Individually, or as a pair, produce a document describing what you propose to do for the final course project.
The goal is to communicate to me you have a feasible idea of the correct scope, and that it will reinforce concepts taught in the course.
Your project should either take technologies used in the course and go further (e.g. running a farm of load-balanced servlets), or explore technologies we have not specifically worked with (e.g. Ruby on Rails).
The server-side of your project will be hosted on your virtual machine(s).
Your plan document should have sections for each of the following:
Overview. What are you building and why? This should be at a relatively high-level, describing from an end-user perspective what the thing you are aiming to build will do.
Technical details.
What technologies do you plan to use?
This includes details about client-side presentation, client-side scripting, server-side scripting, state persistence, session management, data formats, physical/network infrastructure, etc.
Scalability. Discuss vertical and horizontal scalability in relation to your chosen technologies. Discuss what steps could be done within your architecture and which steps (if any) you plan to take.
Availability. Discuss the impacts of various hardware/network/software failures. Discuss what steps could be done within your architecture and which steps (if any) you plan to take.
Security. Discuss possible attacks on your project's infrastructure. Discuss what steps could be done within your architecture and which steps (if any) you plan to take.
If your project is based on any existing source code developed by someone else or developed by you prior to this course, please describe what your starting point was.
Grading.
The plan document should address all the points outlined above.
You should also demonstrate good written communication skills.
The plan document is worth 20 points and is included in the normal assignment total for the course.
The actual project implementation and presentation combined are worth 20% of the course total.
The project should be roughly as complex a build as the Quotes Search Engine assignment.
I expect a more impressive project from pairs than from individuals.
Submission.
Submit your document in Microsoft Word or PDF format to the Moodle dropbox by the deadline.
