The Neighborhood Project

Planning Baby Steps.

First of all, my adviser on this project is Professor Ray Larson, who also teaches my IS 257 class, for which part of this project will fulfil the requirements. I am also getting two units of independent study credit for this class.

When one things of neighborhoods, one cannot help but think of both geography and quality of life. What do we need to be able to convey those ideas over the web? what kind of system do I want to implement? Perhaps if we think of them as modules, that will help get my ideas down.

So, I know I'm definitely going to need an authentication modules (allowing unregistered comments might allow people to game the system, and I really would like to avoid that), a file uploading module (for pictures), some sort of administration module (to approve pictures and patrol the system), a mapping module, and a address module (so people can search for addresses?)

It often helps me if I can visualize what sort of interface I'm working toward, so I'm going to pull out my sketchbook and draw tomorrow. I don't guarantee they'll be good, but a rough sketch often helps me think of what areas I'm forgetting. I'll share them here when I get them scanned in, which will probably be tomorrow or Friday, whenever I can spare a couple hours in front of the scanner.

I need to start thinking about database layout, since I've got an assignment concerning that due...February 17th.

Here's what I have to have for that:
Assignment #2

The following information should be turned in for the preliminary design of your personal database project.

1. A general description of the data you will be using for the database, and what uses you might expect the database to have.
2. A preliminary data dictionary for the entities and attributes and format of the data elements of the database. You should have at least 5 entities with some logical connections between them. The data dictionary consists of all of the attributes that you have identified for each entity, along with indication of whether the attribute is a primary key (or part of a primary key), and what format the data will be (e.g.: text, decimal number, integer, etc.)
3. Produce an entity-relationship diagram of the database OR a UML diagram.

These will be preliminary design specifications, so do not feel that you must follow everything that you describe here in the final database design.

Guess what I'm doing this weekend?

(oh yeah, if you're paying attention to the blog, don't be shy about commenting, that's why I put this in blog format in the first place. That, and I wanted to have a way to look back on the progress I've made this semester.)

Posted by katster at February 11, 2004 11:45 PM | TrackBack