Transcript Chapter 5 of Database Design, Application Development and

IS4401
Project Technology Issues, Part 2
Introduction
This seminar covers
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Development Tools
Web hosting services
Payment processing
Mobile technologies
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SMS Gateways
Bluetooth
RFID
GPS
‘Phone blogging
NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1
Integrated IDE for Java development
 Supports Standard, Mobile and
Enterprise Java
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A lot of new tools for Mobile, Web
Services and SOA
Available in labs
 Loads of info available from:
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http://www.netbeans.org
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Java SE 6 available from:
http://java.sun.com/
I want to develop at home!
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Visual Studio 2005 available free from BIS
Tech Support
NetBeans 5.5 and Java 6 SE available free
from Sun
Databases (Oracle 10i XE, SQL Server
2005 Express, MySQL 5.0) available free,
as mentioned two weeks ago
If you want to run IIS, you need Windows
XP Pro – not free!
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But Visual Studio 2005 includes a small
development web server
I want to develop at home!
Suggest you back up your PC or
laptop before installing development
tools or databases
 Your PC will slow down and
uninstalling can be tedious and messy
 No harm to have 2Gb of RAM
 NetBeans 5.5 is SLOW to start up
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Especially in lab environment
 Even on dual-core PCs!
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Briefly…
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PHP
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Ruby, Python and AJAX
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Easier than ASP.NET 2.0, apparently
You can get LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and
PHP) downloads free but you need your own PC
Supported on many platforms
Available as free extensions to VS2005
AJAX extensions installed in Labs
Perl
Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flex …
And lots more …
Plagiarism
A lot of the technogies discussed here
require the use of APIs provided by
3rd parties
 Students need to:
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Discuss the use of external code with
their supervisor in advance.
 Supervisors
will have veto rights if it is felt
that the proposed contribution of 3rd party
code outweighs significantly the work of the
student
Plagiarism
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Students need to:
Clear any s/w licence issues with Bob if it
involves installing software on BIS
hardware
 Acknowledge in their documentation
areas where they have used code from
3rd parties (such as mobile phone
emulators, API's, mobile utilities etc.)
and not try to pass it off as their own!
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Web hosting services
Loads of hosting services available
 Pick one that suits the technologies
you want to use
 Organise hosting early in your project
 Examples
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http://www.webhost.ie/
http://www.brinkster.com/
http://www.blacknight.ie/
http://www.hosting365.com/
Web hosting services
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What’s the cheapest?
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Shop around – some services do basic hosting deals for
€90 pa
Do a Google search on web hosting on
http://www.google.ie
Keep your client’s needs in minds
Should be possible to upgrade hosting
package if traffic volume increases
Web hosting services
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Sample services and prices
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Webhost.ie - €89+VAT pa for Windows 2003 Server
+ASP.Net 2.0 + MySQL + DreamWeaver + FrontPage
Blacknight.ie - €35 pa for Linux + PHP + Perl + MySQL +
FrontPage
Hosting365.com - €39.75 pa for Windows + ASP.NET 2.0
+ MySQL. €39.95 for Linux + PHP + Perl + MySQL.
Brinkster.com – As little as $4.95 pm but check features
carefully. Also $4.95 pm applies to 24month contract.
FREE Hosting
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Check out http://www.aspspider.net/
ASP.Net 2.0 + Windows 2003 Server + SQL Server 2005
Express
Low storage limits and traffic volumes
Web hosting services
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Some hosting services, e.g.
http://www.webhost.ie, will allow you to
publish ASP.NET 2.0 websites directly using
Visual Studio 2005
Easy!
But it ties you to .NET technology
Demo follows …
Payment processing
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Numerous service providers
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A lot require merchant accounts
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Eg http://www.realex.ie
Your customer has to have this already,
otherwise beyond scope of FYP
Best option is probably PayPal
Merchant account not needed.
 See http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_merchant-outside
 Then click “Website Payments Standard”
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Mobile technologies
SMS Gateways
 Bluetooth
 RFID
 GPS
 ‘Phone blogging
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SMS Gateways
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Clickatell
http://www.clickatell.com
 Pros
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 HTTP
and XML APIs
 Cheap and works well
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Cons
 XML
API is not well documented
 Also XML implementation is non standard
 Should be a proper web service
 No developer support !!!!!  
SMS Gateways
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Clickatell Demo
Using XML API
 Need to do an HTTP POST of a quasi-XML
document
 Hard to find decent code for it
 There is a C# example here:
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http://forums.clickatell.com/viewtopic.php?t=292
Should be easy enough to convert to VB.NET
SMS Gateways
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Clickatell
Demo
Small
Windows
App
SMS Gateways
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Clickatell
Demo
Small
Windows
App
SMS Gateways
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Where can I get code?
C# code available from:
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Tested working – I used it
Provides method as follows:
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http://forums.clickatell.com/viewtopic.php?t=292
public string SendSMS(string phonenumber, string
message)
Returns a string with XML response
Use code from post at bottom of page
SMS Gateways
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Clickatell – things to note
XML API provides all sorts of useful
methods
Eg bulk SMS, MMS, ringtones
Two-way SMS will cost considerably more
Payment process is a bit clumsy
Bluetooth
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What is Bluetooth?
Short-range two-way wireless technology
 Mainly used in mobile ‘phones
 Typical 10m-30m range
 Pairing required prior to use
 Not suitable for apps where transient,
brief radio contact is required
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Bluetooth
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Programming with
Bluetooth
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You need …
A
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Bluetooth dongle
A Bluetooth API
 Java:
https://btutil.dev.java.net/
 Python: http://lightblue.sourceforge.net/
 Other APIs available. Not all are free.
RFID
http://www.phidgets.com
 RFID kit
for CAN$90
 USB
interface
 .NET and
Java APIs
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GPS
Global Positioning System
 Satellite Navigation
 Typical 5-15m accuracy
 Location-aware
applications
 Vehicle tracking
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GPS
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Most GPS devices support the NMEA
0182/0183 protocol
See http://www.nmea.org/pub/0183/ and
http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/nmeafaq.txt
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Connect to PC via serial port
APIs
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For example:
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http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/nmea-0183.htm
Sample NMEA Sentence
GGA - Global Positioning System Fix Data
GGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.324,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M, , *42
123519
4807.038,N
01131.324,E
1
Fix taken at 12:35:19 UTC
Latitude 48 deg 07.038' N
Longitude 11 deg 31.324' E
Fix quality: 0 = invalid
1 = GPS fix
2 = DGPS fix
08
Number of satellites being tracked
0.9
Horizontal dilution of position
545.4,M
Altitude, Metres, above mean sea level
46.9,M
Height of geoid (mean sea level) above
WGS84 ellipsoid
(empty field) time in seconds since last DGPS update
(empty field) DGPS station ID number
… Easy to decode!
Mobile ‘phone blogging
Use your mobile ‘phone to upload
photos to a Web site
 Supported by www.flickr.com
 Requires Java-enabled mobile
‘phone with internet access.
 Or use ‘phone with
mobile email account.
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Amazon Web Services
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Includes, but not limited to:
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S3 (Simple Storage Service)
 Really heap high volume online storage
EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud
 Easily accessible remote computing capacity
The Mechanical Turk
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“… A marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. The
Mechanical Turk web service enables companies to
programmatically access this marketplace and a diverse, ondemand workforce. Developers can leverage this service to
build human intelligence directly into their applications.”
http://aws.amazon.com
Other Ideas
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Mashups
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Aka hybrid web apps
A website or web application that seamlessly
combines content from more than one source into
an integrated experience
Interesting combination of mobile and web
technologies
Google Earth
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Check it out!