Internet Systems Development

Aims

This course unit seeks to equip the candidate with an understanding of how to implement and maintain a web site. The course unit aims:

1. To help the candidate to understand the key issues, technologies, protocols and paradigms of web site development and management.
2. To stimulate analysis and develop a critical approach to web site design and construction, thus to enable appropriate choices of tools and methodologies when constructing web sites.
3. To examine and compare a wide variety of different technologies used in web site construction, including those at the cutting edge of Internet development.
4. To introduce some of the key programming languages used in web site construction.
5. To provide an opportunity for the candidate to gain proficiency in web authorship.

Programme Content and Learning Objectives

After completing the programme, the student should be able to:

1. Write advanced HTML, including the use of forms, tables, frames, imagemaps, dynamic HTML and style sheets and to be aware of current and forthcoming advances such as XML.
2. Understand the key issues of web page design with regard to the balance of dynamics, performance and aesthetics.
3. Understand the issues of authoring for platform and location independence.
4. Write simple client-side applets and/or components and incorporate them into a web page.
5. Write simple client-side scripts to create dynamic web content.
6. Write simple server-side scripts and use these to provide web-based access to a database.
7. Understand issues of security as they relate to intranet and Internet technologies and know how to design a secure web-based system.
8. Explain the technologies and implications of online commerce.
9. Explain the operation of the World Wide Web and related Internet technologies.
10. Set up and manage a web server.

Syllabus Content

HTML Part 1

• Basic HTML, publishing to a website.

• HTTP, the architecture of the web, web server design and management.

• Aesthetics vs efficiency, separation of content and representation, design for multiple browsers, hypertext design issues, designing for the visually impaired, international concerns, cross-media design.

• Further HTML: tables, forms, frames, style sheets, imagemaps.

• Incorporating applets and other objects into HTML pages, writing simple Java applets, overview of ActiveX, security and performance concerns, Java sandboxing, digital signatures and notions of trust. Use of Plug ins.

• Basic JavaScript, including form validation, image pre-loading, window manipulation.

• Introduction to Active Server Pages and database integration.

• Introduction to Perl, implementing CGI programs on the web server.

• Technologies of security such as S-HTTP, SSL and PPTP, secure transaction protocols, server security mechanisms, site certificates.

• Implementing shopping carts, credit card authentication schemes, micropayments and ecash, the exploitation of search engines/portals.

• Business benefits, connecting to legacy applications, design issues (e.g. user involvement, publishing methods), email/news/groupware integration.

• Investigation of current issues. From June 99 these might include one or more technologies such as XML, SMIL, IPv6, VRML etc.