Case Study

Categories : All, Retail / E-commerce

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Client Requirement

Client required an application to bridge the gap between demand and supply. This application is a platform for professionals that work with various organizations requiring experts from diverse domains. It is a complete expert management platform that facilitates everything right from posting gigs to paying an expert for its service.

Gig-based platform that connects enterprises and experts application opens an opportunity for experts in any sphere. Organizations can post their requirements along with payment method and details and hire an expert from the listed profiles.Further, company can communicate with the professional via email or click to call service and set up a deal. Once work is delivered the system will automatically release payment to an expert.

Client required the following:

• A comprehensive platform that can handle complete resource management exercise.
• A platform that can manage both company and expert profiles.
• Integration of payment gateway.
• Integration of Trove to hold funds.
• Implementation of controlled communication techniques.
• Calling feature to any US number.
• Portal developed with the use of 3rd party iLance package.

Project Challenges

Team faced the following challenge:

• Integrating calling features
• Intensive security features
• Use of 3rd party package-iLance. Customizing this package to meet the requirement for crowd-sourcing platform was a challenge.

Technologies Used

Manpower

Planning

Keeping in mind the enormous structure of the website and the challenges involved a four-tier development approach was adopted consisting of:

• The Database layer containing MySQL Server Database, Tables, Stored Procedures and so on.
• The User Interface layer which forms the Graphical User Interface of the website.
• The Interface layer and Database Abstraction layer for converting data between incompatible type systems in databases and accessing data from the database respectively.
• The Business Logic layer consisting of all the business logic procedures for modules like User Profiles, Invitations, Forums, Blogs etc.

Architecture

The online networking characteristic of the website called for the design approach to be built around PHP and MySQL Server. Modules like User Profiles, Invitations, Forums and Blogs were developed in PHP such that they can be executed directly from the UI layer. These PHP files consisted of all the business logics used for respective modules like Save (Add/Update), Delete, Get Single Object, Get Multiple Objects for Listing and were designed to be capable of handling many more logics which were not related to the database. In order to most effectively access the database in an object- oriented context, an interface translating the object logic to the relational logic was used to communicate with the relational databases in an object-oriented manner.

An intermediary abstraction layer was created for accessing data from the database. Stored procedures were used only for complex retrieval of data from multiple tables and were entirely avoided with conditional syntax to ensure smooth performance of the website. The UI layer was kept free of any business logic with images, applications and data being called from their respective servers. Sub-domains were used for the different areas of the website to guarantee scalability. Third party package (iLance) was integrated to provide a crowd-sourcing platform.

Development Highlights

The site was equipped with robust architecture to offer centralized access handling two different roles. Extensive pre-development research was carried out in order to integrate the third-party chat tool and build a fully-functional system according to the latest standards. SEO activities performed ensured high visibility for the site over the internet. Web usability guidelines were strictly followed during development and the interface was made easily navigable through judicious use of AJAX, CSS and HTML controls. The site was developed and fully functional within a span of 8 months.