Jack Krix
Defining the problem
Need
A library/item management system that can handle searching for items, adding items and removing items. The system will operate around a local database management system (I used a MySQL). This is shown as problem #4 in the assessment handout.
Ideas generated
The MySQL server (what I chose to do):
Since I went with MySQL I would have to have a local server running when the program is running. For the server I searched for a reliable and portable server that would meet the needs. I ended up using WAMP which unfortunately installs a range of web server components but the good thing was that it had a MySQL server. There were a few things that I don’t like about this setup; the main concern being that it has a bunch of un-required components and features for the library system that take up a whole lot of space (the total install size of WAMP on a system is about 150MB, depending on the system). The reason I went with the WAMP server setup was that it was the easiest used compared to other portable MySQL standalone servers.
An external server for MySQL:
For portability issues I was considering having the program connect to my own external server but there are some big issues with this and for these reasons I went with the WAMP server: * The DET proxy will block the server so the system would not function within a DET campus. * All data going to the server could potentially be intercepted (very unlikely but could happen). * The data is not locally stored. * If the server goes down the system would not be functional. * For every client, a database would be generated. If each client has many entries of items in their database, for example purposes let’s say a standard client has a 2GB database of entries and there are 200 clients who have used the system, there would be 400GB space taken up on the server, decreasing server performance. * If there are many clients sending queries to