Case Study

Categories : All, Case Study, Social Networks

Client Requirement

The website aims at being one stop shop for information on products for sport tours.

The website behaves as a new revenue channel for clubs and tours through respective members and supporters contributing during their participation in cash back affiliates.

The website targets at streamlining the communication between tour, tournament organizers and tourists.

The end user is enabled to share his/her experiences during the tours with the virtual world.

Project Challenges

Team faced the following challenges:

• The site will be a comprehensive networking for the players of the different sports of different clubs.
• Incorporating the affiliates on the site and giving the players extra cash-back on the products.
• The site will be the one stop shop for the tours.
• The site will be a platform for the players of the different clubs going on the tours for the tournaments.
• The site will be selling the virtual products on the site.
• Incorporating Open ID concept.
• The site will be having the Facebook Application called My Sports Venues.
• Incorporating the real-time city finding and showing the map of the city using the web-services.
• The site will be having unique concepts of honours board, tour/tournament ranking,league events etc.
• Credit purchases through PayPal for the clubs and individual.
• Interactive tour/tournament search based on the geographical region and sports. Search the tours based on the tour destination, tour departure location etc.
• Incorporating the features of accepting the tour/tournament fees on the site. The payment will be directly credited to the club’s account.

Technologies Used

Operating System & Server Management	Red Hat Linux 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	PHP5+, Zend Studio, MS Visio, AJAX, Java Script, HTML5, CSS3 etc.
Database	MYSQL Database Server, DB Clustering, DB Optimization, Master Slave Replication, Query Optimization, Scheduler for Backups

Manpower

Project Leader	1
Developers	5
Designers	2
Quality Assurance Testers	2

Planning

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

• The Database layer containing MySQL Server Database, Tables, stored procedures and so on
• The Data Access layer containing the Data Access DLL responsible for accessing data from database
• The Business Layer DLL consisting of all business logic procedures for modules like Offices,Properties, Maps etc
• The User Interface Layer which forms the Graphical User Interface of the website

Development Highlights

The design approach was built around PHP 5 and MySQL SERVER 5 due to the social networking nature of the website. Modules like Offices, Properties, Maps etc. were developed in PHP 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. 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. 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 6 months.