Book Listing Website using PHP, MySql and HTML - Literature review Example

Book Listing Website using PHP, MySql and HTML – Literature Review This section of the proposal focuses on reviewing the current trends combined withreferences to proven theories regarding the concepts and technologies, involved in developing this website. At the end of the section, the choice of languages and technologies will be justified with information that is most pertinent. Designing user interface The features of a website are brought into limelight only with an appropriate and flexible presentation of it to the user. This is where a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) comes into picture. According to (ACM SIGCHI 1996), “Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them”. HCI in general terms can be inferred as a mix of a discipline belonging to the field of engineering dealing with the science of design. It’s a kind of study which evaluates the level of ease with which a person could use the system using the attributes of practicability, intuitiveness and accuracy. A successful interface implementation depends on how well the requirements of the system are gathered in the initial phase. There are critical opinions mentioning the lack of knowledge with developers in identifying the characteristics of humans while using a system, especially a website (Lotze 2002). Reducing design costs, improving quality and the process involved are some of the research areas that are been explored in recent times. Being a subset of User Interaction, HCI involves identifying goals from the standpoint view of both the user and business and also, developing architectural prototypes that can be refined consistently. Most of the efforts that go into coding and creating designs are actually directed towards the development of HCI. In the current trend, with the emergence of cloud computing and other technical advancements, the necessity to develop a safe, useful and commercially viable website is imperative and looking forward, it stands to remain at the same cynosure. Software Development Life Cycle Software development Life Cycle (SDLC) provides an effective approach for developing a website or any kind of software. SDLC involves seven fundamental phases which enclose the entire development timeframe of the software. All these phases are equally important as faltering in any of the phase would lead to astronomical errors in all other subsequent phases. The phases includes, studying feasibleness, analysing requirements, designing, modelling, implementation, testing and active operation. SDLC directly relates the phases involved in the management of project with the corresponding phases of Software Development. Out of several SDLC models that are available, for a small term project of this nature, an iterative model of SDLC would be the ideal fit. Other options include the agile and waterfall model. An iterative model allows for an openness to exist between the client and the developer and also, allows for an interactive development – enabling changes to be made even in the middle of a development process. A waterfall model does not allow for the requirements to be added at a later stage as the models are based directly on the initial requirement analysis phase. In case of developing websites, requirements often keep changing and with the advancements in technologies, there is always a constant need for fine tuning the effectiveness of a website. Hence, an iterative model suits as a best model to follow for this kind of development. Additionally, the time spent in analysing the requirements would be quite minimal in an iterative model as there is this feasibility of augmenting the development process with additional requirements, if needed. So, a cost effective, minimal time consuming iterative model would suffice the demands of developing a book listing website. (Saleh 2009) Data Security and Accessibility Information security is one of the primary aspects of web development that needs to be given its due importance. Organisations like W3C and OMG have set certain standards for developing web security. Securing the database at the back end solves most of the problems of data security. In addition to this, in the front end, efforts are to be taken to ensure that users get to access only the information which they are legally authorized to do so. Access based control process has evolved greatly to become one of the most flexible and heterogeneous method of providing security. Requirements like content based control and user level control (based on the characteristics and the requirements of the user) are made possible with the use of languages like Java and XML. Also the use of SQL to access data in database provides this security through features called access control and views. Some of the current research topics related to Data security include preventing data leakages, fine-grained controls to access, combining database concepts with the theories like probability, cryptography etc., and providing access to shared computation in a controlled environment. Accessibility of data largely controls the security issues. It requires proper input and output validation methods to control the flow of data to a website. As long as data exists in direct view, there is always a possibility to extract it. So, information that is critical should be transmitted only through secured protocol measures. Proper authentication of users and control of session variables allow for a transparent execution of users’ actions in the website. Sensitive information like users’ password must be passed through secured SSL web pages to protect the integrity of the application. Attacks like Phishing and Denial of Service are bound to happen if there is any possibility of deadlocks or memory leaks. An active alert system should be kept in place through the help of error handling processes. (Ferrari 2010) Data protection Any kind of information about an individual, when stored by an organisation, necessary steps have to be taken to ensure that it is protected. In 1998, United Kingdom passed an act called the Data Protection Act, 1998 which detailed rules regarding the management of this information. With the advent of cloud computing and web 2.0, the world is shrinking smaller every day and there is greater need for protecting such data. There is no single authority that determines the passage and collection of data by different websites and hence, internal security should be handled by every organization so that third parties would not catch hold of those data. Considering the criticality of the issue, the cost incursive for its implementation has risen up so much that a complete protective measure is affordable only by large enterprises. In recent years, there