START-UPS 2.0 @ HARVARD

Cultivating a web presenceDerek Horton

Get familiar with the language of the industry

Technology Overview

5/1/2008

3

HDot

Explain this?

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3

Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Database

DatabaseDatabase

Web Server

Web Server

Web Server

Web ServerLo

ad

Ba

lanc

ing

Web Client – who you serve

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The user visiting your website

Client side script runs here (javascript)

Unknowns

browser

connection speed

plugins

language spoken

Web Client

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78.6%

17.8%

3.6%

Market Share

Internet Explorer

Firefox

Other

Databases – The place for your data6

Relational

Consists of multiple tables with constraints between them

Transactional

If an operation fails, any steps executed are undone

Scalable

Can handle extremely large amounts of data efficiently

Redundancy techniques increase reliability

Server replication and clustering increase capacity

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Databases - Products

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Web Servers – serving the client

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In between the client and the database

Typically

Gets the users request

Get necessary info by querying the database

Processes info and creates a page to return

Sends the page to the user

Web Servers / Application Servers

34.2% market

Strong player in

business

48.42% market

Strong in the open

source community

9

IIS – Windows Server Apache – Linux (typically)

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Basic Scenario

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Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Web Server

+

Database

High-Availability Scenario

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Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Database

DatabaseDatabase

Web Server

Web Server

Web Server

Web ServerLo

ad

Ba

lanc

ing

Session Handling – remembering people12

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Cookies

Persistent

Non-persistent

Hidden form fields

Query strings (http://www.google.com/search?q=ImAQueryString)

Where to store the data?

Design and Development13

Web Designer

Layout

Style

“artistic”

Web Developer

Programming

Wiring things

“logical”

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Design – Look and Feel14

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HTML

Mix of information and layout

In a dynamic website HTML will be minimal

CSS

Primary way of expressing layout according to best practices

Flash / Silverlight

Design - Example15

HTML CSS

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Design - Tools

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HTML / CSS Editors

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Microsoft Expressions Studio (get via Dreamspark)

Firefox + Firebug

Graphic Editors

Adobe ImageReady

Adobe Photoshop

Design - Portfolios

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Web Designers will have portfolios illustrating their

work

Transparent to others in that markup code can be

viewed (not the case for application code)

Development - under the hood

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Client side code

Silverlight, Flash, Javascript, Java Applets

Server side code

ASP.NET, PHP, PERL, Ruby on Rails, Python, etc.

What runs where?

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Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Web Client

Database

DatabaseDatabase

Web Server

Web Server

Web Server

Web ServerLo

ad

Ba

lanc

ing

ASP.NET

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Microsoft Solution

Heavily deployed for enterprise management

Allows code behind to be written in multiple languages

C#, VB.NET, Iron Python

Developed using Visual Studio .NET

.NET 3.5, .NET 2.0, .NET 1.1, asp

Code works for desktop, Silverlight, and web

.aspx, .asp, viewstate

PHP

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Embraced by the open source community

Many tools for development, such as Zend Studio

LAMP – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP

v. 5.2, 4.4.7

Which is better? ASP.NET or PHP?

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• Most any project can be done in eitherNot polar opposites

• Can be used in desktop applications (Win32)

• And on the client side (Silverlight)

ASP.NET code is “more portable”

• Visual Studio is a great development toolASP.NET has Visual Studio

• Possibility to use leaner libraries and get cheaper hostingPHP is leaner and cheaper

• Resulting in well maintained code blocks available free to use (ieDrupal)

PHP has strong open source community backing

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AJAX

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Asynchronous communication

Communication outside a postback event

Allows for more of a desktop application experience

Transfer in background

Upload files

Download images

Examples

Google Suggestions

Microsoft Live Image Search

Flash / Silverlight / Java Applets

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Allows more rich content by communicating outside

the HTML + CSS + Javascript browser platform

Requires plugin to view, slow loading (page+plugin)

Appropriate for applications

Search engine indexing issues

Better with Silverlight (XAML instead of binary)

Silverlight

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http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/

http://www.nokola.com/shock/

Getting tools

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Dreamspark (academic)

Visual Studio 2008

Expression Studio

SQL Server 2005 Dev Edition

Server 2003 Standard

MSDNAA (academic)

Server 2008 / Vista

All Microsoft products except Office

Other

Ubuntu / Fedora / CentOS /

openSUSE

Apache

MySQL

Popfly

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http://www.popfly.com/users/BinaryCode/Flickr%

20And%20Virtual%20Earth

http://www.popfly.com/users/BinaryCode/Coming

%20Soon%20On%20Dvd

QUESTIONS