Community Networking Portal for Academic Group is a massive site which includes Academic Room, Social Network, Online Courses, Video Lectures, Scholars Directory

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Case Study
Community Networking Portal for Academic
Group

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This is a massive site which includes Academic Room, Social Network, Online
Courses, Video Lectures, Scholars Directory, Online Research Tools, MP3 Files,
Journal Articles, Online Books, Book Reviews and Ancient Manuscripts. This web
application required development of numerous features and maintenance. They
looked for a team with extensive knowledge and enormous experience in
developing a social networking platform and sought professionals who would
implement the following:
 Provide all the academic content (Images, Videos, Manuscripts, books etc.)
under a single platform to make it convenient for the users to find everything
under one roof rather than surfing various sites for it.
 Enable social interaction by inviting people.
 Allow knowledge exchange through file sharing, downloading and uploading
feature.
 Allow user to create his/her profile to showcase accomplishments.
 Create “Public Profile” feature so that users can create profiles for scholars
they admire.
 Create an absolute category-based design and maintain proper Discipline
using parent-child system.
 View version history and implement various high-ranking search techniques.
Project Challenges
Team faced the following challenges:
 According to requirement the client demanded high-ranking search techniques
to be implemented in the application. Apache Solar which is a competent
technology was used to meet the user requirement. The application can now
search according to various sections such as search according to tags,
geographical focus, category based, related disciplines, related videos and so
on.
 Adding discipline-based content was another crucial requirement. Project team
adopted parent-child system to create each category within the application.
 Project team developed several modules to incorporate social networking
feature using Drupal Framework.
 Other challenges include synchronization and incorporation of an extensive list
of features designed for enhancing the user‟s community networking
experience.
 Provision and maintenance of the database of a range of interactive features
like mail service, blogs and forums to ensure user participation.
Client Requirement

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Technologies Used
Manpower
Planning
The enormous structure of the website and the challenges involved necessitated
the adoption of a four-tier approach that consisted of:
 MYSQL Server Database, Tables, Stored Procedures etc… incorporated within the
database layer.
 Conversion of data between incompatible type systems in databases and accessing data
from the database for the Interface layer and Database Abstraction layer respectively.
 All the business logic procedures for modules such as User Profiles, Invitations, Forums
and Blogs etc… forming the Business Logic layer.
Operating System &
Server Management
Linux OS, Multi-Server Architecture with Staging & Production
Environment through Version Controlling releases, Server
Optimization, Security & SSL Implementation, Scheduler for
Back-ups, Alert Monitoring System Integration, Server
Performance Tuning at regular intervals, Software Firewall
Configuration & Maintenance
Development Tools &
Environments
Drupal, Apache 2.0 Handler, AJAX, Java Script, Apache Solar,
HTML5, CSS3, etc.
Database MYSQL Database Server, DB Clustering, DB Optimization,
Master Slave Replication, Query Optimization, Scheduler for
Backups
Project Leader 1
Developers 1
Designers 1
Quality Assurance Testers 1

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 The GUI of the website formed the User Interface layer.
Architecture
The website was mainly characterized by rich user data and featured extensive capabilities
of social networking nature which entailed MySQL Server and Drupal. The development
structure was specifically implemented to facilitate the „faster to market‟ transition of such
concepts. Drupal Framework was used to develop modules like User Profiles, Invitations,
Forums and Blogs such that direct execution from the UI layer was possible. Effective
access to the database in an object oriented context was implemented using an interface
translating the object logic to relational logic so as to communicate with the relational
databases in an object-oriented manner.
The access to the database was enabled through the creation of an intermediary
abstraction layer. Only the complex retrieval of data from multiple tables was facilitated
through stored procedures and everywhere else conditional syntax was implemented to
ensure seamless performance of the website. Images, applications and data were called
from their respective servers keeping the UI layer free of any business logic and scalability
was guaranteed by implementing sub-domains for various areas of the website.
Development Highlights
Greater accuracy in handling user status, user information and other user-related
validations ensure privacy and security of content. Comprehensive search & browse
options are offered within optimized query features using Apache Solar. The entire
framework was kept highly scalable in order to provide adaptability & ease while
incorporating new features. Web usability guidelines were strictly adhered during the
development and the interface was made easily navigable through the judicious use of
CSS and HTML controls. Search Engine Optimization activities were regularly resorted to
with a view to ensure high visibility for the site over the internet. The site was developed
and fully functional within a span of 12 months.