have been several forward steps in this department, to make this process an economical one. Some of the results of such measures are the introduction of data protection methods like tape backups, taking snapshots of data, creating clones and other remote replication procedures. Another option that is been given to the users in recent times is providing them with the option to control their information rights. Users are allowed to set access levels for others to access their information. Data protection is an ever developing issue with increasing complexities and measures have to be taken to keep it under control with updates being done on a regular basis. (Meier 2010) Coding languages For developing the Book listing Website, HTML is chosen for front end design of webpages and PHP is used for the Server Side Scripting. MySql has been chosen as the backend database. PHP, acronym of Hypertext Processor is basically a server based programming language that gives the option of writing within the codes of HTML. The major advantage of PHP is that it is platform independent and allows for easy building of complex and huge web based systems. Also, the latest version of PHP has become completely object oriented, allowing the developer to take advantage of Object Oriented Programming concepts. Its flexibility to integrate with web pages and its compatibility with MySql allows for easy management of data. Both MySql and PHP being open source add up to the comfort of the developer – meaning that it is cost effective and completely free. Being freely available also allows for reusable piece of codes which are developed by other PHP developers. It saves time and effort and at the same time maintaining the integrity of the application. Most of the syntaxes of PHP are similar to C++ as it is developed based on C++. Hence, programmers who are familiar with C and C++ languages can easily migrate to this set of programming languages. PHP allows for scalability. Programmers can easily extend the executable file by adding a piece of code or by creating another executable and replacing the previous one – Unique feature of PHP. PHP takes a very small loading time and hence it processes requests fast. It has proper validation features which ensure security of the data. (Ullman 2003) HTML is a very simple language used for designing web pages. It is user friendly and allows even amateur developers to easily understand web designing. It offers variety of formatting styles and allows for easy integration of any server side coding. Its openness to accept server side scripting and the feasibility to send and retrieve data makes it the primary choice of developing web pages. HTML has been extended to offer dynamic nature to web pages through languages like DHTML and XHTML. Another major reason is that the language is user friendly and the code is interpreted correctly irrespective of the mistakes made in syntax. Though it has the downside of bad error handling, its simple tags allows the users to correct mistakes as and when the do it. Listing sites can be easily created with HTML tags like tables and proper formatting can be done using Cascaded Style Sheets. The use of MySql as the backend is for two major reasons – it is open source and still, it offers extreme high performance and reliability. It is flexible enough to run in all platforms. It has high scaling performance in handling huge amount of data. It is robust enough to handle multiple transactions at a time. Data insertion and manipulation is extremely efficient and gives equal importance to data protection with access controls. It offers enough flexibility to integrate with multiple application developments along with an easy control for management of the server. Specialization Application programming interface is nothing but a platform which has helped in developing integrated e-business a reality today. It allows for organizations to share data across different platforms. An example of the use of API is the creation of applications for popular software like Adobe readers for different kinds of platforms like the mobile phones, Ipads etc. The book listing website, in a similar way can specialize in integrating book catalogue from book selling sites like the Amazon through the use of API. API has evolved so much, that to integrate any third party vendor would be just to get an interface hook from the vendor and latch the source to it. SOAP, web services, in addition to API have eased out the process of transferring data between applications and servers in a safe and secure way. (Linthicum 2000 ) Testing Once the development of the work is done, it becomes mandatory to run the product in a testing environment. The obvious reasons include testing the efficiency of the product and identify any defects that may arise in the long run. There are certain procedures to be followed while testing is conducted. ISEB-ISTQB provides a development team with an opportunity to understand the methods and processes to be followed to gain maxim output out of testing. Finding as many defects as possible is the prime notion of any tester and solving those defects in such a way that they won’t peep again becomes the cut out task of the developer. Software testing also allows for the clients to get to know about the quality of the product given to them. In order to equally distribute the efforts required for testing, planning can be done in such a way that testing procedures take place after every stage of development. An advantage of such method is that, mistakes could be identified at its inception and can be rectified at the same time. Several types of testing procedure take place which includes black box, white box and grey box testing. Each method tests different aspects of the product. There are also several standards that can be followed for testing such as the IEEE 829 standard test documentation. (Tamres 2002) References ACM SIGCHI. 1996. Curricula for Human-computer Interaction. ACM Special interest group on computer-human interaction curriculum development group [On-line]. Available: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/cdg2.html Lotze, P. 2002. Directions in HCI education, research, and practice in Southern Africa. Proceedings of CHI 2002, 524-525. Saleh, K. 2009. Software Engineering. Michigan: J. Ross Publishing, Tamres, L. 2002. Introducing Software Testing. Michigan: Addison Wesley Publications. Linthicum, D.2000. Enterprise application integration. Michigan: Addison Wesley Publications. Ullman, L. E. 2003. PHP and MySQL for dynamic Web sites. Californaia: Peachpit Press. Ferrari, E. 2010. Access Control in Data Management Systems. Californai: Morgan & Claypool Publishers Meier. J. D. 2010. Improving Web application security: threats and countermeasures NY: Microsoft. Read More