Greetings!

Just a quick update on what is going on in terms of development this week.

The project officially kicked off on Monday when Peter and I met with John to discuss the project aims and objectives. We also discussed our individual strengths and weaknesses and informally assessed the group dynamic and the roles each of us will play during the project’s lifetime. Luckily we discovered our level of ability was on a par, and that this project would be a great (if sometimes steep) learning curve for the both of us.

This week will mainly involve setting up our workspace (including motivational “hang in there baby” posters for the hard times ahead) and deciding on a development schedule. Also we will be making decisions on the following important issues:

• Language and framework currently we are thinking of using a PHP/mySQL setup for handling the functionality of the artefact as this is the area that both members have had a little experience with. In addition a number of AI libraries and extensions are available to provide the more complex functionality. Also it will allow for the future integration with the DIVERSEproject.Also a decision will be made if a framework (such as codeigniter or Cake php) to support the development of the application. Also the project lends itself to a MVC architecture.

• Version control – Deciding whether to take the SVN or GIT approach to developing the software.

• Severs and Hardware – all the old house keeping stuff such as server setup, directory creation,database setup etc.

• Development Methodologies – This project is undertaken alongside our studies therefore a formal methodology will probably not be stuck to. However, the project lends itself to iterative development, which is how we will approach the development process.

 

This is a first major project for both the developers and we are both very excited to begin development on the software artefact. After this week we will be getting stuck in with the nitty gritty design work and system requirement analysis work so stay tuned for updates on the progress the project.

Regards,

Boaz