Case Study

Categories : All, Education, Microsoft Development

Client Requirement

Online Publishing Tool for School Administration for schools system will provide an online publishing tool which can be used by the central administrators, school coordinators, individual teachers and students (grades Kindergarten through Sixth Grade).

Teachers can create projects (class and individual) and then using the dashboard system can communicate with the Coordinator (if needed) and the Students for the final project (manuscripts) submission.

Students would use the tool that is built in ADOBE FLEX for creating the pages of their project.

The final output of book pages and book cover are then of sufficient high-quality to be printed at specification though client’s learning’s production line.

There is an Admin panel (central administrators) to manage Schools, Coordinators and Teachers

Project Challenges

Team faced the following challenges:

• Integrating third-party chat module in the application.
• Harmonizing the simultaneous execution of various integrated features and options while maintaining consistent load balance.
• Used WCF Service and integrated it with the application.
• Developed a fully AJAX driven site with various features without compromising on the performance and execution.
• Ensuring safe and secure transfer of data while integrating 3rd party API’s and JavaScript compatibility for all browsers.
• Access to application depending on different roles such as Teachers, Coordinators and Students came as a challenge to the team.
• Developing a study & dependable framework to support the real-time updation of content on the site.
• Internal messaging handled between Teachers, Coordinators and Students.
• Drag and Drop pages of an assignment with JavaScript and compatibility with all the browsers.

Manpower

Project Leader	1
Developers	4
Designers	2
Quality Assurance Testers	2

Technologies Used

Operating System & Server Management	Windows OS, Multi-Server Architecture with Staging & Production Environment through Version Controlling releases, Server Optimization, Security & SSL Implementation, Scheduler for Back-ups, Alert Monitoring System Integration, Server Performance Tuning at regular intervals, Software Firewall Configuration & Maintenance
Development Tools & Environments	Microsoft Visual Studio, C#, .Net, Microsoft Visio, SVN, Flex, JSON, AJAX, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, JQuery etc.
Database	MYSQL Database Server, DB Clustering, DB Optimization, Master Slave Replication, Query Optimization, Scheduler for Backups

Planning

The following N-tier development approach was adopted to equip the site with numerous features and functionality mentioned below:

• The Database layer containing SQL Server 2008 Database, Tables, Triggers and so on.
• The Data Access layer containing the Data Access DLL responsible for accessing data from the database.
• The Business layer DLL consisting of all the business logic, intermediate layer of UI and Data Access.
• WCF Service layer DLL for communicating between the layers.
• The User Interface layer which forms the Graphical User Interface of the website.

Architecture

The design approach was built around Visual Studio .Net Framework (3.5) and SQL SERVER 2008 due to the e-learning domain of the application. Modules like Teachers, Coordinators, Projects, Assignments and Students were developed in C#.Net such that they can be executed directly from the UI layer. 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. Triggers were used only for complex updation and deletion of data from multiple tables and were entirely avoided with conditional syntax to ensure smooth performance of the application. The UI layer was kept free of any business logic with images, applications and data being called from their respective servers. Web usability guidelines were strictly followed during development and the interface was made easily navigable through judicious use of Flex, JSON, AJAX, CSS, HTML and Web Server Controls. The site was developed and fully functional within a span of 5 months.