Design models of Facebook and Safari - Research Paper Example

 Understanding the Concepts Google chrome and safari belong in the category of the client/server structure as they have servers that provide services to subsystems, which are clients. Every client has knows how the interface of the server looks like but the server has no use knowing how the interface of the client looks like. The response of the server to the client and vice versa is immediate. The end users do not need to be involved in any kind of interactions with the server and therefore all interactions are limited to the client. The client enables the user to input data into the system and then takes over the processing of the data input. The use of this kind of architecture is to enable the creation of a user friendly application for the client. The server on the other hand manages the data from a centralized location and takes care of the security of the database. This model structure however has a flow as there is no peer to peer communication between the server and the client. Peer to peer communication is a necessity in this kind of structure and often needed. Dropbox, icloud, instagram and Google drive belong to the architectural style of peer to peer where the servers and clients can be peers and clients can be servers while at the same time servers can be clients. Microsoft PowerPoint belongs to the repository architectural style where sub systems have the ability to access and modify any data using a solitary structure called the repository. Facebook, twitter and Skype belong to the model-view controller architectural style where the subsystems are classified to three dissimilar types. There is the model subsystem which is responsible for the knowledge of the application domain then there is the view subsystem which displays the objects of the application domain to the user. Finally, there is controller subsystem which controls the sequence of interactions with the user and gives notice of any views of changes in the model. The two chosen applications for study are Facebook and safari. Facebook is a social networking application that enables people to connect, get to know each other and meet new friends. At the same time it enables people to share files like pictures, videos and even audios like music mp3s. Using Facebook, one can easily plan a party and be able to invite all his or her friends in a matter of minutes. Facebook has a user friendly interface that enables people to communicate even without too much knowledge on IT. Once someone has signed up, they are able to create a profile that includes their personal and career details, making it easy for their friends to identify them through their name, workplace, or even hometown. Adding friends is just as easy as the click of a button as once they have identified people they know through search or even through their friends suggestions they just click on the add friend button and it is done. Facebook should be able to reduce the amount of time and money spent when looking for old friends and it has been able to do that effectively. Facebook has a group messaging feature where a single user can start a chat that involves several of her friends. It also allows every user to have a maximum of five thousand friends and for cases of celebrities and popular personalities; they have pages that can add up to millions of fans. This makes it easy for these prominent to be able to communicate with their loyal followers, giving important updates and keeping in touch. The design goals for Facebook include, reliability; it should be reliable because once people get into it; they rely on it for most of their communication needs. Fault tolerance; the system should be able to allow communication between two different users even with a low network since some users maybe in locations with poor networks. Security; the security of the user information should be well protected because of the high cases of identity theft. The privacy is also important since no one wants to have their private messages viewed by random strangers because of hacking. Modifiability, the profile of the user should be easily modifiable because the user might want to make changes to their profile regularly as they deem fit. Safari on the other hand is a web browser built by apple Inc. it enables one to browse the internet and access various web pages with ease. They can also download files from the internet using the inbuilt downloader. Once one has started browsing the internet from safari, the application saves the pages visited to enable easy and fast loading of the previous pages. This is also useful in cases where the computer is shut down without notice, as the browsing session can be resumed without a problem. The application also allows for the saving of passwords so that the user does not have to type the usernames and passwords. The design goals for safari include, reliability, the application should be reliable because the user needs to browse the internet and be able to keep bookmarks and save pages that can be revisited. Fault tolerance; the application should be able to save sessions so that in times of power blackouts they can be resumed. Security, the security of the user should come first because of the high number of cybercrimes in the world today. Modifiability, the applications should be easy to modify so that the user is able to tweak the application to match his preferences. Deployment Safari is a client server architectural style and it was chosen because with the system of Facebook they function while complementing each other. The two are cannot function without each other because Facebook needs a web browser and safari needs the web applications to function effectively because that is the reason for which it was built. These two applications are used by millions of people worldwide making them ideal choices. References Crnkovic, I., & Larsson, M. (2002). Building reliable component-based software systems. Boston: Artech House. Read More