Chapter 4: Starting the Development Process


Overview

You might be one of the many people who think they can't write an application or have no interest in doing so. The applications demonstrated in Chapter 3 might not look like much, but they really are applications. Writing applications shouldn't fill you with fear or trepidation, because most people have the skills needed ”all that you really need is a desire to do something and to know how to write a procedure. Coding is often more a matter of discipline and technique, art rather than science.

Designing software includes a number of tasks this chapter doesn't consider, such as how to create the user interface. In addition, the chapter won't discuss defining schedules and other tasks that don't really relate to the topic at hand ”connecting to Google Web Services and using the information it provides effectively. Consequently, this chapter discusses issues you probably didn't hear about in a computer science class, read in a book, learn about in a magazine, or discuss with a friend across the street.

Web services are all about communication. Your application uses some type of communication medium to transmit a request to a remote server and receive a response. The kind of communication you use makes a great deal of difference in the way you design and optimize your application. The communication method can also change the way your application operates and can affect performance.

You also need to consider the target platform for your application and choose the best language to meet your particular needs. Google Web Services works well with a number of platforms and programming languages (as you'll see in the chapters that follow). Some developers attempt to take a one size fits all approach to selecting a language, but that's clearly not the best approach. This chapter helps you decide which platforms to target and which language to use for your specific needs.

Finally, most Web sites don't get visitors from just one country anymore. In fact, I've found that I use Google's translation service quite often now to translate sites in Japanese and German (among other languages). Often, these sites contain a bit of information I need to get a consulting job done or perform a writing task. Consequently, I understand the benefits that internationalization can provide. This final section discusses when internationalization can make your site more appealing and some of the steps you need to perform to do it.

Getting Additional Information about Application Design  

This chapter doesn't discuss general application design. Make sure you augment the information in this chapter with some general design information from books such as Designing Highly Useable Software by Jeff Cogswell (Sybex, 2004). Another good book to consider is Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design , Second Edition, by Michael J. Hernandez (Addison-Wesley, 2003). Finally, you might consider Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler, David Rice, Matthew Foemmel, Edward Hieatt, Robert Mee, and Randy Stafford (Addison-Wesley, 2002).

Don't think that you're limited to reading books about design. You can also find a wealth of online sources for specific topics. For example, Microsoft provides a number of white papers online such as the article entitled "Modeling Your Application and Data" at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vsent7/html/vxoriModelingYourApplicationData.asp. You should also consider sources such as Rational's (now IBM) article entitled "Modeling Web Application Design with UML" at http://www.rational.com/products/whitepapers/100462.jsp. Sometimes online magazines provide great input. Check out the article entitled "Magic Quadrants: Business Modeling, Application Design" at http://www4.gartner.com/pages/story.php.id.2648.s.8.jsp ”it provides some great resources you can use.

Make sure you also get any application design software you need. There are moderately priced solutions such as Microsoft Visio (http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/). However, you should also consider shareware from sites such as Tucows (http://idirect. tucows .com/), ZDNet (http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/2001-20-0.html), CNET (http://www.cnet.com/), and Nonags (http://nonags.com/). If your application is small enough, you can also use simple drawing programs such as Paint Shop Pro (http://www.jasc.com) or create the design by hand on paper. The point is to get the design down in print so that you can refer to it.

No matter what source of information you use and how you get your design in writing, you want to avoid one of the most common mistakes that developers make ”starting an application without designing it. You wouldn't consider building a house without a blueprint ”developing a blueprint for your application is the same. Although this chapter doesn't provide general design information, you'll find it essential in adding the Google Web Services twist to your application design.




Mining Google Web Services
Mining Google Web Services: Building Applications with the Google API
ISBN: 0782143334
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 157

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