Chapter 9: Project Case Study - Upgrading the Existing ColdFusion 5.0 Application

In this chapter, you'll be introduced to the case study for the bulletin board application developed for a fictitious e-learning company, Steffilina Inc. This chapter also discusses the high-level design of the application.

The Steffilina Bulletin Board Application

Steffilina is a leading e-learning company in the United States, with headquarters in Alaska. The company has a highly qualified management team and a talented and efficient development team. The total number of employees is approximately 25,000. The company develops Computer Based Tutorials (CBT), Web Based Tutorials (WBT), customized software, and training manuals for customers worldwide. It also has a research department located in the northern United States.

Steffilina is committed to delivering quality products to its clients. However, in the recent past, the clients of Steffilina have started complaining of bugs and errors in the products. One of the major clients has reported a functionality bug in a product developed by Steffilina. The company doesn't want to lose its existing clients, because the company is committed to customer satisfaction. Moreover, the word of mouth might spread in the market, leading to a loss of business. Therefore, the management has decided to find the root cause of these bugs.

The management has formed a committee for the root cause analysis. After thorough research, the committee has determined that not all the employees have an equal level of expertise. If a project is in the hands of employees who lack the relevant experience to handle development problems, the product might not be flawless. But the employees with less experience need to learn from the more experienced employees and grow in the process. Moreover, the experienced employees cannot be deployed for all the running projects.

In order for all the products developed at Steffilina to be successful, the inexperienced employees should not get in the way. They can contact the more experienced employees to seek help. To help this sharing of views and knowledge, the committee wants to provide an employee bulletin board. The employees who need support can post their queries and messages in this forum. The employees who know the solutions can reply to these queries from anywhere at any time.

To implement the bulletin board application, which needs to be accessible across the globe, you need a Web application. Also, the application needs to interact with the back-end database, which needs to be a SQL Server 2000 database.

Currently, management has bought a license for ColdFusion MX. However, the employees aren't trained in ColdFusion MX. Rather, they have experience in ColdFusion Server 5.0. Although management wants the application to be developed with ColdFusion MX, and wants it done quickly, it will take time for the development team to learn it. To help solve this problem, Robert, a ColdFusion expert, provided a solution to management through an e-mail from Australia. According to him, the development team could develop the application first in ColdFusion Server 5.0. Then, the team could run the Code Compatibility Analyzer to make the application compatible with ColdFusion MX. In this manner, the application could be developed using the current level of expertise and without any delay. This application will provide the following benefits:

• The customer support costs will decrease.

• The employees will able to obtain the latest information from the experts.

• Information exchange between employees will speed up the development process, which will affect the marketing performance of the organization.

Ultimately, all these benefits will result in happy clients and will help the organization grow in the long run.

Only the employees of Steffilina should use the bulletin board application. Therefore, users should be authorized before accessing the application. To enable authorized access, the bulletin board application should prompt for a username and password through a login page. After successful login, the application should display the Main application page, which can be used to post and view messages. The employees should also be able to reply to the messages through the bulletin board application. This application, developed using ColdFusion Server 5.0, should be compatible with ColdFusion MX.

After a complete analysis of the project, the committee has decided to form a team of software professionals who are experts in ColdFusion Server 5.0. The team, made up of a project manager, a team leader, and three developers, decides to use ColdFusion Server 5.0 as the development platform and then migrate the application to ColdFusion MX. The team also decides to use SQL Server 2000 as the back-end database for the application.

The development of an application follows a typical life cycle, the various phases of which are discussed in the following section.