  abilities and integrated with SVN or similar.
• Like MS Project but allowing multi-access and
  sharing

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RSS/Atom Blogs and Twitter

• News of when information changes
• Download of media files eg Podcasts to iPod etc
  (could be video or audio)
• News groups too

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Social Networking Sites

• Proprietary protocols
• Dangerous for security and identity theft
• Good for looking up people and discovering useful
  information about them
• Suggest a customised Home page as a portal to a
  groupware system
• Suggest facebook-like directories of people and
  groups with hyperlinks

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Email

• The orginal groupware
• I think Google Docs is better than attachments
• Email is really a memo service then.

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Collaboration

• Shared desktops
• White Boards
• Some relationship to Wikis and shared everything
  else but used at the same time by several people

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The Future?

• Shared virtual worlds
• Augmented reality
• Only it makes me feel ill

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Two Axes for Groupware

• Happens at the same time?
• Happen at the same virtual place?
• Try this..

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Topics yet to be covered

• How do software requirements for groupware differ
  from ordinary GUI applications?
• What are the special requirements where teams
  communicate using groupware?
• Wireless networking and portable devices
• See web page for coursework 2 and also for
  growing body of content for exam

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